Commonwealth v. Hairston

• Decision Date: 21 January 2014
• Citation: 84 A.3d 657
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Kenneth HAIRSTON, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

84 A.3d 657

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee

v.Kenneth HAIRSTON, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued April 9, 2013.

Decided Jan. 21, 2014.

Michael James Healey, Esq., Healey & Hornack, P.C., Pittsburgh, for Kenneth Hairston.

Rebecca Good McBride, Esq., Allegheny County District Attorney's Office, Amy Zapp, Esq., PA Office of Attorney General, for Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

BEFORE: CASTILLE, C.J., SAYLOR, EAKIN, BAER, TODD, McCAFFERY, ORIE MELVIN, JJ.

OPINION

Justice BAER.

Appellant Kenneth Hairston was convicted of two counts of murder on April 12, 2002, and, following the penalty phase, was sentenced to death for each murder conviction. Appellant failed to file a timely post-sentence motion or a timely appeal, thereby waiving his individual claims of error. This Court, therefore, engaged solely in our limited, automatic review of death penalty cases, evaluating the sufficiency of the evidence to support the conviction and performing our statutory review of the sentence.¹Commonwealth v. Hairston, 603 Pa. 660, 985 A.2d 804 (2009). Following our affirmance of the convictions and sentence, Appellant moved for reinstatement of his direct appeal rights nunc pro tunc, which the trial court granted. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Lantzy, 558 Pa. 214, 736 A.2d 564 (1999) (permitting the restoration of appellate rights nunc pro tunc as a remedy for counsel's ineffectiveness for failing to file a direct appeal).² Appellant now presents numerous claims of error related to his convictions and sentence. Upon consideration of these claims, we find no reversible error in the guilt or penalty phases of Appellant's trial, and affirm.

Because we have already engaged in a sufficiency review and found that “the evidence of guilt was overwhelming,” Hairston, 985 A.2d at 809, we provide the following facts solely as background.

On May 21, 2000, Appellant arrived at the apartment of his step-daughter, Chetia Hurtt, with a handgun he was not licensed to carry. When he was let into the apartment, Appellant threatened to kill Hurtt, her boyfriend, Jeffrey Johnson, who was also present, and himself. After Appellant demanded Mr. Johnson leave the apartment, he pointed the gun at Hurtt, pushed her down, and attempted to remove her clothes. Meanwhile, Mr. Johnson informed police about what was occurring, and the police responded immediately.

When they arrived at the apartment, they found Appellant, half-naked, and recovered his gun. As the police were bringing Appellant out of the apartment, he attempted to escape. During the course of the ensuing investigation, Ms. Hurtt informed police that Appellant had been assaulting her for years and making threats against her family. She agreed to press charges. As a result of these events, Appellant was charged with rape, attempted rape, attempted escape, and related crimes. According to Ms. Hurtt's subsequent testimony, following his arrest Appellant threatened to harm himself and his family if Ms. Hurtt revealed his past assaults and persisted in pressing charges.

As the time of Appellant's rape trial drew near, Appellant acted on his threats. On June 11, 2001, two weeks before his trial for assaulting Ms. Hurtt was scheduled to begin, he directed the school bus company of his autistic teenage son, Sean, not to pick him up for school. Later that day, firefighters responded to a report of smoke coming from the home Appellant shared with his wife, Katherine, Sean, and his wife's mother, Goldie Hurtt. When the firefighters gained entry, they discovered that the house was strewn with garbage and debris and the doors were barricaded. Once inside, they discovered Sean on the living room couch, and although they brought him out of the house alive, he later died at the hospital from blunt force trauma to the head. Firefighters discovered Katherine's body in the kitchen, and it was later determined that she too died from blunt force trauma to the head. Goldie Hurtt was rescued from the house, unharmed. Appellant was discovered in the kitchen with several self-inflicted puncture wounds to the neck and chest. When emergency responders removed him from the house, he was extremely combative.

At the hospital, Appellant indicated that he had killed his wife and started the fire, and that his motivation for doing so was anxiety and outrage over the pending rape allegations and imminent trial on these charges. Eight days later, on June 19, 2001, Appellant further explained that he bludgeoned his wife and son with a sledgehammer, left the house with the weapon and went to a local bar, where he consumed several drinks, and returned home. Upon his return, he spread debris around the house, barricaded the doors, and poured gasoline around the basement floor, which was ignited by the water heater.He attempted to stab himself, and then lay down next to his wife's body. He explained that he intentionally piled debris around the house to fuel the fire and to “make sure that we were gone.” Hairston, 985 A.2d at 807.

Appellant was charged with two counts of criminal homicide. Meanwhile, on December 14, 2001, Appellant was convicted of rape, sexual assault, burglary, attempted escape, and related charges resulting from his abuse of his step-daughter over a five year period from when Ms. Hurtt was fifteen to twenty-one, and from the charges for his conduct on May 21, 2000. At his murder trial, the Commonwealth argued that Appellant killed his wife and son to punish Ms. Hurtt for reporting to the authorities that Appellant held her at gun-point and attempted to rape her, and had raped her previously. At the penalty phase, the jury found two aggravating circumstances, and two mitigating circumstances. ³ Weighing these, the jury returned a sentence of death for both convictions, which the trial court imposed on July 11, 2002.

Following the expiration of time to file post-sentence motions, trial counsel moved to withdraw. After the time to file an appeal had expired, the trial court appointed new counsel on September 9, 2002. On January 14, 2003, appointed counsel moved to withdraw, before he had filed anything on Appellant's behalf. Current counsel entered an appearance on August 22, 2005. Upon counsel's request, on September 2, 2005, the trial court gave Appellant 45 days to file post-sentence motions, and eventually extended this time. Post-sentence motions were filed May 8, 2006. Following the Commonwealth's answer, the trial court denied Appellant's motions on June 2, 2008, and Appellant thereafter filed his notice of appeal to this Court on June 6, 2008.

On direct appeal, we determined that the periods during which Appellant was eligible to file either a post-sentence motion or an appeal had lapsed years earlier. SeePa.R.Crim.P. 720(A)(3) (“If the defendant does not file a timely post-sentence motion, the defendant's notice of appeal shall be filed within 30 days of imposition of sentence.”). Consequently, we held that Appellant's appeal period had already expired before he requested an extension of time to file post-sentence motions, and that all claims not associated with our automatic review of capital cases were not preserved. Hairston, 985 A.2d at 808. Based on our automatic review, we affirmed Appellant's conviction and sentence.

Following our decision, Appellant filed a petition for relief pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA), 42 Pa.C.S. § 9541 et seq., arguing that prior counsel was ineffective for failing to file timely post-sentence motions and requesting the reinstatement of his appellate rights nunc pro tunc. The Commonwealth filed an answer conceding that prior counsel was ineffective. The court granted relief by permitting Appellant to file a notice of appeal nunc pro tunc. Appellant complied, raising numerous issues. In its responsivebrief to this Court, the Commonwealth makes no argument that the trial court's grant of nunc pro tunc relief was inappropriate. We will therefore proceed to address the issues Appellant has raised.

I. Arson Evidence

Appellant's first issue concerns the Commonwealth's guilt-phase evidence that Appellant intentionally set fire to his house after murdering his wife and son, where the Commonwealth had not charged him with arson. The trial court permitted the Commonwealth to introduce this evidence for two reasons: first, because it demonstrated malice by establishing that the deaths were intentional and not accidental; second, because it demonstrated Appellant's consciousness of guilt by establishing that the fire was a suicide attempt. See Commonwealth v. Sanchez, 416 Pa.Super. 160, 610 A.2d 1020 (1992) (holding that evidence that a person accused of a crime attempted to commit suicide is admissible because it is indicative of consciousness of guilt); Pa.R.E. 404(b)(2) (permitting evidence of a defendant's prior bad acts to prove “motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, absence of mistake, or lack of accident.”). The trial court explained to the jury that evidence of the fire was admitted not to show that Appellant was a person of bad character, but only to establish his state of mind at the time he acted.

Appellant argues that although the trial court decided to permit the Commonwealth to admit evidence of the uncharged arson pursuant to Rule 404(b)(2), it is not apparent from the record that the court ever engaged in the balancing test required by that rule, which provides that although prior bad acts may be admissible, “[i]n a criminal case this evidence is admissible only if the probative value of the evidence outweighs its potential for unfair prejudice.” Pa.R.E. 404(b)(2). Appellant asserts that the trial court's failure to engage in this balancing test was an abuse of discretion.

Engaging in the balancing test he faults the trial court for omitting, Appellant argues that he was prejudiced by evidence of the fire because it tended to prove Appellant's guilt of arson, a crime for which he was not...