Court Opinion

ID: 9760933
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:24:35.069719+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:18.845208
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent, for three reasons:
I. HEARSAY USE OF POWELL’S OUT-OF-COURT STATEMENT TO IMPEACH CRANE’S IN-COURT TESTIMONY THAT POWELL RATHER THAN CRANE SHOT THE JOGGER
This case differs from the non-hearsay use of a nontestifying confederate’s confes*820sion permitted in Tennessee v. Street, 471 U.S. 409, 105 S.Ct. 2078, 85 L.Ed.2d 425 (1985), which is the principal authority relied upon in the Majority Opinion. It may well be that who shot the jogger was a collateral issue because it was what happened on a different occasion, but a collateral issue, where relevant, is proved the same as any other issue, with due regard for the law of hearsay.
This was an issue injected into the ease by the Commonwealth rather than the appellant when the Commonwealth introduced all of Crane’s pretrial statement including this uncharged crime. Crane had a right to take the stand and contradict any portion of that alleged confession, and the Commonwealth should have been limited to using admissible evidence when rebutting facts in Crane’s testimony. The statement Powell gave the police is hearsay: it was introduced for its truth, and not for some non-hearsay purpose. Thus this was a different use and a different case from Tennessee v. Street, supra, cited in the Majority Opinion.
As stated in the Majority Opinion “the Commonwealth moved the trial court ... to admit Powell’s previous statement under Federal Rule of Evidence (FRE) 804(b)(3) ... as a statement against penal interest.” This is the real issue we needed to confront on this appeal with respect to the admissibility of Powell’s statement, and not whether the statement had a nonhearsay use. The Majority Opinion fails to address whether this exception to the hearsay rule should apply here, but it hardly seems reasonable to argue that the portion of Powell’s statement wherein he says Crane shot the jogger is anything but self-serving hearsay. See Taylor v. Commonwealth, Ky., 821 S.W.2d 72, 77 (1991), Leibson, J., dissenting.
II. ERROR IN FAILING TO INSTRUCT THE JURY ON THE LESSER INCLUDED OFFENSE OF SECOND-DEGREE MANSLAUGHTER
If, as the Majority Opinion states, the “appellant’s pretrial statement does not establish that he was not shooting at the store clerk,” meaning (I presume) that fairly read Crane was saying that he intended to shoot at the store clerk, then the trial court erred in instructing on any degree of wanton homicide, including wanton murder; in this scenario the only evidence was of intentional homicide. If, on the other hand, Crane’s statement should be construed as claiming that he did not intentionally shoot at the store clerk, but instead “shot the gun up in the air,” then surely there is a jury issue as to whether shooting “up in the air” manifested extreme indifference to human life, and Crane was then entitled, as he claims, to a wanton manslaughter instruction. The Commonwealth cannot have it both ways.
The wanton endangerment case which the Majority cites, Combs v. Commonwealth, Ky., 652 S.W.2d 859 (1983), is inap-posite. Combs was shooting in the direction of people, rather than up in the air. Shooting in the direction of people whom you do not hit, is wanton endangerment. But shooting in the direction of a person whom you hit, is intentional murder, rather than wanton murder.
The trial court probably would have been correct to leave the “wanton” portion out of the murder instruction (Shannon v. Commonwealth, Ky., 767 S.W.2d 548 (1988)), but surely it was incorrect to charge wanton murder on the basis that Crane was “shooting at the store clerk” rather than shooting the gun up in the air. On the other hand, if Crane’s intent was to shoot up in the air, rather than at the store clerk, the proper charge was wanton manslaughter, and, at the least, failure to permit the jury to consider it was reversible error.
III. THE TRIAL COURT’S FAILURE TO RECUSE AT THE SECOND TRIAL
If the judge said at the sentencing after the first trial, as is claimed, that “he would impose the death penalty on the appellant if he could, but that the law did not allow him to do so,” surely this implies bias and the trial judge should have then recused himself from the second trial. Perhaps, *821the trial judge could make such a statement and not be biased, but at the least it has such a strong appearance of bias that the judge should have recused himself before the second trial.
The trial judge’s statement that “he did not recall making the alleged statement” suggests that he was not denying it. We have on the one hand an affidavit that the statement was made, and on the other hand a statement that the trial judge “could not see himself making the statement attributed to him.” This is too much of an appearance of bias for this Court to tolerate, especially in a case with the checkered history of this one, wherein the decision of the trial court was questioned in a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision (Crane v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 683, 106 S.Ct. 2142, 90 L.Ed.2d 636 (1986)), and we have been twice appealed and reversed in federal courts: one time for approving the trial court’s conduct of the trial, and, after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed us, a second time for declaring the trial court’s error “harmless.”
This was a case where the trial judge should have recused himself to avoid the appearance of bias even if he was not consciously aware of bias.
COMBS, J., joins this dissent.
REYNOLDS, J., joins this dissent as to Issues I and II.