State v. Kennedy
| Decision Date | 18 June 2015 |
| Docket Number | No. 20130229–CA.,20130229–CA. |
| Parties | STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Benita KENNEDY, Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | Utah Court of Appeals |
Scott S. Bell, Nicole G. Farrell, and Alan S. Mouritsen, Salt Lake City, for Appellant.
Sean D. Reyes and Christopher D. Ballard, Salt Lake City, for Appellee.
Opinion
¶ 1 Defendant Benita Kennedy appeals her obstruction-of-justice conviction. She contends that the jury instructions were vague, that the court erred in rejecting her proposed mistake-of-fact instruction, and that she was deprived of her constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel when her trial counsel failed to object to the sufficiency of the evidence against her. We affirm.
¶ 2 We recite the facts in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict, and we present conflicting evidence as necessary to understand the issues raised on appeal. State v. Black, 2015 UT App 30, ¶ 2, 344 P.3d 644.
¶ 3 Eddie Garza hatched a plan to raise funds to throw his girlfriend's son a birthday party by robbing Hiram Torez, a drug dealer. Garza called Torez, asking to purchase drugs. They agreed to meet in a parking lot. To help pull off the robbery, Garza brought his girlfriend's stepfather (Christian Lizarzaburu), her brother (Larry Davis), and a friend (Anthony Corona).
¶ 4 Kennedy was with Torez at the home of Natalie Jo Irish when Torez received Garza's call. Before leaving for the meeting, Torez loaded his handgun. Kennedy drove Torez to the meeting point—a church parking lot—in Irish's SUV.
¶ 5 Garza's group arrived first, driving a sedan Garza's cousin's roommate had rented. Garza parked the sedan. Lizarzaburu and Davis exited the car and hid behind a nearby building. Garza remained in the driver's seat. Corona took the front passenger seat. When Kennedy arrived, she parked the SUV next to the sedan but facing the opposite direction, so that the drivers' doors faced each other about five feet apart.
¶ 6 Torez got out of the SUV and into the rear seat of the sedan. Garza, Torez, and Corona began to argue. Lizarzaburu and Davis ran to the sedan, opened both rear doors, and saw Garza and Torez fighting. Garza told Corona to shoot Torez. Corona shot Torez six times; one bullet grazed Garza's finger.
¶ 7 Garza, Corona, Lizarzaburu, and Davis then ran from the sedan. As Garza exited the sedan, Torez pleaded for help. Garza responded, “Sorry, homey.” Corona ran to a nearby building.
¶ 8 Meanwhile, Kennedy remained in the driver's seat of the SUV, playing a game on her cell phone. Out of the corner of her eye, and through the tinted windows of the SUV, she saw flashes and realized that the situation had soured. She saw three people—Garza, Lizarzaburu, and Davis—approaching the SUV. According to Lizarzaburu, Kennedy recognized the three, rolled down her window, called them by name, and told them to get in.1 However, according to Irish, Kennedy later said she had not recognized them until after they had entered the SUV.
¶ 9 Irish also testified that Kennedy told her that, while driving away, Kennedy had exclaimed something to the effect of “Oh my God” and “[W]hat have you guys done?” Her passengers instructed her to pick up Corona. According to Lizarzaburu, Kennedy told Corona to “get in, get in, get in the car.” After Corona got in, Kennedy asked the group if they had killed Torez. Corona replied that he had “dumped on [Torez] with the .22.”
¶ 10 Kennedy dropped Corona, Lizarzaburu, and Davis off before taking Garza to Irish's house. Irish cleaned Garza's injured finger with hydrogen peroxide and drove him home. According to Garza's cousin, Kennedy suggested to Garza that he tell the cousin to report the rented sedan as stolen. Meanwhile, people near the scene of the shooting had heard the gunshots and called the police. When officers arrived, they discovered Torez's body inside the sedan.
¶ 11 Kennedy was eventually charged with one count of obstruction of justice. The charge was enhanced to a first-degree felony because the State alleged Kennedy had acted in concert with two or more people. At trial, Kennedy primarily argued that she could not have formed the intent to obstruct justice, because she did not know a crime had been committed. The State argued that, given Kennedy's proximity to the shooting, she must have known that a crime had occurred.
¶ 12 At the close of the evidentiary phase, Kennedy asked the court to give the jury a mistake-of-fact instruction. The gist of the proffered instruction was that “[a]n act committed under an ignorance or mistake of fact, which disproves the culpable mental state, is a defense to any prosecution for the crime.” The court declined to give the instruction.
¶ 13 The court provided two jury instructions relevant to this appeal. The first (Instruction 15) was a general instruction concerning mental states:
¶ 14 Instruction 15 then defined each of the three mental states. For example, “[a] person engages in conduct intentionally or with intent or willfully with respect to the nature of his conduct or to a result of his conduct, when it is his conscious objective or desire to engage in the conduct or cause the result.”
¶ 15 The second instruction at issue is Instruction 19. Unlike Instruction 15, Instruction 19 referred to the specific defendant and crime charged:
¶ 16 The jury convicted Kennedy of obstruction of justice. Kennedy appeals.2
¶ 17 Kennedy first contends that the jury instructions failed to require that the jury find that she specifically intended to obstruct justice. We review a challenge to jury instructions for correctness. State v. Featherhat, 2011 UT App 154, ¶ 8, 257 P.3d 445.
¶ 18 Kennedy also contends that the trial court erred by failing to give the jury her proposed mistake-of-fact instruction. The issue of whether to instruct the jury on a theory that is supported by the evidence presents a legal question. State v. Berriel, 2013 UT 19, ¶ 10, 299 P.3d 1133. We review the trial court's resolution of that question for correctness. But whether the evidence introduced at trial supports a particular theory is “primarily a factual question,” and we review the trial court's resolution of it for an abuse of discretion.Id. ¶¶ 9, 11.
¶ 19 Finally, Kennedy contends that the evidence against her was insufficient to sustain a conviction. We will reverse a guilty verdict for insufficient evidence only when the evidence is so inconclusive or inherently improbable that reasonable minds must have entertained a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crimes of which he or she was convicted. State v. Nielsen, 2014 UT 10, ¶ 46, 326 P.3d 645.
¶ 20 Kennedy contends that the jury instructions misled the jury into believing that they could convict her of obstruction of justice if they found that she acted knowingly or recklessly, rather than with the requisite mental state of acting intentionally. She argues that she preserved this claim for appeal by proposing a mistake-of-fact instruction. See Wohnoutka v. Kelley, 2014 UT App 154, ¶ 3, 330 P.3d 762 ().
¶ 21 An issue is preserved for appeal when it has been presented to the trial court in such a way that the trial court had the opportunity to rule on it. Id. ¶ 4. The appellant must present the legal basis for her claim to the trial court, not merely the underlying facts or a tangentially related claim. See id.
¶ 22 Kennedy's proposed instruction would have informed the jury that a defendant's mistake of fact could disprove the required mental state. The proposed instruction thus did not inform the trial court of Kennedy's apparent belief that Instruction 15 would mislead the jury into believing that a mental state of knowledge or recklessness was sufficient to convict Kennedy. As a result, the proposed instruction did not raise the legal basis of Kennedy's contention on appeal in such a way that the trial court would have had an opportunity to rule on it. See id. Her challenge to Instruction 15 is therefore unpreserved.
¶ 23 Kennedy also argues that two exceptions to our preservation rule apply. Specifically, she asserts...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
State v. Reigelsperger
...delay, or prevent the investigation, apprehension, prosecution, conviction, or punishment of any person regarding a criminal offense." 2015 UT App 152, ¶¶ 25–26, 354 P.3d 775 (internal quotation marks omitted). The defendant asserted that the instructions were erroneous and that they had le......
-
State v. Sanchez
...to “present the legal basis for her claim to the trial court, not merely the underlying facts or a tangentially related claim.” State v. Kennedy , 2015 UT App 152, ¶ 20, 354 P.3d 775. “[I]n general, appellate courts will not consider an issue, including constitutional arguments, raised for ......
-
State v. Bruun
...affirm unpreserved challenges to jury instructions when the instructions "fairly instruct the jury on the applicable law." See State v. Kennedy , 2015 UT App 152, ¶ 24, 354 P.3d 775.¶ 77 Here, the trial court instructed the jury that it had to find that Defendants "participated as a princip......
-
State v. Ringstad
...of review requires an appellant to show the existence of a harmful error that should have been obvious to the district court." State v. Kennedy, 2015 UT App 152, ¶ 23, 354 P.3d 775 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). "An ineffective assistance of counsel claim raised for the fi......