Court Opinion

ID: 9367953
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-02-02 17:00:30.907527+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:04.661801
License: Public Domain

Appellate Case: 21-7068     Document: 010110807162      Date Filed: 02/02/2023   Page: 1
                                                                                 FILED
                                                                     United States Court of Appeals
                       UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                        Tenth Circuit

                              FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT                        February 2, 2023
                          _________________________________
                                                                        Christopher M. Wolpert
                                                                            Clerk of Court
  UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

        Plaintiff - Appellee,

  v.                                                         No. 21-7068
                                                  (D.C. No. 6:20-CR-00086-RAW-1)
  MIRANDA LYNNE REE,                                         (E.D. Okla.)

        Defendant - Appellant.
                       _________________________________

                              ORDER AND JUDGMENT*
                          _________________________________

 Before HARTZ, KELLY, and MORITZ, Circuit Judges.
                   _________________________________

       Miranda Ree appeals from her jury conviction for second-degree murder in

 Indian country. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1111(a), 1151, 1153. She argues that the district

 court erred in admitting evidence of her apparent lack of remorse. Finding no

 reversible error, we affirm.

                                     Background

       One afternoon in September 2018, Ree and Bryan Chaney, along with Kasy

 Allen, Mary Edens, and Shaun Williams, were smoking methamphetamine inside a

 house in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Ree and Chaney lived in that house, and they had

       *
         This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines
 of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. But it may be cited for its
 persuasive value. See Fed. R. App. P. 32.1(a); 10th Cir. R. 32.1(A).
Appellate Case: 21-7068    Document: 010110807162        Date Filed: 02/02/2023     Page: 2

 been arguing that day.1 At some point, Chaney retrieved a Coleman camping torch

 powered by an eight-to-twelve-inch propane tank that he and others used to smoke

 methamphetamine. Over the course of 45 or 50 minutes, Chaney repeatedly walked

 past the living room couch where Ree, Allen, and Williams were sitting while

 igniting the torch and pointing it at Ree; Williams testified that Chaney did this six to

 eight times, and Ree estimated it was eight to ten times.

       Chaney never burned Ree or anyone else, though Ree and Williams said they

 could feel the heat emanating from the torch. Allen and Edens testified that they

 heard Ree say she would stab Chaney if he did not stop. Williams and Ree testified

 that Ree simply said she would hurt Chaney if he did not stop.

       Eventually, Williams pulled out his car keys from his pocket and told Ree they

 could leave. Williams testified that Chaney then walked past the living room couch,

 “sa[id] something about who [Ree] was dating at the time,” ignited the torch, and left

 the living room area through a hallway. R. vol. 3, 115. Ree agreed to leave with

 Williams, but she first wanted to use the bathroom. So she walked down the same

 hallway Chaney had just entered, where the bathroom was located.

       According to Ree, as she walked down the otherwise-empty hallway, Chaney

 came out of his bedroom and walked into the hallway with the torch. She testified

 that she told Chaney to leave her alone, but “he kept coming at [her].” Id. at 272. Ree

       1
         This was not the first time Ree and Chaney had argued. They were once in a
 relationship, and days before, according to Ree, Chaney had hit her on the head
 because Chaney was upset that she was dating someone else. Chaney had also
 severely injured a friend of Ree’s months earlier.
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 could not recall whether Chaney had ignited the torch. But she told the jury that she

 was scared Chaney would burn and kill her. Ree said she reached into a closet to grab

 anything to defend herself, and she managed to find a knife. She testified that she

 again warned Chaney to leave her alone, but he “kept walking towards [her].” Id.

 at 273. And when he did, she stabbed him. The stab wound caused Chaney’s death,

 and the forensic pathologist who performed Chaney’s autopsy testified that the knife

 traveled from front to back, left to right, and downward.

       After Ree stabbed Chaney, she told everyone in the house to call the police.

 She then left the house with Williams and the knife.2 While they were stopped at a

 Wal-Mart refueling Williams’s car, Ree’s friend Tiffany Bowers called Ree “to see

 what she was doing.” Id. at 163. Ree told Bowers that she had done “something really

 bad and . . . was really scared,” but that she could not talk about it over the phone. Id.

 at 276. Bowers invited Ree to her home, and when Ree and Williams arrived, Ree

 told Bowers that she stabbed Chaney because he tried to burn her with the torch.

       Sometime later, Ree and Williams left Bowers’s home to purchase marijuana.

 On their drive back, Ree threw the knife out the car window. Ree returned to

 Bowers’s home, and Ree’s boyfriend, Christopher Del Rio, arrived shortly thereafter.

 Ree told Del Rio that she stabbed Chaney because he tried to burn her, and she left

 Bowers’s home with him.

       2
         Ree and Williams offered different accounts of who retrieved the knife from
 the house: Ree testified that Williams retrieved it, and Williams testified that Ree
 retrieved it.
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       Meanwhile, back at the Broken Arrow house, officers arrived after Allen and

 Edens called the police. Edens had performed CPR on Chaney, and she testified that

 she did not see a torch next to Chaney when she saw him in the hallway. The officers

 also did not locate a torch in the hallway, but they found one in a bedroom. Ree

 testified that she did not move the torch and that she did not know how the torch

 ended up in the bedroom.

       Williams saw Ree once more the following morning. He testified that Ree told

 him she was leaving Oklahoma and that Del Rio knew people in Texas or Mexico. A

 few days later, Ree arrived at her sister’s home in Texas. She then self-surrendered

 after the United States Marshals Service advised her sister that Ree was wanted for

 first-degree murder.

       At trial, Bowers testified, without objection, that Ree did not appear

 remorseful on the day Chaney died. Bowers also testified that Ree did not appear

 remorseful approximately six weeks after Chaney’s death, when Bowers spent time

 around Ree while they were both in state custody. Ree’s counsel objected to this

 latter testimony on relevance grounds, arguing that “anything that happened a month

 and a half or two months later would be entirely irrelevant.” Id. at 171. The district

 court overruled the objection.

       At the close of trial, the district court instructed the jury on first-degree

 murder, second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, and involuntary

 manslaughter. As relevant here, the district court instructed the jury that second-

 degree murder required the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ree

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 killed Chaney with malice aforethought, which it defined for the jury as “to kill

 another person deliberately and intentionally[] or to act with callous and wanton

 disregard for human life.” R. vol. 1, 138. Because Ree asserted that she acted in self-

 defense, the district court also provided a self-defense instruction. That instruction

 informed the jurors that they could convict only if the government proved beyond a

 reasonable doubt that Ree did not act in self-defense or that “it was not reasonable for

 [Ree] to think that the force she used was necessary to defend herself against an

 immediate threat.” Id. at 139. The jury convicted Ree of second-degree murder,

 finding that Ree killed Chaney with malice aforethought and rejecting Ree’s assertion

 of self-defense. The district court later sentenced her to 365 months in prison and five

 years of supervised release.

       Ree now appeals.

                                     Analysis

       Ree argues that the district court erred in allowing Bowers to testify that Ree

 did not appear remorseful approximately six weeks after Chaney’s death because

 such testimony was irrelevant under Federal Rule of Evidence 401. The government

 counters that Bowers’s testimony was relevant to show Ree’s state of mind when she

 killed Chaney. We need not resolve this dispute, however, because we agree with the

 government that any abuse of discretion in admitting Bowers’s testimony was

 harmless. See United States v. Chavez, 976 F.3d 1178, 1204 (10th Cir. 2020)

 (explaining that nonconstitutional challenge to district court’s admission of evidence

 is subject to harmless-error review).

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        The erroneous admission of irrelevant evidence is harmless if it did not affect

 a party’s substantial rights. See id. A party’s substantial rights are affected only if the

 error, considered in the context of the entire record, had “a substantial influence on

 the outcome of a trial or leaves one in grave doubt as to whether it had such effect.”

 Id. (quoting United States v. Richter, 796 F.3d 1173, 1197 (10th Cir. 2015)). The

 government bears the burden of demonstrating, by a preponderance of the evidence,

 that the nonconstitutional evidentiary error was harmless. United States v. Andasola,

 13 F.4th 1011, 1017 (10th Cir. 2021).

        Here, the government asserts that it presented more than sufficient evidence of

 Ree’s guilt and the admission of Bowers’s lack-of-remorse testimony was harmless.3

 The disputed elements of Ree’s crime concerned Ree’s state of mind, specifically

 whether she acted with malice aforethought or in self-defense. The government first

 asserts that its evidence supporting the former was overwhelming. It points to Allen’s

 and Edens’s testimony that Ree threatened to stab Chaney in the moments preceding

 the fatal incident. It also relies on Ree’s failure to call the police after she stabbed

 Chaney, and the stab wound’s front to back, left to right, and downward trajectory—a

 path of travel that, according to the government, was inconsistent with Ree’s

 testimony that “it was almost like [Chaney] walked towards the knife.” R. vol. 3,

 273. The government additionally notes Ree’s efforts to hide the knife she used to

        3
         Because the issue before us is whether Bowers’s testimony affected Ree’s
 conviction for second-degree murder, we consider the elements for that crime only.
 See, e.g., United States v. Vallo, 238 F.3d 1242, 1246–47 (10th Cir. 2001).
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 stab Chaney and her flight to Texas. And it emphasizes that Ree, if truly afraid for

 her life, had an opportunity to leave the house with Williams, but she instead chose to

 follow Chaney into the hallway where she ultimately stabbed him.

       The government further contends that it presented overwhelming evidence to

 rebut Ree’s assertion of self-defense. It highlights, for example, the fact that the torch

 Ree claimed Chaney held in the hallway4 wasn’t found next to Chaney’s body but in

 a nearby bedroom.5 The government also stresses that Chaney never burned or hurt

 Ree and that Ree could have requested help at any time from many individuals in the

 house, including Williams, who indeed told Ree they could leave the house. And

 finally, the government explains that Ree could have turned around and left the

 hallway when she encountered Chaney.

       In reply, Ree first argues that Bowers’s testimony posed a serious risk of

 unfair prejudice because the testimony tended to malign her character and may have

 therefore caused the jury to convict on improper grounds.6 But our review of the

 record reveals that Bowers’s testimony was not as significant as Ree contends.

 Though Ree describes Bowers’s testimony as substantial, at bottom, the challenged

 testimony consisted of a single question and a single corresponding answer: The

       4
           Notably, Ree couldn’t remember whether the torch was lit.
       5
           Further reinforcing this point, Edens—who administered CPR to Chaney—
 testified that she did not see a torch next to Chaney in the hallway.
         6
           In her reply brief, Ree takes significant issue with the government’s assertion
 that Bowers’s testimony was harmless because Ree does not challenge Bowers’s
 initial testimony that Ree did not appear remorseful on the day of Chaney’s death.
 Because the government’s argument on this point is not material to our resolution of
 this case, we need not further address Ree’s reply argument.
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 government asked Bowers whether Ree appeared remorseful for Chaney’s death

 when she saw Ree in state custody approximately six weeks after the incident.

 Bowers said that Ree did not. No more was made of Bowers’s testimony throughout

 the trial, and as the government observes, neither party referenced the testimony

 during closing arguments.

       Next, Ree contends that she presented a substantial case of self-defense and

 that absent Bowers’s testimony, the jury could have acquitted her or convicted her of

 a lesser-included offense such as voluntary or involuntary manslaughter. In support,

 she draws our attention to Chaney’s violent behavior and repeated threats with the

 torch. She also invokes much of her own testimony and argues that her account of

 self-defense is more plausible than the government’s alternative theories. In

 particular, Ree notes that the evidence showed that she consistently told others she

 stabbed Chaney because Chaney tried to burn her with the torch. And she explains

 that a stab wound to the chest travelling front to back is consistent with Chaney

 having approached her in the hallway.

       But Ree fails to rebut the record evidence that strongly supports a finding of

 malice aforethought and discredits her assertion of self-defense. She does not

 challenge, for instance, that she threatened to stab and hurt Chaney; that she could

 have left the house with Williams or requested help from others; that despite fearing

 for her life, she chose to walk through the same hallway that Chaney had entered

 only moments earlier; that she failed to turn away from the hallway when Chaney

 allegedly came towards her with the torch; that she failed to call the police after

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 seriously injuring Chaney; that the torch Ree claimed Chaney held in the hallway was

 neither found nor seen next to Chaney’s body; or that Ree fled days after the fatal

 incident. This undisputed evidence amply supports the jury’s determination that the

 government proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Ree killed Chaney deliberately

 and intentionally or with callous and wanton disregard for human life. It also

 supports the jury’s finding that the government proved beyond a reasonable doubt

 that Ree did not act in self-defense or that it was not reasonable for Ree to think that

 the force she used was necessary to defend herself against Chaney. And in light of

 this strong evidence of Ree’s guilt, we are not convinced that Bowers’s testimony

 about Ree’s apparent lack of remorse approximately six weeks after the incident

 played a significant role in the jury’s findings. See United States v. Hardwell, 80 F.3d

 1471, 1492 (10th Cir. 1996) (concluding that admission of one challenged piece of

 evidence was harmless because its admission “could not have prejudiced [the

 defendant], against whom the evidence was overwhelming”).

       Ree nevertheless maintains that the jury could have interpreted some of the

 evidence the government relies on “as too equivocal to negate reasonable doubt.”

 Rep. Br. 17. To be sure, a jury could make more than one inference from the

 evidence introduced at trial. But as Ree herself acknowledges, here, “there was also

 significant evidence supporting the government’s theory of the case.” Id. And the

 jury concluded, after reviewing all the evidence, that the government proved beyond

 a reasonable doubt that Ree killed Chaney with malice aforethought and not in self-

 defense. Given the strength of the evidence supporting these findings, we cannot say

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  that Bowers’s testimony had a substantial influence on the outcome of Ree’s trial;

  nor does it leave us in grave doubt as to whether it had such effect. Any error in

  admitting Bowers’s testimony was harmless.

                                        Conclusion

        Finding no reversible error, we affirm Ree’s conviction.

                                              Entered for the Court

                                              Nancy L. Moritz
                                              Circuit Judge

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