Court Opinion

ID: 9750420
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:57:50.446428+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:09.948036
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
dissenting.
I must respectfully dissent because I cannot follow the majority’s analysis of a very clear record and because I believe that the majority has not addressed the questions fundamental to the disposition of this case.
Officer Stepp confirmed that another officer saw Appellant Kellie Parker Sutton “at the door naked with no weapon.”
The majority characterizes the following as illogical: She did not possess a firearm when she was naked. She was naked when she was at the front door and yelled at the officers. Therefore, she did not possess a firearm when she was at the front door and yelled at the officers. Respectfully, the conclusion is logical. If Appellant was seen naked at the front door, and no weapon was seen in her hands when she was naked, is the majority suggesting that the gun was someplace on her body?
The majority works too hard to complicate the record. There is no testimony that anyone saw Appellant with a firearm on her person. Taking the record as it is without rewriting it or skewing it, none of the police officers saw a firearm on Appellant’s person, even when they saw her naked. They did watch her stand in her doorway and yell, “I have a gun[;] get your ass away from my truck or I’ll shoot you.”
The issues the majority should address based on this uncomplicated record are:
(1)If Appellant was the person yelling, would her knowledge that another person in the house had a gun in his bedroom be sufficient evidence that Appellant exercised care, custody, and control over that gun?
(2) Does a threat to use a gun constitute the exercise of care, custody, and control over a firearm?
(3) Is the threat evidence that Appellant knew that that specific firearm was located in a place to which she had access?
(4) Is following police officers’ orders to sit down in someone else’s room by sitting on a bed where officers later found a firearm evidence that Appellant exercised care, custody, or control over that firearm or that she knew the firearm was located under the mattress when the firearm was not visible until officers searched under the mattress?
Because the majority fails to address the clear issues raised by the record, I respectfully dissent.