Court Opinion

ID: 9674555
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:30:31.165344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:28.117544
License: Public Domain

STEPHENS, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
The majority maintains that the out-of-court statement by Leroy Kinser that he watched Johnson and Vincent beat and rob the victim was properly admitted as a prior inconsistent statement to impeach Eva Kin-ser. I disagree.
Detective Gaddie testified that Eva Kin-ser told him that Leroy Kinser told her that he stood in the doorway of the victim’s home while he watched his co-defendants, Dean Vincent and Ronnie Johnson, “do the robbing and whatever else was done *655there.” This is double hearsay. Any statement made outside of the courtroom witness stand, offered for the truth of the matter asserted therein, constitutes hearsay. To be admissible, it must fall into a recognized hearsay exception.
Leroy Kinser’s statement, because it is double hearsay, requires two exceptions. His statement to Eva Kinser could properly be admitted as an admission, and her statement could fit into the exception for impeachment by prior inconsistent statements. Jett v. Commonwealth, Ky., 436 S.W.2d 788 (1969). However, these exceptions would only apply to Leroy Kinser. To admit his statement into evidence during the trial of his co-defendants Vincent and Johnson would be unacceptably prejudicial to them. The trial court’s admonition was not enough to cure the inevitable conclusions to be drawn from the statement by the jury. As the United States Supreme Court held in Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968),
[a] defendant may be prejudiced by the admission in evidence against a co-defendant of a statement ... made by that co-defendant. This prejudice cannot be dispelled by cross-examination if the co-defendant does not take the stand. Limiting instructions to the jury may not in fact erase the prejudice.
Id. at 132, 88 S.Ct. at 1625.
Thus, Leroy Kinser’s out-of-court statement should never have been allowed to be heard by the same jury that determined the fate of Johnson and Vincent. Such an admission into evidence “violated [their] right of cross-examination secured by the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment.” Id. at 126, 88 S.Ct. at 1622.
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.