State v. Eaglin

• Decision Date: 03 July 2019
• Docket Number: 17-657
• Citation: 279 So.3d 949
• Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. Kyvonte Latrell EAGLIN
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US

279 So.3d 949

STATE of Louisiana

v.Kyvonte Latrell EAGLIN

17-657

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Third Circuit.

July 3, 2019

Alfred F. Boustany, II, Boustany Law Firm, P. O. Box 4626, Lafayette, LA 70502, (337) 261-0225, COUNSEL FOR DEFENDANT-APPELLANT: Kyvonte Latrell Eaglin

Michael C. Cassidy, District Attorney - 31st JDC, Bennett R. LaPoint, Assistant District Attorney, P. O. Box 1388, Jennings, LA 70546, (337) 824-1893, COUNSEL FOR APPELLEE: State of Louisiana

Court composed of Sylvia R. Cooks, Elizabeth A. Pickett, and Phyllis M. Keaty, Judges.

PICKETT, Judge.

FACTS

The defendant, Kyvonte Latrell Eaglin, attended a party at the American Legion Hall in Jennings on August 8, 2015. An altercation broke out, and a group moved outside. The defendant went to his vehicle and retrieved a gun. Shots from one or more firearms were fired, and the victim was killed.

The defendant was convicted of manslaughter on November 18, 2016. The trial court sentenced the defendant to twenty years at hard labor on January 30, 2017. This court affirmed his conviction and sentence. State v. Eaglin , 17-657 (La.App. 3 Cir. 3/28/18), 239 So.3d 1001, writ granted in part , 18-822 (La. 3/18/19), 265 So.3d 761 (per curiam).

One of the issues on appeal addressed the introduction of an inflammatory photograph into evidence. This court held the photograph was in fact erroneously introduced, but we found the error to be harmless. The Louisiana Supreme Court granted the defendant's writ application in part and remanded the matter, finding this court "applied the wrong standard in determining whether the error was harmless." Eaglin , 18-822 at 1, 265 So.3d 761. The supreme court instructed this court to reevaluate the error according to the standard set out in Chapman v. California , 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967).

DISCUSSION

At trial, the state introduced, as evidence of the defendant's bad character, a copy of a Facebook photograph of the defendant, who was approximately thirteen years old at the time. The photograph falsely portrayed the defendant as a masked armed robber holding a dangerous pistol to the back of a child's head, as though ready to shoot the child. The trial court itself described the photograph as "inflammatory." Later in the trial, the defendant's sixteen-year-old cousin, Latavius Stewart, testified the photograph was taken approximately four years earlier. Mr. Stewart was the boy standing against the wall while the defendant held a BB gun against his head. Another cousin took the photo. Mr. Stewart said they were "[j]ust having fun with it. We were being silly. Just taking pictures."

This court found:

This photograph, Exhibit S-2, provided no useful purpose at trial. Chief D'Albor's testimony did not show he relied on it at the scene to identify the defendant. Even if he had, it would still add nothing to help the jury reach a verdict. The photograph depicted nothing related to the crime for which the defendant was on trial. It did, however, present a disturbing image to the jury that portrayed the defendant as one who held a gun to a young boy's head. Only later in the trial did the jury hear testimony explaining the photograph, which in itself did not cast the defendant in a particularly good light.

Eaglin , 239 So.3d at 1020. Thus, this court found the photograph to be "totally irrelevant," "highly prejudicial," and without probative value, and it found the trial court erred in admitting it into evidence. Id. at 1027. However, this court reviewed the testimony of numerous witnesses, including the defendant's own testimony, and found "[t]here was consistent testimony regarding the fight that preceded the shooting that was sufficient to convict the defendant of manslaughter." Id.

The Louisiana Supreme Court granted the defendant's writ application in part and remanded the matter, finding this court "applied the wrong standard." Eaglin , 18-822 at 2, 265 So.3d 761. The supreme court instructed this court "to determine whether the state has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained" in accordance with Chapman , 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824. Id.

Chapman standard

In Chapman , 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, the state's counsel made repeated references to the defendants' failure to testify during his closing argument to the jury, a practice which California's state constitution allowed at the time. After the trial, but before the appeal reached the California Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court found the state constitutional provision invalid in Griffin v. State of California , 380 U.S. 609, 85 S.Ct. 1229, 14 L.Ed.2d 106 (1965). Nevertheless, the California Supreme Court affirmed the Chapman defendants' convictions, admitting the defendants had been denied a federal constitutional right but finding the error harmless.

The Court explained:

The federal rule emphasizes "substantial rights" as do most others. The California constitutional rule emphasizes "a miscarriage of justice," but the California courts have neutralized this to some extent by emphasis, and perhaps overemphasis, upon the court's view of "overwhelming evidence." We prefer the approach of this Court in deciding what was harmless error in our recent case of Fahy v. State of Connecticut, 375 U.S. 85, 84 S.Ct. 229, 11 L.Ed.2d 171 [ (1963) ]. There we said: "The question is whether there is a reasonable possibility that the evidence complained of might have contributed to the conviction." Id., at 86-87, 84 S.Ct. at 230 .... [ Fahy ] emphasizes an intention not to treat as harmless those constitutional errors that "affect substantial rights" of a party. An error in admitting plainly relevant evidence which possibly influenced the jury adversely to a litigant cannot, under Fahy , be conceived of as harmless. Certainly error, constitutional error, in illegally admitting highly prejudicial evidence or comments, casts on someone other than the person prejudiced by it a burden to show that it was harmless. It is for that reason that the original common-law harmless-error rule put the burden on the beneficiary of the error either to prove that there was no injury or to suffer a reversal of his erroneously obtained judgment. There is little, if any, difference between our statement in Fahy v. State of Connecticut about "whether there is a reasonable possibility that the evidence complained of might have contributed to the conviction" and requiring the beneficiary of a constitutional error to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained. We, therefore, do no more than adhere to the meaning of our Fahy case when we hold, as we now do, that before a federal constitutional error can be held harmless, the court must be able to declare a belief that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

Chapman , 386 U.S. at 23-24, 87 S.Ct. 824 (footnotes omitted).

The Court refined the Chapman rationale in Sullivan v. Louisiana , 508 U.S. 275, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993) :

Harmless-error review looks, we have said, to the basis on which "the jury actually rested its verdict." Yates v. Evatt, 500 U.S. 391, 404, 111 S.Ct. 1884, 1893, 114 L.Ed.2d 432 (1991) (emphasis added). The inquiry, in other words, is not whether, in a trial that occurred without the error, a guilty verdict would surely have been rendered, but whether the guilty verdict actually rendered in this trial was surely unattributable to the error. That must be so, because to hypothesize a guilty verdict that was never in fact rendered—no matter how inescapable the findings to support that verdict might be—would violate the jury-trial guarantee. See Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570, 578, 106 S.Ct. 3101, 3105, 92 L.Ed.2d 460 (1986) ; id., at 593, 106 S.Ct. at 3114 (BLACKMUN, J., dissenting); Pope v. Illinois, 481 U.S. 497, 509–510, 107 S.Ct. 1918, 1926, 95 L.Ed.2d 439 (1987) (STEVENS, J., dissenting).

Sullivan , 508 U.S. at 279-80, 113 S.Ct. 2078. The Louisiana Supreme Court has "adopted the Sullivan refinement of Chapman. " State v. Johnson , 94-1379, p. 14 (La. 11/27/95), 664 So.2d 94, 100.

Accordingly, we will review the defendant's Assignment of Error Number 7 to determine whether the state proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the error did not contribute to the verdict, not whether the legally admitted evidence was sufficient for a conviction, and whether the jury's verdict was surely unattributable to the error.

Application of Chapman

This court previously found the photograph was irrelevant, highly prejudicial, and erroneously admitted into evidence. It "had nothing to do with the crime for which the defendant was tried." Eaglin , 239 So.3d at 1020. It "was not reasonably useful in identifying the defendant at the scene of the crime" and "provided no useful purpose at trial." Id. The photograph presented "a disturbing image to the jury that portrayed the defendant as one who held a gun to a young boy's head" and "did not cast the defendant in a particularly good light." Id. This court considered all the evidence and determined it was sufficient to convict the defendant of manslaughter. This court, however, did not determine whether the state proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the error of admitting the photograph did not contribute to the verdict.

The defendant in State v. Small , 11-2796 (La. 10/16/12), 100 So.3d 797, was convicted of second degree murder because she left her children home alone in the middle of the night. One of the children died in a fire that broke out while she was gone. The trial court allowed photographs of the defendant's prior residence to show the earlier residence had constituted a fire hazard. The supreme court considered the photographs "problematic" and felt they showed the defendant was a neglectful parent. Id. at 814. The defendant admitted she had left the children alone to go out drinking. No evidence suggested the present home was not clean or that any...