Court Opinion

ID: 9747845
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 15:38:47.449943+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:27.837755
License: Public Domain

KELLER, Justice,
dissenting.
Because substantial evidence supports, the trial court’s determination that Mary Wood (‘Wood”) was unavailable to testify at Appellant’s third trial, I agree with the majority’s conclusion that the trial court properly allowed the Commonwealth to introduce Wood’s videotaped prior sworn trial testimony. I respectfully dissent from the result reached by the majority and vote to reverse Appellant’s convictions and to remand the case for a new trial, however, because the trial court erred when it permitted the introduction of Wood’s au-diotaped, unsworn, out-of-court interview with investigating officers as part and parcel of her prior trial testimony. In my view, the evidentiary issues in this case can — and should — be resolved under the Kentucky Rules of Evidence. Because the trial court’s finding that Wood was unavailable was not clearly erroneous, Wood’s prior trial testimony was properly admitted under KRE 804(b)(1). The lion’s share of Wood’s out-of-court confession, however, constituted rank hearsay that does not fall within an exception to the hearsay rule and thus should have been excluded.1
To properly contextualize the error in this case, I find it necessary to give a more extensive recitation of the factual background of this case — focusing upon the nature of Appellant’s defense and Appellant’s cross-examination of Wood, including the manner in which Wood’s out-of-court confession was introduced — than the majority provides. Thus, briefly: (1) an assailant, acting in complicity with others, robbed,a cab driver in rural Henderson County, Kentucky, and, during a struggle, used a knife to slash and stab the driver’s face, hands, and arms; (2) subsequently, Kenneth “Cowboy” McClanahan contacted the authorities and informed them that he had been present when Appellant planned the crime, and that Appellant had later shown him a sum of money and told him that he (Appellant), Appellant’s girlfriend Wood, Wood’s minor son B.W., and B.W.’s friend C.P. had committed the crime together; (3) McClanahan then assisted the investigating officers by wearing a wire and obtaining taped incriminating statements from Wood (the initial getaway driver) and B.W. (who assisted the assailant during the robbery by taking the driver’s money bag and wallet to his mother’s vehicle); (4) Appellant, Wood, B.W., and C.P. were all charged; (5) B.W.’s and C.P.’s charges were disposed of in juvenile court and Wood entered a guilty plea in circuit court and received a prison sentence; (6) Appellant proceeded to trial, and his theory of the case was that McClanahan, Wood, B.W., and C.P., had committed the robbery, and that Wood had “cooked up” the scheme to finger Appellant as the assailant as retribution for Appellant’s refusal to become her fourth husband. Prior to the trial that is the subject of the present appeal to this Court, two (2) separate juries were unable to reach a unanimous verdict as to Appellant’s guilt.
During the Commonwealth’s direct examination of Wood at Appellant’s second trial, Wood described the planning, preparation, and execution of the robbery. Defense counsel’s cross-examination consisted primarily of laying KRE 613 foundations *827to impeach Wood with alleged inconsistencies between her trial testimony and a previous statement that Wood had given to police officers upon her arrest ten (10) days after the crime. Specifically, defense counsel addressed inconsistencies including: (1) whether Appellant, while leaping into Wood’s car after robbing the cab driver and slicing the driver’s throat, exclaimed “Drive, bitch, drive!” (as Wood testified at trial) or “go, go, go” (as Wood had stated in her audiotaped statement to the police); (2) whether during her trial testimony, in which she described the knife that Appellant allegedly used and explained that Appellant shaved his beard immediately after the crime for the purpose of changing his appearance, Wood disclosed new details regarding the crime “for the first time”; and (3) whether, in contrast to her earlier statement to the police in which she described “getting caught up in the ‘hype’ of it,” Wood’s trial testimony attempted to emphasize that her own role in the crime and the role of her son was the result of Appellant’s coercion. In response to many of these KRE 613 foundational questions, Wood stated that she could not remember the exact words that she had used during her statement to police two (2) years earlier. After a handful of Wood’s “I can’t remember what I said back then” responses, defense counsel stated/inquired “Why don’t we just play the tape?” After a lengthy bench conference, that is exactly what transpired.
Wood remained seated on the witness stand while Appellant’s trial counsel played for the jury Wood’s approximately-fifteen-minute-long audiotaped interview with the investigating officers. During the interview, Wood indicated that she was “cooperating” with the authorities, started her narrative of the events by stating that “Gary wanted to go do a job,” and proceeded to describe Appellant’s role in soliciting, planning, and executing the robbery. When the tape concluded, defense counsel engaged in a few follow-up questions to establish the alleged inconsistencies — e.g., “Now you heard yourself tell the officer ■ that Gary said ‘go, go, go’ right?” — and then he concluded his cross-examination. The Commonwealth had no redirect examination. However, defense counsel later recalled Wood to the stand to lay additional groundwork for Appellant’s “you lied on me because I wouldn’t take you as my bride” defense — i.e., more KRE 613 foundational questions regarding whether she had asked Appellant to marry her in the presence of other people and whether, when she discovered that Appellant was already married to someone else, she made statements to the effect of “paybacks are hell” and “he’ll pay.” The case was subsequently submitted to the jury for its deliberations, and the trial court declared a mistrial when the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict.
After the trial court ruled prior to Appellant’s third trial that the Commonwealth could introduce Wood’s videotaped trial testimony from the second trial, Appellant’s new defense counsel requested that the trial court redact the videotape to omit the portion where Appellant’s former trial counsel had played Wood’s audiotaped out-of-court statement to police. The trial court denied Appellant’s motion. And, thus, at Appellant’s third trial, after all of the Commonwealth’s “live and in person” witnesses testified: (1) the bailiff rolled a TWVCR “media cart” in front of the jury; (2) the trial court informed the jury that Wood was unavailable to testify in person at the trial, but admonished the jury to give Wood’s testimony from a prior “hearing” as much credibility as it would if Wood had testified in person because Wood had been under oath at the time she testified at the prior “hearing”; and (3) both Wood’s trial testimony and her out-*828of-court audiotaped statement to police were played for the jury (with the trial court’s bench clerk muting and fast-forwarding through the bench conferences).
The trial court erred when it denied Appellant’s motion to redact Wood’s out-of-court confession from the videotape that contained Wood’s former trial testimony. Despite the majority’s suggestion to the contrary,2 Wood’s out-of-court confession, although played during her earlier testimony, was not, itself, testimony,3 and was certainly not, therefore, “testimony given as a witness at another hearing of the same or a different proceeding”4 that would be admissible under KRE 804(b)(1). Instead, Wood’s interview contained extrajudicial statements5 that could be admitted into evidence at Appellant’s trial only if they independently satisfied an exception to the hearsay rule.6 Although a handful of individual statements contained within Wood’s interview would have been admissible under KRE 801A(a)(l) as prior statements that were inconsistent with Wood’s trial testimony, and certain inculpatory statements may have been admissible under KRE 804(b)(3) as statements against Wood’s interest, much of Wood’s “eonfession” consisted of descriptions of Appellant’s conduct rather than her own. Simply stated, neither KRE 804(b)(3) nor any other rule permitted the introduction of Wood’s extrajudicial statements about Appellant’s conduct.7
The majority, however, does not address the substantive issue of whether Wood’s extrajudicial “confession” was, in fact, properly ■ admissible at Appellant’s trial. Instead, the majority holds that Appellant waived his right to object to the playing of the audiotape because Appellant’s former trial counsel had introduced the audiotape of Wood’s police interview during his cross-examination at the prior trial. In so doing, the majority adopts what it acknowledges to be a minority position, which could be characterized as “you made your bed, now you get to sleep in it,” in apparent reliance upon pre-WWI authority, which has not been cited by any court since before WWII, that only holds, on a matter of statutory interpretation, that a statute did not permit objections to portions of former testimony.8 Most significantly, however,' the majority opinion’s waiver analysis all but ignores our own rules addressing objections to former testi*829mony. The Kentucky Rules of Criminal Procedure: (1) treat a witness’s testimony at a former trial as the equivalent of a deposition;9 (2) make the admissibility of a witness’s former testimony subject to the Kentucky Rules of Evidence;10 and (3) explicitly authorize objections at trial to portions of deposition testimony and set out the circumstances under which such objections may have been waived:
Objections may be made at the trial or hearing to receiving in evidence any deposition or part thereof for any reason that would require exclusion of the evidence if the witness were then present and testifying; provided, however, that:
(a) objections to the competency of a witness or to the competency, relevancy, or materiality of testimony are not waived by failure to make them before or during the taking of the deposition unless the ground of the objection is one that might have been obviated or removed if presented at that time;
(b) errors and irregularities occurring in the oral examination in the manner of taking the deposition, in the form of the questions or answers, in the oath or affirmation or in the conduct of the parties, and errors of any kind that might be obviated, removed, or cured if promptly presented are waived unless seasonable objection is made at the taking of the deposition; and
(c) objections to the form of written questions are waived unless served in writing on the party propounding them within the time allowed for serving the succeeding cross or other questions and within three (3) days after service of the last questions authorized.11
Today’s majority opinion adopts, by judicial fiat, a new fourth exception to RCr 7.20(2)’s general rule that former testimony is subject to all proper objections that could have been raised at the time the testimony was originally given. If the Court wishes to amend its rules, we have procedures to do so. As we have not done so, however, I would apply RCr 7.20(2) as written. I therefore disagree with the majority’s apparently ad hoc conclusion that Appellant waived his right to object to this inadmissible hearsay, and I would hold that the trial court erred when it failed to redact Wood’s videotaped prior testimony as Appellant had requested. Because the erroneous admission of the audiotaped confession prejudiced Appellant by improperly bolstering Wood’s sworn testimony, I vote to reverse Appellant’s convictions and to remand this indictment to the trial court for a new trial.
STUMBO, J., joins this dissenting opinion.

. KRE 802 ("Hearsay is not admissible except ■ as provided by these rules or by rules of the Supreme Court of Kentucky.”).

. Brooks v. Commonwealth, Ky., 114 S.W.3d 818, 829 (2003) (“Nor does KRE 804(b)(1) require the exclusion of otherwise admissible prior testimony because of changes in, or second thoughts about, trial strategy. The trial judge correctly admitted the prior testimony of Wood including her taped statement to police.” (emphasis added)).

. See BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY 1485 (7th ed.1999) (defining "testimony” as "[ejvidence that a competent witness under oath gives at trial or in an affidavit or deposition.” (emphasis added)).

. KRE 804(b)(1).

. See KRE 801(a) ("A 'statement' is ... an oral or written assertion!)]”). Cf. Williamson v. United States, 512 U.S. 594, 114 S.Ct. 2431, 129 L.Ed.2d 476 (1994) (holding that "statement,” under FRE 804(b)(3) means "a single declaration or remark” rather than "a report or narrative”).

. See KRE 805 (“Hearsay included within hearsay is not excluded under the hearsay rule if each part of the combined statements conforms with an exception to the hearsay rule provided in these rules.”)

. See Osborne v. Commonwealth, Ky., 43 S.W.3d 234, 239-241 (2001).

. Scribner v. Palmer, 90 Wash. 595, 156 P. 531, 532 (1916) ("It is the testimony of the deceased witness given in a former trial, not some part of it, which is in plain and positive terms made admissible at the second trial. The statute leaves no room for construction.”).

.RCr 7.22 ("For purposes of Rule 7.20 a duly authenticated transcript of testimony given by a witness in a previous trial of the same offense in any district or circuit court on the same charge shall be the equivalent of a deposition.”).

. RCr 7.20(1) ("At the trial or upon any hearing, a part or all of a deposition, so far as otherwise admissible under the rules of evidence, may be used_” (emphasis added)).

. RCr 7.20(2).