Court Opinion

ID: 9662138
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:00:19.812324+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:36.981009
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
concurring.
Respectfully, I concur in results only.
The Majority Opinion is a basketful of broken rules. These include:
1)That the U.S. Sixth Circuit’s decision reversing the judgment in this case, Sherley v. Seabold, 929 F.2d 272 (6th Cir.1991) somehow has been overruled by Brecht v. Abrahamson 507 U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 1710, 123 L.Ed.2d 353 (1993) simply because Brecht changed the standard for federal court review in habeas corpus cases to a less onerous one. Brecht has zero effect on the viability of the decision and opinion in Sherley v. Seabold. It should not be a subject of discussion in this opinion. The Federal District Court and the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, exercising habeas corpus jurisdiction, reviewed the first trial of this case and held that hearsay evidence was erroneously admitted in violation of the Sixth Amendment confrontation clause. Surely this is the law of the case upon remand and retrial of the same case. If and when the present decision is attacked in federal court, assuming the attack does not founder on the rocks of procedural default, we can be certain the federal courts will remind us that what they said previously about a federal question is the law of the case-. Worse yet, the Majority Opinion suggests that we should not apply the law of the case doctrine to habeas review in the Federal District Courts and U.S. Courts of Appeal, even though it would apply if the U.S. Supreme Court were to undertake further review.
2) That, in admitting evidence held inadmissible in Sherley v. Seabold, the trial court was engaged in applying Brecht (albeit erroneously), i.e., a harmless error standard. Harmless error (an appellate problem) has nothing to do with trial court decision-making, and obviously was not a factor involved in this ease at the trial level.
3) That because no section of the Federal Constitution guarantees to the accused the protection of the law of the case doctrine, our Court can turn it on or off at will, like a water faucet, without regard to due process considerations.
4) That an error in admitting hearsay evidence is not preserved by a pretrial motion in limine. Here, as described in the Commonwealth’s brief (p. 12) there was a motion in limine “to prevent the prosecutor from introducing statements made by victim Pau*801line Lang,” to which “the prosecutor stated (responded) that the prosecutor would not do so.” While I agree that the pretrial motion did not preserve the complaint of error because of special circumstances present here (discussed infra), as a general proposition, the pretrial motion in limine, once ruled upon, does indeed suffice. See KRE 103(d).
5) That, RCr 10.26 notwithstanding, “[e]ven palpable error can be waived.” Majority Opinion, p. 798.
Because these broken legal premises now become precedent to cite in future cases, publishing this opinion is a serious mistake.
The prosecutor introduced evidence at the second trial of this case in flagrant disregard of the plain-spoken mandate in Sherley v. Seabold. The opinion states:
“Lang made statements with regard to her attacks to a number of persons — her neighbor, the police officers who responded to the call for assistance, an emergency room nurse, and the investigating detective — which the prosecution offered in the form of hearsay evidence.” 929 F.2d at 273.
It then holds these statements, “with the possible exception of those she made to her neighbor before being removed from her home,”1 inadmissible hearsay and a violation of the confrontation clause in the Sixth Amendment:
“Lang’s statements do not offer the particularized guarantee of trustworthiness required by Wright (Idaho v. Wright, 497 U.S. 805, 110 S.Ct. 3139, 111 L.Ed.2d 638 (1990)) and Roberts (Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980)).” 929 F.2d at 274.
The law of the case set out by the Sixth Circuit in its opinion in Sherley v. Seabold was violated upon retrial in two respects.
1) Police evidence tags attached to exhibits and admitted into evidence for the jury to read and consider plainly introduced Lang’s hearsay statements. The tags stated:
Ms. Lang, 81 year old w/f, widowed, states a b/m came to her door early, approx. 5:10 am just after she had gotten up and dressed. He had what appeared to be roses with him, and wanted her to open the door and give him a pencil to sign ‘the paper.’ She opened the door to hand him a pencil and he forced his way in and beat her face and head, and struck her left side breaking 4 ribs. Subject took money from victims purse and fled.
2) Lang’s statements to the investigating police, plainly proscribed as hearsay by Sherley v. Seabold, were elicited by indirect means, but in such a manner that the jury could have no doubt as to what Lang said to the police. Officer Michael Ormes testified:
Q. Did Sergeant Brace ask her what happened? And I just want to know if he asked her. I don’t want you to tell me anything that she said. Okay? Did he ask Pauline Lang what happened?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. Did she respond and give an explanation?
A. Yes.
Q. Did Officer Bruce ask her if she had been robbed?
A. Yes.
Q. Again, I don’t want you to tell me what she said, but did she give him an answer?
A. Yes, she did.
Q. After she gave an answer, did Officer Bruce locate anything?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. What did he locate?
A. Her purse.
Q. After he located her purse, can you tell us what he did with it?
A. He handed it to Mrs. Lang.
Q. And without telling us what she said, can you tell us what she did with the purse?
A. She opened it up so she could look inside of it and also held it up to where we could see inside of it also.
Q. Was there any money in the billfold?
A. No.
And Sergeant Bruce testified:
Q. Now again, I don’t want you to—
*802A. Okay.
Q. —tell me what she said, but did she tell you what had happened?
A. Yes.
Q. Okay, based upon what she told you, without telling us what it was, did you locate any items in the room?
A. I located her purse laying on the floor near the head of the bed.
Q. After you found the purse, what did you do with it?
His testimony continued in the same vein. Mrs. Lang took the purse, opened it, and it was empty.
The testimony of these witnesses was clearly what McCormick on Evidence designates as an “indirect version of hearsay statement:”
If the apparent purpose of offered testimony is to use an out-of-court statement to evidence the truth of facts stated therein, the hearsay objection cannot be obviated by eliciting the purport of the statements in indirect form. Thus evidence as to the purport of ‘information received’ by the witness, or a statement as the result of investigation made by other persons, offered as evidence of the facts asserted out of court, have been held to be hearsay. McCormick on Evidence, Sec. 249, p. 593 (Cleary ed. 1972).
Notwithstanding the trial error here in admitting evidence in clear violation of the hearsay rule and the confrontation clause as applied by the Sixth Circuit in its mandate in Sherley v. Seabold, amazingly enough, we are confronted with a serious preservation of error problem because in every instance the defense counsel failed to object at the point where the evidence was presented. While the overreaching prosecutor shovelled in the very same evidence which the Sixth Circuit had forbidden and the prosecutor had agreed not to offer, defense counsel stood by, seemingly oblivious to the fact the prosecutor was violating the mandate of the Sixth Circuit and the motion in limine, not raising his voice to alert the trial court to the problem. If this was a defense strategy, I am at a loss to understand it.
Thus, the one point made in the Majority Opinion with which I agree is that since no contemporaneous objection was made, if we are to reverse this case it must be on grounds of palpable error under RCr 10.26. Contrary to the Majority Opinion, if there is palpable error, a circumscribed legal concept articulated in RCr 10.26, we are duty bound to reverse. But the palpable error concept requires more than just an error the appellate court can palpate and more than what is reversible error if preserved by contemporaneous objection. It requires an unpreserved error “[so] substantial ... that manifest injustice has resulted from the error.” RCr 10.26.
The key issue here is whether “manifest injustice has resulted from the error.” The constitutional error standard, a “harmless beyond a reasonable doubt” review, applies if the error were preserved, but it does not control our hand when the problem is to decide whether the error is of such magnitude “manifest injustice has resulted.” See Jackson v. Commonwealth, Ky.App., 717 S.W.2d 511 (1986). While the meaning of “manifest injustice” as used in RCr 10.26, has never been fully expounded in our previous opinion, there is one case, Stone v. Common-ivealth, Ky., 456 S.W.2d 43 (1970) explaining that it applies where the appellate court “believes there may have been a miscarriage of justice.”
When all is said and done, this case was retried because the federal courts decided that evidence was inadmissible hearsay which this court thought, unanimously, was admissible under firmly rooted hearsay exceptions. Sherley v. Commonwealth, 87-SC-243-MR (rendered October 15, 1987). While the ruling of the federal court controls because of its superior authority as a reviewing court exercising habeas jurisdiction, and while the defendant then had the right to have such evidence excluded at retrial upon proper objection, classifying use of such evidence as “manifest injustice” or a “miscarriage of justice” means going an additional step which seems inappropriate in present circumstances.
Although I might readily conclude that Sherley has suffered from ineffective assis*803tance of counsel, I cannot conclude there has been any “miscarriage of justice” here. Indeed, given the unobjected hearsay, and perhaps even without it, there is no reason to doubt that justice was done. Therefore, I concur in the results of this opinion, even though, had there been contemporaneous objections when hearsay was offered, I would reverse for prejudicial error.
One question remains: whether the motion in limine, to which the prosecutor agreed, sufficed to preserve the error. The practice of excluding evidence by motion in limine is now codified in KRE 103(d), which provides that a “motion in limine resolved by order of record is sufficient to preserve error for appellate review.” I believe this new rule simply codifies what was existing practice before the rule, and therefore I would apply it here, where the prosecutor conceded the motion, if one could be reasonably certain the trial court was aware the substance of the motion was being violated. But here the nature of the violations were, on the one hand, tags on the exhibits such as would come in unnoticed by the trial court unless called to his attention, and, on the other hand, indirect, backdoor testimony plainly implying what Pauline Lang had to say while not repeating it, a method of introducing hearsay so subtle as to escape judicial notice if not called to the court’s attention. One can hardly fault the trial court for failing to observe violations of the motion in limine, and to intervene sua sponte when these violations seemingly escaped the notice of defense counsel. Having decided this is not a case where the prosecutor’s actions, however overreaching, may have caused a “miscarriage of justice,” this is not a case where we should throw out the judgment to punish the prosecutor.
Thus, while as a general proposition (KRE 103(d)) requires no contemporaneous objection to preserve an error covered by a favorable ruling on a motion in limine, the unique circumstances of this case do not qualify for the general rule. We should not extend the reach of protection by motion in limine to cases where we cannot infer the trial court knew evidence excluded by motion in limine was being introduced anyway. Present circumstances called for the defense counsel to speak up if he wished to preserve error.
Thus, for the reasons stated, while disagreeing with most of the Majority Opinion, I concur in results.

. "These statements may meet the excited utter-anee exception to the hearsay rule.” Id.