Rogers v. State

• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: KAREN R. BAKER, Associate Justice
• Citation: Rogers v. State, 558 S.W.3d 833 (Ark. 2018)
• Decision Date: 25 October 2018
• Docket Number: No. CR-17-916,CR-17-916
• Parties: Edward Darnell ROGERS, Appellant v. STATE of Arkansas, Appellee

558 S.W.3d 833

Edward Darnell ROGERS, Appellant

v.STATE of Arkansas, Appellee

No. CR-17-916

Supreme Court of Arkansas.

Opinion Delivered: October 25, 2018

Rehearing Denied December 20, 2018

Hancock Law Firm, by: Sharon Kiel, Little Rock, for appellant.

Leslie Rutledge, Att'y Gen., by: David Raupp, Sr., Ass't Att'y Gen., for appellee.

KAREN R. BAKER, Associate Justice

On July 12, 2018, in Rogers v. State , 2018 Ark. 242, 550 S.W.3d 387, we affirmed the convictions and sentences of appellant, Edward Darnell Rogers. On July 12, 2018, Rogers filed a petition for rehearing and the State responded. We grant the petition for rehearing and issue the following substituted opinion.

In February 2015, Rogers, was charged with four counts of rape. The victims, L.W., twins Mi.B. and T.B., and Ma.B. were all under the age of eighteen at the time of the alleged offenses. On February 8, 2016, Rogers was convicted by a Pulaski County Circuit Court jury of three counts of rape and sentenced to an aggregate sentence of forty years in prison. Rogers timely appealed to the court of appeals, which reversed and remanded the matter to the circuit court. The State filed a petition for review, and on January 25, 2018, we granted the petition for review. Upon granting a petition for review, this court considers the appeal as if it had been originally filed in this court. Pack v. Little Rock Convention Ctr. & Visitors Bureau , 2013 Ark. 186, at 2–3, 427 S.W.3d 586, 588. On appeal, Rogers presents two issues: (1) There is insufficient evidence to support his rape convictions of Mi.B., Ma.B., and L.W.; and (2) the circuit court erred by not allowing Rogers to impeach L.W. with a crime of dishonesty.

I. Facts

In 2003, Tia Bryant moved to a neighborhood in North Little Rock. Bryant has five children —one adult son and four daughters. The adult son did not live with Bryant. Rogers already resided in the neighborhood—living with his mother across the street from Bryant. The two met and began dating. In 2006, Rogers moved into Bryant's home with her and her four daughters, L.W., twins Mi.B. and T.B., and Ma. B. All four girls testified that Rogers acted as a father to them, took them to and from school, to extracurricular activities, and bought clothes and food for them. All four girls testified that Rogers began touching them inappropriately when they were young teenagers. They each testified to multiple sexual encounters, in their early teens, that included penetration.

At trial, the following evidence was presented. The State called T.B., who was seventeen at the time of the trial, and she testified that she first met Rogers in 2003 when he began dating her mother and eventually moved in with them. She testified that she and her siblings thought of Rogers as a father and called him "Daddy." T.B. further testified that when she was thirteen, Rogers started "kissing and rubbing" on her while she was watching television in the living room late one night when everyone else was asleep. She threatened Rogers that she would tell her mother, and he stopped. T.B. testified that several days after this incident, Rogers set up his blow-up mattress in the living room and asked her to come sit with him. T.B. testified that after kissing T.B. on her face and breasts, Rogers then went out to his car and retrieved a gold condom. T.B. testified that he laid her down on the mattress and penetrated her with his penis. She further testified that she asked Rogers to stop and that she was crying the entire time. T.B. testified that after it was over, Rogers wrapped the used condom in a piece of paper and threw it into the trash. T.B. testified that two or three weeks later, Rogers asked her to go grocery shopping with him, drove to a dead-end street, grabbed a condom from the glove compartment, and again raped her. T.B. testified that he also performed oral sex on her. T.B. testified that Rogers raped her on seven or eight other occasions in her living room, and the rapes stopped when she fifteen or sixteen years old. T.B. stated that she threatened to tell her mother, but Rogers told her that he would hurt her mother and then kill himself.

T.B. further testified that she witnessed Rogers abusing her sisters. One night, she was sleeping in the top bunk of the bedroom that she shared with Mi.B. and Ma.B., and she saw Rogers performing oral sex on Ma.B. On a later date, when it was only T.B. and Mi.B. in the house, T.B. heard a "clapping noise" and saw Rogers in the living room having sex with Mi.B. as Mi.B. was bent over the sofa. T.B. also stated that Rogers had shown her videos of her older sister, L.W., and Rogers having sex with L.W. on the couch. T.B. stated that Mi.B. disclosed the rapes to their mother one afternoon after school in November 2014, and T.B. confirmed that it had happened to T.B. as well. T.B. stated that Rogers had moved to a nearby home in October 2013 and that the abuse stopped at that time, although the family continued to have some contact with him until the allegations of rape were disclosed in 2014.

Next, the State called Ma.B., who was sixteen at the time of trial. She testified that Rogers began touching her inappropriately when she was twelve or thirteen. Ma.B. testified that the first time she was raped, she and her sisters were helping their mother clean a back room of the house and that she was told to go get the broom. When Ma.B. went into the living room, Rogers was masturbating, and he asked her to come over to him. He then grabbed Ma.B.'s hand, placed it on his penis, and told her to move it up and down. Ma.B. stated that a few days later, when no one else was at home, Rogers began kissing and touching her, then he raped her. She testified that he used a condom with a gold wrapper. Ma.B. testified that Rogers raped her at least five times, either in the living room, in her bedroom, or in his car. She stated that on at least one occasion, Rogers had come into her room at night and abused her while her sisters were present. Ma.B. testified that Rogers had also raped her and Mi.B. one time while they were all in the living room. Ma.B. stated that Rogers told her that if she told her mother about the abuse, "it would hurt her." Ma.B. testified she did not disclose the rapes until her sister Mi.B. told their mother. Ma.B. testified that she had loved Rogers and called him "Daddy" prior to the abuse and that she had no reason to lie about it.

Next, the State called Mi.B., who was seventeen at the time of trial; she testified that Rogers had helped raise her and her sisters. Mi.B. testified that when she was thirteen, Rogers pulled out his penis and told her to touch it and she said no. On another occasion, Mi.B. testified that her sister had caught her watching pornography, and Rogers asked her if she wanted to do any of those things from the video with him — she told him no and left the room. Mi.B. testified that one night when everyone else was asleep, Rogers showed her videos of him having sex with different women, and he then proceeded to rape her on the blow-up mattress in the living room. Mi.B. further testified about other times when Rogers raped her on the couch in the living room and in his car with the seat reclined. She testified that there was a total of six to seven rapes over the course of two weeks. According to Mi.B., she had also witnessed Rogers having sexual intercourse with Ma.B. one night while Mi.B. was sleeping next to her. Mi.B. testified that she had told her mother about the abuse while they were in the car one afternoon. She stated that she did not tell her mother earlier because Rogers had threatened to kill himself and hurt her mother. Mi.B. admitted that she had recorded a video recanting the allegations and stating that her mother was just angry with Rogers because he had left her. However, Mi.B. claimed that she had made the video only because she thought she would get paid money and could help her mother, who was struggling financially. Mi.B. testified that she was lying in the videos but not at trial. She admitted on cross-examination that she would lie whenever she felt like it.

The State also called Marlon Raglin, who knew Mi.B. through Raglin's cousin. Raglin testified that Mi.B. had a crush on him and admitted that he had encouraged her to make the video. He stated that he knew Rogers through Deshawn Ford, who lived with Raglin. Raglin claimed that it was actually his cousin and Ford who had pushed Mi.B. to make the video and who had helped her film it. Raglin denied that he had been offered anything from Rogers in return for encouraging Mi.B. to recant the allegations. Raglin testified that Mi.B. had told him long before she made the video that the rapes did not occur and had asked him what to do. Raglin testified that he had told her "to help the guy out."

The State also called Detective Ashley Noel with the North Little Rock Police Department, who testified that she had investigated the allegations against Rogers. She testified that she did not collect any physical evidence from the house because of the length of time between the alleged acts and the filing of charges and because she would have expected to find Rogers's DNA on many items in the house given that he had resided there for years.

The State called L.W., who was twenty-one at trial; she testified that Rogers had lived with her family off and on beginning when she was ten and that she thought of him as a father. She stated that when she was fourteen, Rogers raped her in her bedroom after school when no one else was at home. L.W. also testified about another occasion approximately one month later when he raped her on the couch in the living room. In total, L.W. stated that Rogers had raped her five or six times and that the abuse stopped during her senior year in high school. She testified that she did not see him abuse her sisters and that she did not tell her mother about the rapes until she asked about them in November 2014. L.W. testified...