Ragland v. Commonwealth, No. 2002-SC-0388-MR (KY 11/18/2004)
| Decision Date | 18 November 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 2002-SC-0388-MR,No. 2003-SC-0084-TG.,2002-SC-0388-MR,2003-SC-0084-TG. |
| Parties | Shane Layton RAGLAND, Appellant v. COMMONWEALTH of Kentucky, Appellee. and Shane Layton Ragland, Appellant v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, Appellee. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky |
Transfer from Court of Appeals, 2003-CA-192, Fayette Circuit Court, 00-CR-865.
William E. Johnson, J. Guthrie True, Johnson, Judy, True & Guarnieri, LLP, Frankfort, KY, Jerry L. Wright, Herren and Adams, Lexington, KY, Counsel for Appellant.
Gregory D. Stumbo, Attorney General, Frankfort, KY, Connie Vance Malone, Matthew D. Nelson, Assistant Attorneys General, Office of Attorney General, Criminal Appellate Division, Frankfort, KY, Counsel for Appellee.
Appellant, Shane Layton Ragland, was convicted by a Fayette Circuit Court jury of murder and sentenced to thirty years in prison. He appeals to this Court as a matter of right, Ky. Const. § 110(2)(b), asserting eight claims of reversible error, viz: (1) failure to grant Appellant's motion for a change of venue; (2) failure to declare a mistrial when the prosecutor commented on Appellant's failure to testify at trial; (3) failure to suppress evidence obtained pursuant to search warrants; (4) failure to suppress evidence of statements made by Appellant during a custodial interrogation; (5) admission of hearsay statements made by the victim; (6) admission of ballistics evidence with respect to weapons other than the alleged murder weapon; (7) admission of expert testimony with respect to the results of comparative bullet lead analysis; (8) failure to grant a new trial on the basis of newly discovered evidence. The prosecutor's comment on Appellant's exercise of his Fifth Amendment right not to testify requires reversal for a new trial. Thus, we need not address the claims relating to venue, which can be renewed prior to retrial, or entitlement to a new trial on the basis of newly discovered evidence. We will address other claims of error because they are likely to recur upon retrial. Springer v. Commonwealth, Ky., 998 S.W.2d 439, 445 (1999).
* * *
On the night of July 17, 1994, Trent DiGiuro, a student athlete at the University of Kentucky, was shot in the head and killed as he sat in a chair on the front porch of his residence at 570 Woodland Avenue, Lexington, Kentucky. DiGiuro was celebrating his twenty-first birthday with friends, some of whom were on the porch with him when he was killed. Although one eyewitness heard the shot, no one saw who fired it or from where it was fired. Fragments of the fatal bullet were recovered during the postmortem examination and a firearms expert concluded that the bullet most likely had been fired from a.243 caliber rifle with a four-groves-and-lands, right-twist barrel pattern. Lexington police found two holes in the ground under some bushes near the corner of Woodland and Columbia Avenues, which could have been caused by a bipod rifle stand. Because the spot provided a clear line of sight to the front porch of DiGiuro's residence, the police surmised that it was the spot from where the shot had been fired. Although numerous leads were followed and at least one suspect was identified, six years elapsed before anyone was charged with the murder.
In January 2000, Aimee Lloyd, Appellant's ex-girlfriend, informed Lexington police officers that Appellant confessed to her in April 1995 that he killed DiGiuro because DiGiuro had caused Appellant to be "blackballed" by his college fraternity three years earlier. According to Lloyd, Appellant showed her the rifle he had used to shoot DiGiuro and later told her that he had hidden the rifle at his mother's residence at 501 Capital Avenue, Frankfort, Kentucky. Lloyd also believed the rifle belonged to Appellant's father and that Appellant may have subsequently returned it to his father's residence at 1469 Old Lawrenceburg Road, Frankfort. Appellant resided part-time at both residences. Lloyd also told the police that during her relationship with Appellant from 1994 to 1997, he and one of his friends engaged in a marijuana-growing operation, including cultivating marijuana on his father's Old Lawrenceburg Road property. Because they had no jurisdiction outside of Lexington, the Lexington police referred the information about the location of the weapon and the marijuana operation to the Kentucky State Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.).
On July 12, 2000, F.B.I. Special Agent Gary Miller obtained warrants from a United States Magistrate to search the Frankfort residences of Appellant's parents. On July 13, 2000, Lloyd, pursuant to a ruse and in cooperation with Lexington police, met Appellant at a bar in Lexington and attempted to engage him in a secretly recorded conversation about the DiGiuro murder. The Commonwealth claims that during that conversation Appellant expressed regret for having murdered DiGiuro. Appellant claims he only expressed regret for having mistreated Lloyd during their former relationship. The recorded conversation, which prosecutors played for the jury at trial, was arguably ambiguous. On July 14, 2000, Lexington police officers interrogated Appellant at police headquarters and F.B.I. agents executed the search warrants at the Frankfort residences of Appellants' parents. Although Appellant did not confess to the murder of DiGiuro, he made some statements during the interrogation that were inconsistent with other information his interrogators believed to be true.
The search of the 501 Capital Avenue residence revealed a .243 caliber Wetherby Vanguard rifle with three unspent .243 caliber bullets in the chamber. The search of the 1469 Old Lawrenceburg Road residence revealed an ammunition box containing seventeen unspent.243 caliber bullets. A label on the box indicated the Winchester Ammunition Company had manufactured the bullets on April 28, 1994. Kathleen Lundy, a forensic scientist employed by the F.B.I., subjected the three bullets found in the Wetherby Vanguard rifle, sixteen of the seventeen bullets found in the ammunition box, and the fragment of the bullet that killed DiGiuro to a comparative bullet lead analysis. She testified at trial that one of the bullets recovered from the rifle and nine of the bullets found in the ammunition box were "analytically indistinguishable" in metallurgical composition from the bullet that killed DiGiuro, a finding she described as "consistent with" the bullets having originated from the same source of molten lead.
Markings on bullets test-fired from the.243 Wetherby Vanguard rifle found at 501 Capital Avenue matched the markings on the murder bullet. Markings on bullets test-fired from three other.243 Wetherby Vanguard rifles manufactured during the same time period as the Ragland rifle did not match those found on the murder bullet. However, the firearm's examiner was unable to conclusively say that the Ragland rifle fired the murder bullet because of the degree of fragmentation of the bullet.
The Commonwealth played for the jury during its case-in-chief most of Appellant's July 14, 2000, videotaped interrogation by Lexington police officers. Appellant exercised his Fifth Amendment right not to testify in his own defense. During guilt-phase closing argument, the prosecutor commented as follows on Appellant's silence:
We're not saying that the shot was fired from underneath that bush. You've never heard us say the shot was fired from underneath that bush.... That is a place the shot could have been fired from. It's a place that has a line of sight to the porch. It happens to be a place that lines up very well with the idea that Trent is sitting in this chair kind of angled to the center or maybe looking over at his friends and gets shot straight across. So it matches that very well. And it's a place where it has those two marks in the ground. But we're not saying that's where it's fired from. We don't know where that shot was fired from. The only person who knows where that shot was fired from exactly is the person sitting in that chair over there [indicating Appellant] and he hasn't seen fit to tell us.
(Emphasis added.)
Defense counsel objected, moved for a mistrial, and requested, alternatively, that the jury be admonished to disregard the comment. The objection was overruled, the motion for a mistrial was denied, and the requested admonition was not given.
Defense: I want to object, Your Honor. Could I come forward a moment?
[At the bench.]
Defense: He's just commented on the defendant not taking the witness stand.
Pros.: I did not.
Defense: And we, we would accordingly move for a mistrial. Yes, he said, "He didn't tell us." And I'm sure that's what I heard him say.
Pros.: I didn't say anything about testifying. I said he didn't tell. He was interviewed and he gave a statement. And they got up here and relied on his statement today as evidence in this case. And that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about his statement to the police. Now, I'll clear it up and say about the police if you want.
Judge: Well, I'll overrule the objection.
Defense: We'd ask you to admonish the jury.
. . .
Pros: Whatever you think is appropriate to do Judge. I mean if you want to say that. I'll, I'm going to go back and clarify I'm talking about when he talked to the police about what happened he didn't tell them.
Judge: That will be sufficient.
Pros: [continuing closing argument]:
What I'm talking about ladies and gentlemen, is that the defendant talked to the police about this case and they asked him about it and he didn't say, "You know, I shot it from over here." That's what I'm talking about. He didn't say anything about that.
(Emphasis added.)
The problem with the prosecutor's explanation is that the videotape of the July 14, 2000, interrogation reflects that the police never asked Appellant about the location from...
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