State v. Rice
| Decision Date | 07 July 2000 |
| Docket Number | No. 98-488-C.A.,98-488-C.A. |
| Parties | STATE v. Kenneth S. RICE. |
| Court | Rhode Island Supreme Court |
Present WEISBERGER, C.J., LEDERBERG, BOURCIER, FLANDERS, and GOLDBERG, JJ.
Jane M. McSoley, Aaron L. Weisman, Providence, for Plaintiff.
Paula Lynch Hardiman, Paula Rosin, Providence, for Defendant.
Severance versus joinder of multiple sexual-wrongdoing charges: this is the key legal battleground for the appeal of the defendant, Kenneth S. Rice (Rice) from his criminal convictions. The trial justice denied Rice's motion to sever one or more counts of the six-count indictment against him for various acts of sexual misconduct directed against two minor children. Granting the motion would have required the state to conduct separate trials on the severed charges. On appeal, Rice urges us to reverse his conviction because he asserts that the trial justice improperly denied his severance motion, thereby permitting the state to join all the counts against him in one trial. He contends that, by failing to sever certain of the counts for a separate trial, the trial justice permitted the state to introduce highly prejudicial bad-character evidence against him throughout his trial that otherwise would not have been admissible. Rice also argues that the trial justice committed reversible error when he denied him access to supposedly discoverable information concerning a complaining witness's medical and psychiatric records because these documents may have contained exculpatory evidence. Finally, Rice suggests that the trial justice erred by refusing to allow a nurse practitioner whoconducted a gynecological examination of one of Rice's victims to testify concerning the absence of any physical evidence that would corroborate his alleged sexual molestation of this victim. Rice argues that the cumulative effect of these alleged errors deprived him of his right to a fair trial and violated his witness-confrontation rights under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and under article 1, section 10, of the Rhode Island Constitution. For the reasons asseverated below, we affirm the convictions on all counts and deny Rice's appeal.
After Rice's 1998 trial, a jury returned a guilty verdict on each of the six counts in the indictment: three counts of first-degree child molestation sexual assault, one count of second-degree child molestation sexual assault, and two counts of solicitation with the intent to commit a felony. The trial justice then sentenced Rice to life imprisonment for count 1 (first-degree child molestation sexual assault), to run consecutively to a previously imposed twelve-year sentence Rice was serving as a result of his probation violation after a previous conviction for second-degree child molestation sexual assault. Rice also received concurrent fifty-year sentences for his convictions on counts 2 and 3 (both involving first-degree child molestation sexual assault). On count 4 (second-degree child molestation sexual assault), the court sentenced Rice to ten years (consecutive to count 1's life-imprisonment sentence), and on counts 5 and 6 (the solicitation counts) he received concurrent sentences of five years each. Declaring Rice a habitual offender, the court finally sentenced him to an additional ten years to run consecutively to the sentences it had imposed previously. The trial justice further ruled that Rice would not be eligible for parole for thirty years.
The indictment's six counts related to four separate incidents of alleged sexual crimes committed at three separate locations and against two different victims, whom we shall call Mary and Cindy,1 both of whom were minors when the incidents occurred. All six counts covered a period of approximately twenty months.
The incidents described in counts 1 through 3 pertained to a single encounter between Rice and Mary in April 1992, in which Rice engaged in three acts of first-degree child molestation sexual assault.2 Mary, who was approximately ten years old at the time, lived with her mother, her brother, and her eventual stepfather (Rice) in Hope Valley, Rhode Island. On the day of these incidents, she was working on a school project in the family barn. Her teacher had assigned each of the students to construct a birdhouse. Mary testified at trial that Rice entered the barn and offered to help her build it.
But instead of helping Mary to build the birdhouse, Rice asked the girl to go upstairs to the barn's loft. There, Rice removed his clothes, made her do the same, and then engaged in sexual intercourse with her. When Mary told him "it hurt," he then penetrated her with at least one of his fingers. He then forced her to perform fellatio. Rice finally stopped assaulting her when he heard a car pull into the driveway. Before leaving the barn, however, he threatened Mary: "Don't tell your mom because if you do, I'm going to make your life hell and kill her." Taking him at his word, she remained silent for approximately four years.
Mary's mother married Rice in March 1993, and, a few months later, the family moved to a second-floor apartment in Westerly. Now twelve years old, Mary became friendly with thirteen-year-old Cindy who lived on the first floor of the building with her mother, stepfather, and brothers. The two girls visited each other every day on either the first or the second floor.
Although the family's stay at this apartment was relatively brief, it still afforded Rice the opportunity to solicit both these young girls for sex. Both Mary and Cindy testified at trial that Rice offered them money to perform sexual acts. Mary testified that Rice offered to pay her $15 to "jerk [him] off." She also heard him offer Cindy $20 if she would "sleep with [him]." Cindy testified that, on one occasion, Rice offered her $20 to perform fellatio, and on another occasion, he offered her $5 for a kiss. Mary testified that both she and Cindy refused these offers. Based upon two of these requests, counts 5 and 6 of the indictment charged that Rice had solicited Mary and Cindy to join him in the commission of various sexual acts: in the case of Mary, second-degree child molestation sexual assault (count 5)3 and in the case of Cindy, first-degree child molestation sexual assault (count 6).4
Finally, count 4 of the indictment charged Rice with second-degree child molestation sexual assault on Mary.5 In December 1993, the family moved to another apartment in Westerly. To use the bathroom in this apartment, Mary had to walk through either her brother's bedroom or the bedroom that Rice and her mother used. Mary testified that on two or three occasions when she attempted togain access to the bathroom through her mother's bedroom, Rice grabbed her, threw her down on the bed, and groped her breasts over her clothes. Yet Mary still remained silent, she testified, because she was "always afraid" that Rice "would hurt [her] mom."
Her brother testified at trial that he was always suspicious that something untoward may have happened between Rice and his sister. He noted that Mary would act strangely and sometimes burst into tears at the mere mention of Rice's name. In October 1995, still curious, her brother asked her if anything ever had happened between her and Rice. Mary finally gathered the courage to reveal Rice's assaults to her brother, but she begged him not to tell their mother. Nonetheless, Mary's brother eventually informed their mother that Rice had molested Mary. Mary's mother then brought her to the State Police barracks in Hope Valley, where Mary revealed Rice's two-year campaign of molestation and sexual solicitation.
Later that month, Darrell Superczynski (Superczynski), a child protective investigator with the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families, interviewed Mary. She told him she and Rice had engaged in oral sexual relations together and that he also had engaged in sexual intercourse with her. She also told him that Rice sometimes "had her touch him" in the groin area.
Lori Muddiman (Nurse Muddiman or Muddiman), a nurse practitioner with a specialization in pediatrics and coordinator of the Child Safe Program at Hasbro Hospital, interviewed Mary approximately two weeks later and examined her gynecologically. At that time, according to Nurse Muddiman, Mary denied having engaged in oral sex with Rice, although she acknowledged that Rice had sexual intercourse with her.
Additional facts will be supplied as necessary throughout this opinion.
Rice claims on appeal that the trial justice erred in denying his motion in limine to sever certain counts of the indictment for separate trials. He contends that the court's failure to sever the charges against him allowed the state to use prejudicial "spillover" evidence in support of the various charges to bootstrap its case against him when it did not have proof beyond a reasonable doubt on each of the charges separately. According to Rice, the trial justice should have severed either the two solicitation counts from all the other counts, or at least he should have severed the sole solicitation count relating to Cindy from the five counts relating to Mary. We reject both contentions.
Rule 8(a) of the Superior Court Rules of Criminal Procedure permits the state to join multiple offenses in a single indictment if the offenses charged are "of the same or similar character." Furthermore, Rule 8(a) provides that offenses may be joined when based "on two (2) or more acts or transactions connected together or constituting parts of a common scheme or plan." Because proper joinder under Rule 8(a) is a matter of law, we review de novo whether the state properly joined one or more charges in a single indictment against a single defendant. See ...
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