State v. Ingram

• Decision Date: 25 March 2011
• Docket Number: No. 2010–K–2274.,2010–K–2274.
• Citation: 57 So.3d 299
• Parties: STATE of Louisianav.Bobby Ray INGRAM, III.
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court

57 So.3d 299

STATE of Louisiana

v.Bobby Ray INGRAM, III.

No. 2010–K–2274.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

March 25, 2011.

PER CURIAM.

[2010-2274 (La. 1] The state charged defendant by grand jury indictment with second degree murder in violation of La.R.S. 14:30.1, after he shot his ex-wife, Kimberly Ingram, in his home on October 18, 2006. Defendant had three children with Kimberly, and they had been married for 14 years before the marriage dissolved and they divorced. At the time of the shooting, defendant was married to Nancy Ingram, who was in the home at the time of the fatal confrontation between defendant and his ex-wife. After trial by jury, defendant was convicted of manslaughter in violation of La.R.S. 14:31. The trial court sentenced him to 28 years' imprisonment at hard labor. Defendant appealed his conviction and sentence to the Second Circuit, urging several assignments of error. However, the court of appeal addressed only a single issue: whether the trial court erred in summarily denying defendant's motion for a new trial based in part on allegations of juror misconduct occurring during the jury's deliberation. State v. Ingram, 45,546 (La.App. 2nd Cir.9/22/10), 47 So.3d 1127. The court of appeal set aside that ruling [2010-2274 (La. 2] and ordered an evidentiary hearing on the issue. The state sought review of that decision in this Court and for the reasons that follow, we reverse and remand the case to the court of appeal for consideration of defendant's remaining assignments of error. The fatal confrontation between defendant and his ex-wife brought to an end a contentious relationship involving disputes over custodial exchanges, property, and financial matters, that followed dissolution of the marriage. The relationship with his ex-wife had deteriorated so badly that defendant erected a fence around his home, and by arrangement, Kimberly Ingram picked the children up while parked outside of the gate. On the day of the shooting, defendant and Kimberly had quarreled over the telephone in an argument precipitated by defendant's receipt of Kimberly's demands to settle remaining aspects of the community property division left open at the time of their divorce. Defendant ignored Kimberly's repeated return calls, which were eventually answered by Nancy Ingram. The two women had words, and the dispute continued when Kimberly arrived at the house to wait at the gate for her oldest son to come home by school bus. The women first exchanged words over their phones, and then, after Kimberly challenged Nancy to come out so she could “beat her ass,” and Nancy responded, “Whatever,” defendant's ex-wife drove through the unlocked gate and up the long driveway to the house.

The give and take of threats and curses between the two women continued at the front of the house through a storm door to the main entrance which Nancy Ingram had cracked open a few inches. Words eventually escalated into physical violence when Nancy turned to see whether defendant had called the police. Kimberly pushed open the door and pounced on Nancy Ingram, driving her to the floor as she fell on top of her. Kimberly began pulling on Nancy's hair while [2010-2274 (La. 3] Nancy struggled beneath her. In the meantime, defendant, who had called 911 from the kitchen when he first heard a crash at the door and the scream of his wife, grabbed his high-powered deer hunting rifle and raced to the women sprawled on the floor by the front door. Defendant testified that he approached his ex-wife with the rifle at his hip and grabbed Kimberly by her hair to pull her off of Nancy. Kimberly turned in his direction and lunged at him. Defendant pulled back and fired a single shot from what one of the investigating officers described as a “big game rifle.” The bullet tore through Kimberly's right arm and struck her in the chest, killing her. The defense went to the jury on the theory that the law entitled defendant to meet force with force in defense of his home, his wife, and himself, against the uninvited and unauthorized entry by Kimberly. The trial court charged jurors with respect to the legal principles underpinning that defense at the close of the evidence, instructing them in accord with La.R.S. 14:20(A)(4)(a), that “[a] homicide is justifiable if the defendant was lawfully inside a dwelling and killed a person who made or was attempting to make an unlawful entry into the dwelling and the defendant reasonably believed that the use of deadly force was necessary to prevent the entry or to compel the intruder to leave the premises.”

Following the jury's verdict of manslaughter, which both sides argued against in their closing remarks, defendant filed a motion for a new trial based in part on an affidavit executed by the jury foreman regarding the course of jury deliberations. The foreman generally expressed concerns about certain aspects of the deliberations but specifically focused on a juror identified by the court of appeal in its decision as Juror No. 8. The affidavit stated that during recesses as the trial proceeded, Juror No. 8 had informed other jurors on the panel that she suspected her boyfriend was having an affair and was taking advantage of her [2010-2274 (La. 4] service on the jury to visit his paramour. Acting on her suspicions, Juror No. 8 had armed herself with a baseball bat over a noon lunch recess during the evidentiary portions of the trial and “made an unauthorized entry into the house of the alleged paramour.” She found her boyfriend in bed with the woman. Juror No. 8 told the woman to remain still and listen to her. She also informed her boyfriend that she would deal with him later. The confrontation apparently ended at that point. The jury foreman further explained in his affidavit that Juror No. 8 “acknowledged to him and others that she had placed herself in the same position as Kimberly Ingram, as both had entered homes without authority.” Finally, the foreman alleged that the incident allowed the other jurors to have “the benefit of a ‘recreation’ of the crime, and more importantly, allowed them to use this evidence in its deliberation to compare the juror's position at the house she entered to that of Kim Ingram; i.e., the juror lived; Ms. Ingram did not.”

In arguing his motion, defense counsel addressed the potential impact the information provided by Juror No. 8 may have had on the jury as a whole and the likelihood that it would have caused other jurors to consider whether, by accepting defendant's claim of justification, they would be “criticizing this juror for what she's done.” Counsel also focused on the impact the incident may have had on Juror No. 8 herself, and how it may have impaired defendant's “unquestioned right to twelve non-partial jurors.” At the same time, counsel conceded that “we shouldn't be able to call witnesses and question them about how they ultimately went through the deliberative process.” Counsel's goal therefore was simply to question jurors with respect to what “did you learn about this, did this occur, was it brought to your attention during the jury process.”

[2010-2274 (La. 5] The trial court denied the motion without conducting a hearing on the claim. The trial court assumed for purposes of ruling on the motion that the allegations in the foreman's affidavit were true, although the prosecutor would not subscribe to that view because “[t]hat's not we had been reported as actually occurred.” The court found that as alleged in the affidavit, Juror No. 8 had simply “relayed a personal experience and not some extrinsic facts that could be construed as an extraneous or an outside influence,” for purposes of Louisiana's jury shield provisions in La.C.E. art. 606(B), which generally preclude inquiry into the course and conduct of a jury's deliberations, but which make exceptions for cases in which “any outside influence was improperly brought to bear upon any juror, and, in criminal cases only, whether extraneous prejudicial information was improperly brought to the jury's attention.”

The court of appeal flatly disagreed with that assessment and remanded the case to the district court to conduct an evidentiary hearing on the allegations in the foreman's affidavit. For the Second Circuit panel, the present case offered “a strikingly atypical” example of juror misconduct because “a juror allegedly committed a crime during the course of the trial, which crime was reminiscent of the facts of the case being tried,” and then related the incident to the rest of the jurors, thereby calling the jury's fact-finding process into serious question. Ingram, 45,546 at 13, 47 So.3d at 1134. The panel therefore concluded that it was worth breaching the jury shield rule of La.C.E. art 606(B) to establish the full facts of the incident and the extent to which it became the focus of attention during deliberations, although ultimately defendant might not be entitled to any relief, because the costs of conducting such a hearing appeared far less than the costs to public confidence in the criminal justice system if the hearing were not conducted. [2010-2274 (La. 6] Id., 45,546 at 13–14, 47 So.3d at 1134 (“Because this is such a novel situation and because Ingram clearly may have been prejudiced by the conduct of Juror No. 8 if the allegations are determined to be true, the most cautious and reasonable course of action by the trial court would have been to hold an evidentiary hearing to determine what happened with Juror No. 8 and the other jurors....[T]o proceed without considering this issue is the sort of thing that serves to undermine the public's confidence in the criminal justice system.”). At the same time, the court of appeal did not address the scope of the evidentiary hearing it ordered. In fact, the defense proffer submitted at the hearing on the motion for a new trial listed only a single juror that the defense had intended to call at the hearing, Juror No. 8, whom counsel...