Opinion ID: 1823280
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: Other crimes evidence admitted through hearsay/ defendant's assignment of error number 18

Text: In this error, defendant asserts that the trial court erred when it allowed B.J. Castleberry to testify about an unadjudicated crime involving the defendant (the hitchhiker incident) that occurred shortly after the victim's death, when the men were returning to Alabama. Defendant argues both that this testimony involves prohibited hearsay and that it was inappropriately admitted because it was not evidence of violent conduct. The record shows that the trial court conducted a preliminary hearing to determine whether B.J. Castleberry's testimony about the incident would be admissible. At this hearing, the court watched an excerpt from a videotaped statement given by the witness. The statement provided, in pertinent part: And then all of a sudden the truck stopped on the side of the interstate and me and Spunk raised up and this girl got in the front seat with Jimmy and Terry. Terry was driving at the time and she got in the middle and Terry kept telling herher eye was black and her leg was skinned up a little bit and Terry kept telling her that he wanted her to give him a blow job. Mr. Rivette: Excuse me how do you how docould you hear that from inside? Mr. Castleberry: Yes, Iyeah because  Mr. Rivette: Ya'll had a little sliding door, sliding window? Mr. Castleberry: Sliding window. Mr. Rivette: Okay. Mr. Castleberry: We heard this. And he kept on hinting and she told him no and I don't think she realized what he was hinting about but we knew what he was talking about, about putting her to sleep. And then Jimmy told him to pull over and let him drive. And so Jimmy got to driving and Terry kept on reaching for the dash. That's where the little.25 automatic was which belonged to Jimmy and Jimmy reached over there and pushed the dash back up and then Jimmy finally got tired and just pulled over and told the girl to get out and so she got out and we went home and that's the last time we saw her. And we dropped Jimmy and him off and then we went back to Texas. The court ruled the evidence admissible, noting that: However, we do have this, he's testified and a jury apparently has believed him. He sounded believable to me and while I wouldn't want him as a neighbor that doesn't mean he's not acceptable as witness. And I find that his past [sic] credibility muster, consequently, his testimony with respect to that particular unadjudicated offense will be admitted, limited, however, to its occurrence and without any specific detail. Accordingly, the jury was allowed to hear B.J. Castleberry's testimony about the hitchhiker incident. This testimony substantially comported with the recorded statement. `Hearsay' is a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the present trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted. La.C.E. art. 801(C). However, statements that are events speaking for themselves under the immediate pressure of the occurrence, through the instructive, impulsive, and spontaneous words and acts of the participants, and not the words of the participants when narrating the events, and which are necessary incidents of the criminal act, or immediate concomitants of it, or form in conjunction with it one continuous transaction are part of the res gestae and are not hearsay. La.C.E. art. 801(D)(4). In Louisiana, the `res gestae' doctrine is broad and includes not only spontaneous utterances and declarations made before or after the commission of the crime, but also testimony of witnesses pertaining to what they heard or observed during or after the commission of the crime if a continuous chain of events is evidenced under the circumstances. State v. Craig, 95-2499 (La.5/20/97), 699 So.2d 865. In the instant case, the hitchhiker incident comprises one event in the continuous transaction that was the trip from Houston to Montgomery. These events, which included the stops at the casino and the victim's house as well as the hitchhiker incident, were temporally close, for the entire trip only took approximately thirteen hours. The events were also logically related, as they were all different incidents that occurred during the trip. Because the hitchhiker incident is part of this continuous transaction, it is part of the res gestae and is not hearsay. Further, a witness' testimony about his observations does not constitute a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the present trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted and is not hearsay. Thus, B.J. Castleberry's testimony about the incident was not hearsay and was properly admitted. The sentencing hearing shall focus on the circumstances of the offense, the character and propensities of the offender, and the impact that the death of the victim has had on the family members. La.C.Cr.P. art. 905.2(A). The character of a defendant convicted of first degree murder is automatically at issue in the sentencing phase of the trial, whether the defendant has placed character in issue or not. State v. Bourque, 622 So.2d 198 (La.1993). See also State v. Comeaux, 93-2729 (La.7/1/97), 699 So.2d 16; State v. Connolly, 96-1680 (La.7/1/97), 700 So.2d 810; State v. Jackson, 608 So.2d 949 (La.1992). Evidence of unadjudicated crimes is relevant and probative evidence of a defendant's character and propensities in the penalty phase of a first degree murder trial. Connolly, 700 So.2d at 820. There are, however, jurisprudential guidelines that must be followed before evidence of a prior unadjudicated crime may be admitted. In State v. Brooks, 541 So.2d 801 (La.1989), we enunciated a three-part test to be used in determining whether evidence of unadjudicated crimes should be admitted in the penalty phase of a first degree murder case. Accordingly, the Brooks court determined that this evidence can be admitted if: (1) the evidence of defendant's connection with commission of the unrelated crimes is clear and convincing; (2) the proffered evidence is otherwise competent and reliable; and (3) the unrelated crimes have relevance and substantial probative value as to the defendant's character and propensities, which is the focus of the sentencing hearing under La.C.Cr.P. art. 905.2 Brooks, 541 So.2d at 814. We next addressed the issue of admission of unadjudicated crimes in State v. Jackson, 608 So.2d 949 (La.1992). In Jackson, we reaffirmed our holding in Brooks, but we also added the requirement that the prior unadjudicated crime sought to be introduced must also involve violence against the person of the victim. Jackson, 608 So.2d at 955. Further, the period of limitations for instituting prosecution against the defendant for the unadjudicated crime must not have run at the time of the indictment for the first degree murder for which the defendant is being tried. Id. We imposed yet another restriction on the admission of other crimes evidence in the penalty phase of a first degree murder trial in State v. Bourque, 622 So.2d 198 (La.1993). In Bourque, we held that [i]ntroduction of evidence beyond that necessary to show criminal conduct has been committed and that the defendant has been accused of or connected to that criminal conduct, as well as some minimal evidence in support of these allegations, impermissibly shifts the focus of a capital sentencing jury from considering the character and propensities of the defendant to a determination of guilt or innocence of the unadjudicated criminal conduct. Bourque, 622 So.2d at 248. In Bourque, we reversed the defendant's death sentence and remanded the case to the district court for a new trial, as eleven of the twelve state witnesses at the penalty phase testified about an unadjudicated murder allegedly committed by the defendant. This testimony effectively turned the penalty phase into a forbidden mini-trial on the issue of whether the defendant had committed the other crime. Thus, under Bourque, only minimal evidence of the unadjudicated crime could be admitted in the penalty phase. In State v. Comeaux, 93-2729 (La.7/1/97), 699 So.2d 16, however, we overruled the Bourque restriction of minimal evidence of the unadjudicated crime. Rather than placing quantitative limits on the amount of evidence that could be introduced about the unadjudicated crime, in Comeaux we instead held that the pertinent inquiry was whether arbitrary factors had been injected into the sentencing phase through the introduction of other crimes evidence. To this end, we cautioned: the judge in the capital sentencing hearing should exclude evidence which, because of its cumulative or repetitive nature, has only marginal relevance and probative value. Moreover, the judge, having already ruled at the pretrial hearing on the admissibility of evidence of the unadjudicated conduct, should cautiously consider the quantum of evidence necessary to convey the message to the jury that the defendant has engaged in other serious criminal conduct that the jury should consider in its determination of sentence, without shifting the jury's focus from its function of determining the appropriate sentence in the capital case to a focus on the defendant's involvement in other unrelated conduct. In the instant case, we cannot say that the trial judge erred in admitting evidence about the hitchhiker incident. After viewing B.J. Castleberry's videotaped statement, we agree with the trial judge's assessment of his credibility and cannot say that he erred in finding clear and convincing evidence of the hitchhiker incident, or in considering this evidence competent and reliable. As the trial court noted, the jury's guilty verdict indicates that the jurors found B.J. Castleberry to be a credible witness. The incident is also relevant and has substantial probative value to show defendant's character and propensities, as the evidence shows that defendant's threat of putting the hitchhiker to sleep is the same phrase that he used shortly before murdering the victim. The defendant also threatened to put B.J. Castleberry to sleep upon learning that B.J. Castleberry was going to turn himself in to the police. These threats, combined with the defendant's demands for oral sex, show that defendant committed an attempted aggravated oral sexual battery against the hitchhiker. See La.R.S. 14:27, 14:43.2. Further, as an attempted aggravated oral sexual battery, the incident involved violence against the person of the hitchhiker and, as it occurred only hours after the murder at issue in this case, the period of limitations for prosecution of the battery had not run when defendant was indicted for the crime at issue here. Moreover, the evidence admitted at the penalty phase about the incident did not inject any arbitrary factors in the trial. B.J. Castleberry provided a succinct account of the incident, and this account was not much longer than the above-quoted excerpt from his statement. Thus, because the admission of the hitchhiker incident comports with the requirements for admission of unadjudicated other crimes, we cannot say the trial judge erred in admitting this evidence. Finally, even assuming the court erred when admitting this testimony, the verdict was surely unattributable to this error. The details of the incident were minimal when compared to testimony from defendant's ex-wife, who testified that three weeks before the instant offense, defendant abducted her from Kansas City, Missouri, threatened to blow [her] fucking brains out, made her drive to a remote area, forced her to perform oral sex, and then raped her. This assignment of error thus lacks merit.