State v. Hartfield

• Decision Date: 27 October 1989
• Docket Number: No. 62061,62061
• Citation: 245 Kan. 431,781 P.2d 1050
• Parties: STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. Mitchell HARTFIELD, Appellant.
• Court: Kansas Supreme Court

Page 1050

781 P.2d 1050

245 Kan. 431

STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. Mitchell HARTFIELD, Appellant.

No. 62061.

Supreme Court of Kansas.

Oct. 27, 1989.

Syllabus by the Court

1. A criminal suspect has the right to counsel during custodial interrogations under the Sixth Amendment right to counsel and the right not to incriminate oneself under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

2. Law enforcement officers are required to inform the suspect of his right to have counsel present during questioning under the warnings set forth in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).

3. Parole officers in Kansas are law enforcement agents required to read a parolee his Miranda rights before investigating a new felony.

4. An accused in custody who has at any point requested counsel is not subject to further questioning until the accused has had the opportunity to consult with counsel unless the accused himself has initiated further communication with the law enforcement officers.

5. Where a trial court conducts a full pretrial hearing and finds a statement was freely, voluntarily, and knowingly given, and admits it into evidence, the decision to admit the statement will be undisturbed on appeal if supported by substantial competent evidence.

6. Evidence of other crimes is inadmissible unless the evidence is relevant to prove some other material fact including motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident, K.S.A. 60-455, or unless it is relevant as a part of the res gestae of the crime charged.

7. Intentional withholding of the name of a witness as part of trial strategy by the prosecution will not be tolerated.

8. Photographs of relevant conditions material to the case are admissible, even if gruesome, at the discretion of the trial court.

9. When dealing with pictures of an autopsy, great care must be taken so that the pictures do not simply shock and revolt, but rather help the jury understand the medical testimony.

10. The trial court has the duty to instruct the jury upon the law which applies to the theories of both the defendant and the State for which supporting evidence exists.

11. Jury instructions are to be considered together and read as a whole.

12. The standard of review, when an instruction was not challenged at trial but is challenged on appeal, is whether the instruction was clearly erroneous, and that, but for the error, there was a real possibility the jury would have returned a different verdict.

13. The State is not required to elect between premeditated and felony murder.

14. When an accused is charged in one count of an information with both premeditated murder and felony murder, it matters not whether some members of the jury arrive at a verdict of guilty based on proof of premeditation while others arrive at a verdict of guilty by reason of the killer's malignant purpose.

15. An instruction derived from the maxim falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus is criticized, and its use is not good practice.

Thomas H. Johnson, Asst. Appellate Defender, argued the cause, and Jessica R. Kunen, chief appellate defender, and Martha J. Coffman, Sp. Appellate Defender, were with him on the briefs, for appellant.

Mona Furst, Asst. Dist. Atty., argued the cause, and Nola Foulston, Dist. Atty., and Robert T. Stephan, Atty. Gen., were with her on the briefs, for appellee.

MILLER, Chief Justice:

Mitchell Hartfield brings this direct appeal from his jury convictions in Sedgwick District Court of first-degree murder, K.S.A. 21-3401; aggravated battery, K.S.A. 21-3414; and aggravated burglary, K.S.A. 21-3716. He raises numerous issues, which we will discuss later. We turn first to the evidence.

Hartfield was convicted of stabbing to death Danny O'Day, the companion of his former girlfriend, Leslie Amar; of aggravated battery committed on Amar; and of the aggravated burglary of her home. Amar moved out of Hartfield's home, after several incidents where he used violence against her, and into the home of her girlfriend, Tishon Lane. Hartfield pursued Amar and tried to get her to move back with him. His face-to-face confrontations usually ended in his threatening or physically harming her. She called the police for protection several times and filed a complaint against him. Hartfield also subjected Amar's parents to numerous entreaties for help in getting back with their daughter and threats to harm her.

Early in July, Amar and Lane discovered Hartfield had broken into their home while they were gone. The situation had become so threatening that they borrowed a handgun and some mace for protection. Amar's mother testified that on July 18 Hartfield came to her hair salon and "kept talking about doing something to [Amar], worse than beating her up."

The next night, July 19, Amar and Lane invited Danny O'Day, Amar's new companion, and Terrence Shine, Lane's boyfriend, to dinner. Hartfield kept calling during dinner, threatening that he was coming over; that they wouldn't know when he was "going to strike," but "a lot of innocent people [were] going to get hurt." All four of the people at the dinner party were frightened, and Amar called the police. The police responded and found that someone had put sugar in the gas tank of O'Day's car. The four stayed up into the early morning hours, finding the mace and checking the door and window locks.

Hartfield never came to the apartment, and the four finally fell asleep. Shine left at about 9 a.m. Sometime after that, Lane woke up to the sound of the front door being kicked in. Amar woke up to find Hartfield on top of O'Day in the bed. The evidence shows O'Day was stabbed with a hunting knife. Amar reached for the gun she had hidden under the bed and shot Hartfield three times with her eyes closed. Hartfield was hit in the left shoulder at his clavicle, the inside surface of his left arm, and the outside surface of his right knee.

Lane ran into the room and saw a bloody knife on the floor. Amar was holding a gun on Hartfield and screaming for Lane to call the police. Lane ran out of the house to call from her family's liquor store next door.

While Amar was waiting for Lane to call the police, she noticed her hand was bleeding. She picked up the knife on the floor and threw it out the front door so Hartfield could not reach it. This action enabled Hartfield to grapple the gun from Amar and shoot her in the chest, "since [she had] shot him." He shot her twice in the back as she attempted to hide in a closet, and tried several times to shoot her again, but the gun was empty.

When Lane completed her call to the police she ran back to find Hartfield chasing Amar all over the yard, slashing her with the bloody knife. He followed her as she ran toward the liquor store, but left in his car when he saw the police coming. He was captured after a chase.

Amar suffered a gunshot wound through her chest, two gunshot wounds in her back, and numerous knife wounds over her body. The big hunting knife Hartfield had used on her was found on the ground by the police.

O'Day was found inside the house bleeding to death. It appeared that he had slipped from the bed and crawled to the bathroom. He had a nonfatal stab wound in his back. The cause of death was a four-inch wound through the ribs which almost cut the heart in two.

Hartfield's version of events, to which he testified at trial, was that he received a call at work from O'Day on the morning of the 20th. O'Day told him he and Amar wanted to talk about the problems they had been having with him and wanted to try and resolve them. Hartfield said he needed to go to the Health Department anyway and asked his supervisor if he could leave to go there that morning. After receiving permission, he decided to telephone the Department instead, and used his time to make the visit to Amar's house. He said O'Day met him at the front door with profane language and slammed his finger in the door. When the door came back open, O'Day "was coming at me with a knife." He said he caught O'Day from behind, twisted the knife towards O'Day, fell on him, and the knife went in his chest. He then pulled the knife out of O'Day and stabbed him in the back. At this point, he said, Amar shot him.

The coroner who did the autopsy on O'Day testified that Hartfield's claim that the wound was caused by O'Day falling on the knife was not a realistic medical possibility. Amar, Lane, and Shine testified the knife was not theirs or O'Day's.

The first issue is whether the trial court erred in denying, after a full hearing, a defense motion to suppress statements Hartfield made to his parole officer, Bridgette Clark, when she visited him in jail four days after the killing to serve him with notice of his parole violations. Hartfield claims error on three theories. The first is that Clark visited him after he had requested, and been appointed, counsel, but before he had the opportunity to visit with counsel. He claims admission of the statements made to the officer were thus in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

Clark testified that, after she and Hartfield had exchanged greetings, Hartfield said, "Miss Clark, I want to tell you what happened." Clark said she told him that because of the severity of the case she felt she needed to give him his Miranda rights first so "he could be protected." She reported Hartfield said, "You don't really need to," but she insisted. She read Hartfield his rights. She gave the Miranda rights form to Hartfield to look at and sign if he agreed that he understood what his rights were. Hartfield signed and also told her orally that he understood his rights because Clark emphasized their importance to him. She said she asked him, "[D]o you want an attorney, if you want to wait for your attorney you can," but he told her he "wanted to let [her] know what was going on." She said he "was really eager to let me know what was going on,...