Rubalcada v. State

• Decision Date: 30 June 2000
• Docket Number: No. 82S00-9902-CR-113.,82S00-9902-CR-113.
• Citation: 731 N.E.2d 1015
• Parties: Tommy James RUBALCADA, Defendant-Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Plaintiff-Appellee.
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

731 N.E.2d 1015

Tommy James RUBALCADA, Defendant-Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Plaintiff-Appellee.

No. 82S00-9902-CR-113.

Supreme Court of Indiana.

June 30, 2000.

Dennis A. Vowels, Evansville, Indiana, Attorney for Appellant.

Jeffrey A. Modisett, Attorney General, Janet Brown Mallett, Deputy Attorney General, Indianapolis, Indiana, Attorneys for Appellee.

DICKSON, Justice

The defendant-appellant, Tommy James Rubalcada, was convicted of conspiracy to commit robbery¹ and felony murder² for the February 1998 death of Brian Jamison. On direct appeal, the defendant alleges the following errors: (1) his review of the police investigative file concerning the victim was restricted; (2) his wife was permitted to testify against him; (3) his cross-examination was limited; and (4) a prosecution witness received a plea bargain which was not disclosed at trial. We affirm.

Review of Police Records

The defendant claims that he was denied his federal constitutional rights to due process, confrontation, and compulsory process when the trial court refused to order production of police intelligence records concerning the victim, Brian Jamison.³ He argues that the denial of this information prevented him from learning of the self-interest and motivations of the State's witnesses, from preparing adequately to cross-examine and impeach these witnesses, and from developing alternate defense theories.

Prior to trial, the defendant issued four subpoenas duces tecum directing the Indiana State Police, the Warrick County Sheriff, the Evansville Police Department, and the Vanderburgh County Sheriff to provide the trial court with "all intelligence reports ... concerning Brian Jamison" for in camera inspection. Record at 132-39. The agencies produced fifty-five pages of intelligence reports and one audiotape, which the trial court individually reviewed in camera at a hearing attended by counsel for the defendant and the State. At the hearing, the court afforded the State an opportunity to describe each item and to present any objections and allowed defense counsel to argue for disclosure. The in camera review hearing resulted in the trial court ordering five of the pages disclosed to the defendant and concluding that the remaining fifty pages and the audiotape met the definition of criminal intelligence information under Indiana Code section 5-2-4-1⁴ and that, under Indiana Code section 5-2-4-6,⁵ they need not be disclosed. The trial court also concluded:

[N]one of the information which has not been ordered to be disclosed has any apparent exculpatory benefit to the defendant and neither is any of that information relevant to any of the issues that have been raised in this case or any defenses that have been raised in this case. And until such time as those issues and defenses are presented to the Court that makes any of these documents or information relevant, the Court will order that they not be produced.

Record at 167.

We consider together the defendant's claimed violations of his rights to due process and compulsory process. Claims such as those raised by the defendant here have traditionally been evaluated by the U.S. Supreme Court under the broader protections of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pennsylvania v. Ritchie, 480 U.S. 39, 56, 107 S.Ct. 989, 1001, 94 L.Ed.2d 40, 57 (1987). The compulsory process clause provides no greater protections than those afforded by due process, and a due process analysis is appropriate for determining whether compulsory process rights have been violated. Id.

It is well settled that the Due Process Clause requires the government to turn over evidence in its possession that is both favorable to the accused and material to guilt or punishment. Id. at 57, 107 S.Ct. at 1001, 94 L.Ed.2d at 57 (citing United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976)); Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 1196, 10 L.Ed.2d 215, 218 (1963). The same analysis applies to both exculpatory and impeachment evidence. Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 433, 115 S.Ct. 1555, 1565, 131 L.Ed.2d 490, 505 (1995). Evidence is material only "`if there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different.'" Id. at 433-34, 115 S.Ct. at 1565, 131 L.Ed.2d at 505 (quoting United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 682, 105 S.Ct. 3375, 3383, 87 L.Ed.2d 481, 494 (1985) (opinion of Blackmun, J.); id. at 685, 105 S.Ct. at 3385, 87 L.Ed.2d at 496 (White, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment)).

In Ritchie, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that portion of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision that would have allowed defense counsel to examine all of the government's confidential information. Instead, the Court in Ritchie remanded to the trial court for in camera review of the government's information to determine whether the evidence at issue was favorable to the defendant and material to either guilt or punishment. Id., 480 U.S. at 60-61, 107 S.Ct. at 1002-03, 94 L.Ed.2d at 59-60. A defendant's right to discover exculpatory evidence, however, does not include the authority to search through the government's files unsupervised. Id. at 59, 107 S.Ct. at 1002, 94 L.Ed.2d at 58. The Ritchie Court required that the government files be submitted to the trial court, which "would be obligated to release information material to the fairness of the trial." Id. at 60, 107 S.Ct. at 1003, 94 L.Ed.2d at 59. The Court held that the defendant was entitled to have the government file "reviewed by the trial court to determine whether it contains information that probably would have changed the outcome of his trial." Id. at 58, 107 S.Ct. at 1002, 94 L.Ed.2d at 58.

In contrast to Ritchie, the trial court in this case did conduct an in camera review prior to trial and determined that the intelligence matters the defendant sought were not relevant to the issues presented in the case and did not have "any apparent exculpatory benefit to the defendant." Record at 167.

We review the trial court's ruling, based on its in camera inspection of government investigative materials, for an abuse of discretion in denying access to material, exculpatory, or impeachment evidence. See Pilarski v. State, 635 N.E.2d 166, 172 (Ind.1994)

; United States v. Plescia, 48 F.3d 1452, 1457 (7th Cir.1995). As noted by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, when a criminal defendant seeks access to confidential government files, appellate courts "rely particularly heavily on the sound discretion of the trial judge to protect the rights of the accused as well as the government." Plescia, 48 F.3d at 1457 (quoting United States v. Phillips, 854 F.2d 273, 277 (7th Cir.1988)).

Because the trial court's determination in denying access to some of the subpoenaed matters referred only to relevance and exculpatory value, but did not expressly refer to impeachment value or materiality, we draw upon the methodology used by the Supreme Court in Kyles in our review of the claim presented. The Court in Kyles, noting that the federal Constitution "is not violated every time the government fails or chooses not to disclose evidence that might prove helpful to the defense," Kyles, 514 U.S. at 436-37,115 S.Ct. at 1567,131 L.Ed.2d at 507, stressed that materiality under Bagley requires that suppressed government evidence be "considered collectively, not item by item." Id. at 436, 115 S.Ct. at 1567,131 L.Ed.2d at 507. The Court then explained that it first evaluates the "tendency and force" of the undisclosed evidence item by item and thereafter, for purposes of materiality, considers the cumulative effect separately. Id. at 436 n. 10, 115 S.Ct. at 1567 n. 10, 131 L.Ed.2d at 507 n. 10. We will, therefore, evaluate the tendency and force of the defendant's specific individual challenges made in this appeal and then consider the cumulative effect to determine materiality collectively. To prevail, the defendant must demonstrate "that the favorable evidence could reasonably be taken to put the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the verdict." Kyles, 514 U.S. at 435,115 S.Ct. at 1566,131 L.Ed.2d at 506.

The defendant contends that the trial court erred in not ordering the State to produce to the defendant pages 2-5, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 24, 26, 32, and 52 of the subpoenaed materials.⁶ With regard to pages 2-5, the defendant claims that these pages contain the names of a number of individuals—specifically, David Harris, who provided Jamison the purchase money for the transaction but was not available for deposition by the defendant based upon a successful motion to quash the subpoena; and Aundre Reese, Vince Moreno, Thomas Pryor, Tammie Thorton, and Brett McBride, all of whom testified at trial for the State. On pages 2 and 3 of the undisclosed pages, these names are listed among "subjects linked [to Jamison] via intelligence." Record at 173-74. The list suggests only that the police had observed these individuals in contact with Jamison. The defendant was aware of the relationships among Jamison and these people, and there was no dispute at trial that these people had contact with Jamison or that Jamison was engaged in drug trafficking.

The defendant next claims that page 10 would have provided evidence that might be used to argue that someone else had a motive to kill Jamison. Page 10 is a criminal intelligence report filed four years before the murder that indicates that an anonymous person reported that Jamison sold marijuana to a 12-year-old boy and had many visitors at his house in the evening. The report says that the reliability of the source and the validity of the information are both unknown. There was no dispute that Jamison engaged in drug trafficking. The potential evidentiary value of this anonymous report about his possible actions four years before his death is minimal.

Page 11 is an unsigned...