Opinion ID: 1160882
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The court of appeals applied the correct harmless error standard.

Text: Ronald argues that the court of appeals applied the wrong harmless error standard. If Diane's statement did not fall within a recognized hearsay exception, as the court of appeals appears to have held, its admission violated Ronald's right of confrontation. As Ronald argues, the court of appeals should have then applied the harmless beyond a reasonable doubt standard. [16] But we conclude that Diane's statement properly falls within the state-of-mind exception. Thus, although the court of appeals used only the lesser harmless error standard, its choice did not prejudice Wyatt because that standard would have been the correct one if the court had properly evaluated Diane's statement under the state-of-mind exception. If the superior court correctly found that the statement was an exception to the hearsay rule but erred in its evaluation of the defendant's concerns of prejudice, the court of appeals need only have applied the harmless error standard. A non-constitutional error is harmless if it did not appreciably affect the jury's verdict. [17] We have previously held that this standard is proper even when hearsay is inadmissible under Rule 403. [18] Here, the court of appeals evaluated the error under this standard and concluded that [i]n the context of this lengthy trial and the extensive evidence against [Ronald], we are convinced that the admission of this statement did not appreciably affect the jury's verdict. We agree. As the State argues, the State presented substantial circumstantial evidence at trial indicating that Ronald murdered his wife. Moreover, the State never seemed to focus on or emphasize the lethal situation statement after it was admitted. [19] While the trial court could have sanitized the potentially inflammatory comment or excluded it from evidence, we do not believe that Diane's reference to a potentially lethal situation appreciably affected the jury's verdict in this case. Thus, the error was harmless.