State v. Barnes
| Docket Number | 20210403-CA |
| Decision Date | 14 December 2023 |
| Parties | State of Utah, Appellee, v. Leon William Barnes, Appellant. |
| Court | Utah Court of Appeals |
Third District Court, Salt Lake Department The Honorable Adam T Mow No. 181910110
Andrea J. Garland, Attorney for Appellant
Sean D. Reyes and Jonathan S. Bauer, Attorneys for Appellee
OPINION
¶1 Leon William Barnes was convicted of object rape and forcible sexual abuse of his fourteen-year-old stepdaughter (Stepdaughter). Barnes now appeals, arguing that Stepdaughter's testimony was inherently improbable and that there was insufficient evidence supporting the penetration element of the object rape charge. He also argues that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance of counsel. We reject Barnes's arguments and affirm his convictions.
¶2 In 2018, Barnes resided with his wife (Wife), daughter (Daughter), niece (Niece), and Stepdaughter (Wife's child from a previous relationship) in Salt Lake County, Utah. That year, Stepdaughter reported to Wife that Barnes had been sexually abusing her. Upon receiving this report, Wife took Stepdaughter to a hospital, but medical personnel were unable to perform a useful examination because the alleged abuse had occurred weeks or months earlier. Wife also contacted the police.
¶3 Law enforcement personnel arranged for Stepdaughter to be interviewed at the Children's Justice Center (CJC) by an investigating officer (Officer). At this interview Stepdaughter offered her version of events. She alleged that Barnes frequented her bedroom in the early hours of the morning to touch her "private part." When asked whether she used this "private part" to "pee or poop," Stepdaughter responded "[b]oth." Stepdaughter said that this abuse occurred on something close to a daily basis, and that on one of these occasions, Barnes put his mouth on Stepdaughter's breast. And Stepdaughter reported that during another incident, Barnes claimed that he would "kill her or actually rape her" if she reported the touching to anyone. At no point during the CJC interview, however, did Stepdaughter tell Officer that Barnes had ever penetrated her vagina with his finger.
¶4 A few weeks later, the State charged Barnes with one count each of forcible sodomy, object rape, forcible sexual abuse and tampering with a witness. A preliminary hearing was held at which Stepdaughter testified. During her testimony Stepdaughter described three specific instances in which Barnes had come into her bedroom and touched her inappropriately; she stated that, on one occasion, Barnes had penetrated her "private part" with his finger. At the conclusion of the hearing, the State withdrew the forcible sodomy charge, and the court declined to bind Barnes over for trial on the witness tampering charge. The court did, however, bind Barnes over for trial on the object rape and forcible sexual abuse charges, and the State amended the information to reflect the more limited charges.
¶5 The case then proceeded to a jury trial, which took place in November 2019. During his opening statement, Barnes's counsel outlined the defense's theory of the case. Essentially, he argued that the events Stepdaughter described had never taken place, and that Stepdaughter was not telling the truth about the abuse. He posited that Stepdaughter was motivated to invent allegations about Barnes for several reasons, including pressure from other family members who did not like Barnes, and including Stepdaughter's dissatisfaction with Barnes's apparently strict parenting style. And counsel suggested that Stepdaughter's account of events had changed over time and was inconsistent.
¶6 The State called Stepdaughter as its first witness. During her testimony, she described the same three specific events she had discussed during her preliminary hearing testimony. In particular, she testified that, a few weeks before she turned fourteen, Barnes asked her if she wanted to "learn about boys," to which she replied that she did not. A few weeks later, after Stepdaughter had turned fourteen, Barnes came into her bedroom at "like 3 in the morning," "put his hands in [her] pants," and touched her "private part" (Incident 1). She stated that she did not have "another name" for this part of her body, but she stated that it was "below [her] stomach" and that she used it "[t]o go to the bathroom." When asked to mark the relevant area of the body on a diagram, Stepdaughter circled the entire front genital area, but she made no mark on the back side of the body on the diagram. She testified that, during this first incident, Barnes moved his hand up and down on her private part for a few minutes, which caused pain and a burning and pinching sensation. On cross-examination, Stepdaughter acknowledged that, during this first incident, Barnes "did not put his finger inside" her private part. This incident ended when Barnes left to go to work.
¶7 The prosecutor asked Stepdaughter if she remembered "another time" when Barnes "came into [her] room and touched" her, and Stepdaughter answered affirmatively. She testified that, in this second incident (Incident 2), Barnes again entered her room around 3:00 a.m., unclipped her bra, and "put his mouth on" her breast. Stepdaughter marked the location of this touching-her right breast-on the same diagram.
¶8 The prosecutor asked whether there was "another time that [Barnes] did something slightly different than what [Stepdaughter had] described before," and Stepdaughter answered in the affirmative. She testified that, in this third incident (Incident 3), she was in her bedroom, sleeping on the floor, and Daughter was in the room asleep on the bed. Barnes entered the room around 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. before leaving for the airport to catch a flight. He put his hand inside Stepdaughter's underwear and "put his finger inside of" Stepdaughter's "private part." When asked to identify, on the diagram, the place "where he put his finger inside" of her, Stepdaughter placed an "X" in the center of the circle she had previously drawn in connection with Incident 1, right at the location of the vagina. The prosecutor asked her how she knew that Barnes's finger was "inside of" her, and Stepdaughter testified that "it felt different" than the previous occasion and that she "could feel it" inside of her. She added that Barnes "kind of like pushed it up" and that "[i]t hurt." On cross-examination, she continued to maintain that Barnes had put his finger inside of her, although she acknowledged that she had not mentioned this during the CJC interview.
¶9 These three incidents were the only ones for which Stepdaughter offered a specific description, although she testified that Barnes touched her on nearly a daily basis. When Stepdaughter told Barnes that she wanted the activity to stop, Barnes said that, if she told anyone, "he would hurt everybody in [her] family or he would actually rape [her]." She claimed that she did not initially tell people about the abuse because she was scared and she didn't think people would believe her.
¶10 Stepdaughter also testified that she first disclosed the abuse to her mother after an episode in which Barnes became angry at Stepdaughter when he came to believe that she had caused a power outage in the basement of the home by intentionally damaging the fuse box. In her testimony, Stepdaughter made several statements that were inconsistent with later testimony provided by Wife and Barnes. She said that she did not put a screw in one of the breakers or tell Wife that she had done so, and that Barnes did not threaten to punish her after this incident. She said that the lights had gone out because she "flipped a switch" and it "kind of made everything shut down." Stepdaughter also claimed that she does not sleep well and that she was awake when each of the three specific abuse incidents occurred. And she testified that her natural father had never told her to report that Barnes was sexually abusing her.
¶11 Next, the State called Wife as a witness, and she testified that, on the day of the basement blackout, she arrived home and saw that there was some sort of confrontation going on between Stepdaughter and Barnes. Wife saw "urgency in [Stepdaughter's] face" and observed that Barnes was "standing in [a] door" and not "letting [Wife] in the room." Later, after Stepdaughter told her about the abuse, Wife immediately called the police and took Stepdaughter to a hospital. At the hospital, healthcare providers did not complete a sexual abuse examination; they told Wife that such an exam would not be helpful because the abuse had happened some time ago. Wife also testified that Barnes would regularly go to work around 4:00 a.m.
¶12 On cross-examination, Wife said that Stepdaughter admitted to putting a screw in the fuse box and that Barnes had threatened to spank Stepdaughter as a result. Wife also confirmed that Stepdaughter does have trouble sleeping, but that she sometimes sleeps until noon when she is able to. In addition, Wife testified that, some time ago, Stepdaughter's natural father tried to get Stepdaughter to allege that Barnes was sexually abusing her, even though this was untrue at the time.
¶13 Finally, the state called Officer, who testified about interviewing Stepdaughter at the CJC. Officer testified that she frequently asks non-leading and non-direct questions especially at the beginning, "to allow the child to give as much narrative as possible." Officer also testified that it happens "quite frequently" that a child will disclose something for the first time only after the initial interview is over. On cross-examination, Officer...
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