State v. Colpitts
| Decision Date | 29 March 2022 |
| Docket Number | 47388 |
| Parties | STATE OF IDAHO, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. JESSICA LEE COLPITTS, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Idaho Court of Appeals |
Appeal from the District Court of the Second Judicial District State of Idaho, Clearwater County. Hon. Gregory FitzMaurice District Judge.
Judgment of conviction for first degree murder, affirmed.
Eric D. Fredericksen, State Appellate Public Defender; Sally J Cooley and Andrea W. Reynolds, Deputy Appellate Public Defenders, Boise, for appellant. Andrea W. Reynolds argued.
Hon Lawrence G. Wasden, Attorney General; Kenneth K. Jorgensen, Deputy Attorney General, Boise, for respondent. Kenneth K. Jorgensen argued.
Jessica Lee Colpitts appeals from her judgment of conviction for first degree murder, Idaho Code §§ 18-4001, 18-4002, 18-4003(a). Colpitts argues the district court erred in admitting audio recordings of telephone calls and call logs and in declining to instruct the jury that a witness was an accomplice as a matter of law. We affirm.
The State charged Colpitts with first degree murder for the murder of Samantha Fignani, and the case proceeded to a twelve-day jury trial. The evidence the State presented at trial shows that, at approximately 7:20 p.m. on May 22, 2017, Fignani was fatally shot in the abdomen at her residence. A source told law enforcement that Colpitts had shot Fignani and that Cassie Madsen had driven Colpitts to Fignani's residence and then drove Colpitts away after the shooting. The source also said Colpitts was angry with Fignani because Fignani was in a relationship with Joseph Walker, who was Colpitts' boyfriend and the father of one of her children.
Approximately one month before Fignani's murder, Colpitts kicked Walker out of her residence. Afterwards, Walker resided with Fignani until he was arrested for a probation violation. Walker concealed the nature of his relationship with Fignani from Colpitts until the day of the murder. On that day, at approximately 5:54 p.m., Walker called Colpitts from jail and admitted his romantic relationship with Fignani. In response, Colpitts was audibly upset.
This telephone call, and others which Walker made to Colpitts from jail between May 20 and 23, were recorded. During this timeframe, Walker was incarcerated first in the Nez Perce County Jail and then in the Bonner County Jail. Nez Perce County contracts with Securus, a third-party company which provides inmate communication services. Similarly, Bonner County contracts with Telmate for inmate communication services. As part of their services, both Telmate and Securus provide audio recordings of inmate calls. During trial, the State introduced call logs of Walker's calls from jail and the audio recordings of six of Walker's calls to Colpitts from jail.
In addition to numerous other witnesses, the State presented the testimony of Mad sen. Madsen testified that Colpitts asked Madsen to "drive [Colpitts] to [Fignani's] residence" and that Madsen "figured there could be a fight." Madsen admitted she saw the gun at Colpitts' residence before the two left for Fignani's residence. Madsen, however, claimed she did not know Colpitts brought the gun to Fignani's residence and did not see the gun until Colpitts pulled it from her sweatpants to shoot Fignani.
Based on Madsen's involvement, Colpitts requested that the district court instruct the jury that Madsen was an accomplice as a matter of law. The court, however, declined to instruct the jury that Madsen was an accomplice as a matter of law, ruling that "a reasonable view of the evidence" prevented the court from making such a finding. Instead, the court instructed the jury to determine whether Madsen was an accomplice.
The jury convicted Colpitts of first degree murder, and she timely appeals.
On appeal, Colpitts challenges the district court's rulings admitting audio recordings of Walker's telephone calls to her from jail and call logs identifying his calls from jail. The decision whether to admit evidence at trial is generally within the province of the trial court. A trial court's determination that evidence is supported by a proper foundation is reviewed for an abuse of discretion. State v. Gilpin, 132 Idaho 643, 646, 977 P.2d 905, 908 (Ct. App. 1999). Therefore, a trial court's determination as to the admission of evidence at trial will only be reversed where there has been an abuse of that discretion. State v. Zimmerman, 121 Idaho 971, 973-74, 829 P.2d 861, 863-64 (1992). When a trial court's discretionary decision is reviewed on appeal, the appellate court conducts a multi-tiered inquiry to determine whether the trial court: (1) correctly perceived the issue as one of discretion; (2) acted within the boundaries of such discretion; (3) acted consistently with any legal standards applicable to the specific choices before it; and (4) reached its decision by an exercise of reason. State v. Herrera, 164 Idaho 261, 270, 429 P.3d 149, 158 (2018).
Regarding the audio recordings of Walker's telephone calls to Colpitts from the Nez Perce County Jail, the State presented testimony of Schubert, a retired Nez Perce County sheriff s deputy. Schubert testified his job included "working with the computer systems" and "downloading]" inmates' recorded calls when requested. Schubert described the Securus telephone system at the Nez Perce County Jail and explained inmates are allowed to make calls from "kiosks" in their "pod," meaning the area in which they are housed, and that "each inmate has an ID" used to "log into the system to make a phone call."
Schubert further explained that Securus is a "common system used at jails," "provide[s] all the equipment," and records, stores, and maintains the inmate's calls; Schubert could "retrieve" and "download" "the phone calls that an individual [inmate] made in a specific time period [or] the calls made to a specific phone number between two dates"; and Securus would provide these downloaded calls in a "proprietary," "encoded" format, which could not be modified and which included the time and date of the calls and "the phone numbers attached" to them. Schubert testified that the Orofino Police Department requested recordings of Walker's calls from the Nez Perce County Jail on May 20 and 21, 2017; Schubert "downloaded those calls to a CD" and made them available to the police department; and he neither modified nor listened to the recordings.
Regarding the audio recordings of Walker's telephone calls to Colpitts from the Bonner County Jail, the State presented the testimony of Lieutenant Stevens, a Bonner County Sheriffs employee. Lieutenant Stevens testified he is "the main person" responsible for Telmate, the company that records inmate calls made from the Bonner County Jail. Lieutenant Stevens described Telmate, explaining that when an inmate makes a call, he must enter "a unique pin number" and provide "voice recognition," which the inmate creates the first time he accesses the phone system. Lieutenant Stevens further explained that Telmate records the calls "digitally"; those calls are stored somewhere other than Bonner County; and he does not know any way in which the recordings can be modified.
Lieutenant Stevens also explained the process for copying the recorded telephone calls, including logging into Telmate; choosing "a call history"; "searching] by the inmate's name"; "set[ting] a date range"; choosing the requested calls; and transferring the audio file of the calls "onto a CD, a thumb drive, or attached to an email." Lieutenant Stevens indicated Telmate creates a "separate file" showing "the name, the location, the date and time" of each call. He testified that Detective Frazier of the Orofino Police Department requested recordings of Walker's calls and that Lieutenant Stevens emailed Detective Frazier recordings of those calls, did not and could not modify the recordings, and "set [Detective Frazier] up as an investigator on the Telmate system and sent him information on how to log in."
Lieutenant Stevens also identified Exhibit 107, "a listing of phone calls made with respect to [Walker]" from the Bonner County Jail. This call log identifies the calls by Walker's name and pin number and states each call's time, date, and duration and the "destination" or receiving telephone number. When the State moved to admit Exhibit 107, Colpitts objected, arguing Exhibit 107 lacked foundation because Lieutenant Stevens "just rel[ied] on the Telmate system to provide that information," and he is "not an employee or executive or officer of the Telmate system." The district court admitted Exhibit 107 over Colpitts' objection.
The State introduced the audio recordings of Walker's telephone calls to Colpitts from Nez Perce and Bonner Counties through the testimony of Detective Frazier, who investigated the murder. At the beginning of Detective Frazier's testimony, Colpitts asked to take up a matter outside the jury's presence, and the district court excused the jury. Colpitts then objected to any attempt by Detective Frazier to introduce the audio recordings as lacking foundation. Specifically, Colpitts asserted that Detective Frazier "is not able to lay a foundation by himself as to who the participants were in the conversation" and that the "third party" which recorded the calls had not "testified to the reliability or the methods of the recording of the communications" or "about the protocol involved."[1]
In response, the State presented Detective Frazier's testimony as an offer of proof to the district court. Detective Frazier testified that he...
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