State v. Lewis
| Decision Date | 20 February 2015 |
| Docket Number | 108,310. |
| Citation | 344 P.3d 928,301 Kan. 349 |
| Parties | STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. Michael Trevon LEWIS, Appellant. |
| Court | Kansas Supreme Court |
Kimberly Streit Vogelsberg, of Kansas Appellate Defender Office, argued the cause, and Rachel L. Pickering, of the same office, was on the briefs for appellant.
Steven J. Obermeier, senior deputy district attorney, argued the cause, and Stephen M. Howe, district attorney, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, were with him on the brief for appellee.
After a bench trial, Michael Trevon Lewis was found guilty of felony murder and aggravated robbery. Lewis received a hard 20 life sentence for the felony-murder conviction and a consecutive 61–month prison sentence for the aggravated robbery conviction. The district court also imposed lifetime parole for both convictions.
On direct appeal before this court, Lewis argues: (1) the State presented insufficient evidence to convict him of either felony murder or aggravated robbery; (2) he did not knowingly and voluntarily waive his right to a jury trial; (3) the district court erred in denying his motion to dismiss the charges against him based on the alleged destruction of potentially exculpatory evidence; (4) the district court erred in imposing lifetime parole in connection with the aggravated robbery conviction; and (5) the cumulative effect of the alleged trial errors deprived him of a fair trial.
Before focusing on these issues, we address whether the notice of appeal filed in this case was sufficient to confer jurisdiction on this court over all the issues Lewis raises on appeal. We conclude that it was sufficient to confer jurisdiction over all the issues. Addressing the merits of the issues, we agree with Lewis that the district court erred in imposing lifetime parole in connection with his aggravated robbery conviction. Thus, we vacate that portion of his sentence and remand for resentencing. But, we reject his other alleged errors and, accordingly, affirm his convictions.
Because Lewis challenges the sufficiency of the circumstantial evidence used to convict him of the charged crimes, a detailed recitation of the evidence presented at his bench trial is warranted.
Curley Tyler, the victim in this case, and his son, Eshawn, lived together at an apartment complex in Shawnee, Kansas. Tyler and Eshawn made their living by buying and selling automobiles. Sometime in early 2010, Lewis, a family friend, began renting a Mercedes Benz from Tyler. Later, the two reached an agreement where Lewis would begin making payments toward the purchase of the car.
During the evening of April 3, 2010, the day before Easter, Tyler went out to dinner with his girlfriend, Sabrina Steen; Steen's son, Ben; and Tyler's nephew, Emmanuel. After dinner, the group, riding in Tyler's Cadillac Escalade, went to a church fundraiser for an acquaintance of Tyler's. After the fundraiser, the group stopped at a Walmart located near I–435 and Shawnee Mission Parkway (close to Tyler's apartment) so Steen could purchase an Easter egg coloring kit.
While Steen shopped, Tyler and the others remained inside the Escalade. During this time, Tyler spoke on his cell phone with Lewis. Though Emmanuel could only hear Tyler's side of the conversation, Emmanuel said that the two men spoke about Lewis paying money he owed to Tyler for renting the Mercedes Benz. According to Emmanuel, Tyler tried to convince Lewis to bring the money to him in Shawnee, but Tyler ultimately agreed to meet Lewis in Grandview, Missouri.
The group eventually left Walmart and arrived back at Tyler's apartment. Once at the apartment, Tyler changed into different clothes and told Steen that he was going to take Emmanuel back to his home. Tyler then planned to meet Lewis so Lewis could pay him the money he owed for the car. After meeting Lewis, Tyler planned on stopping by his grandson's house to deliver clothes to him for Easter services the next day and then planned on stopping by his brother Alfred's house to cut Alfred's hair.
Tyler and Emmanuel left the apartment in Tyler's Escalade sometime after 11 p.m. Shortly after they left, Tyler's son, Eshawn, arrived back at the apartment. On the way to Emmanuel's home, Tyler told Emmanuel that he was going to Grandview, Missouri, to pick up some money from Lewis and asked Emmanuel if he would go to Grandview with him. Emmanuel declined. Tyler eventually dropped Emmanuel off at his home sometime around 11:30 p.m. Ultimately, Tyler never delivered the clothes to his grandson nor did he ever arrive at Alfred's house to cut his hair.
Because Tyler was late in returning to his apartment, Steen began calling his cell phone at around 1 a.m. on April 4 and proceeded to call Tyler's phone numerous times throughout the night, but Tyler never answered his phone.
Cody Martin, a 13–year–old boy who lived with his mother in the same apartment complex as Tyler, had been up watching TV but was heading to bed when he heard “two loud metal clings.” Martin told a detective that he believed he heard the clings at around 2 a.m., but later testified at trial that he was not sure when he heard the sounds. He also was not positive whether he had heard two distinct sounds and conceded that it might have been one sound and its echo. Regardless, about 5 minutes after hearing the sounds, Martin looked out his bedroom window and saw what appeared to be a man sleeping inside a pearl white Escalade parked in front of Martin's apartment. Martin said that the man's body was lying between the two front seats of the Escalade.
Shanaya Kane, another resident of the apartment complex, arrived back at her apartment with her boyfriend sometime shortly after 4 a.m. As they pulled into Kane's parking space, they noticed a pearl white Escalade parked in the next stall over. Kane did not recognize the vehicle.
At around 6 a.m., Steen woke Eshawn and told him that Tyler had not come home and was not answering his phone. Steen asked Eshawn to go look for Tyler. Eshawn called Tyler's phone several times, but Tyler never answered his phone.
Eshawn looked out the front of the apartment and saw that Tyler's Escalade was not parked in its usual spot. At approximately 6:45 a.m., Eshawn looked through a back window of the apartment and saw Tyler's Escalade parked outside. Eshawn went outside and saw that Tyler's body was lying inside the vehicle. Law enforcement responded to the scene shortly thereafter.
Tyler was found lying face down on the front passenger seat, his midsection draped over the console, and his legs positioned behind the driver's seat. It was later determined that Tyler had suffered a single bullet wound
to the back right of his head; the bullet exited near his left temple. The bullet was ultimately found between the frame of the front driver's side door and the dashboard. On the floor mat in front of the rear passenger-side seat, investigators found a spent .10 millimeter shell casing.
Tyler's bullet wound
and subsequent blood splatter analysis indicated that Tyler was sitting upright in the front driver's seat when he was shot and that whoever shot Tyler did so while sitting behind him and to his right.
Additional blood splatter analysis showed that Tyler, after being shot, remained in an upright position for an indeterminate amount of time. His body was then moved into the position it was found in—lying face down on the front passenger seat with the midsection draped over the center console and the legs extended behind the driver's seat. A large amount of blood pooled along the bottom of the front passenger door, eventually dripping out of the interior of the Escalade. One blood-flow pattern found outside the car suggested that the Escalade may have been moving after Tyler started bleeding; however, the detective performing the analysis could not definitively say whether this was so. Notably, a yaw mark on the parking lot surface near the front driver's side tire indicated that the Escalade had made a hard right turn into the parking stall. The detective also indicated that based on blood transfer stains found on the driver's seat, it was possible that someone else sat in the driver's seat after Tyler's body was moved.
Though Tyler was known for carrying a large amount of cash (Eshawn believed that his father had approximately $3,000 in cash on him when he met Lewis) and a cell phone, neither cash nor a cell phone were found on Tyler or inside the Escalade. In fact, the pockets of his pants were found turned inside out as if someone had gone through them, and the cell phone holder clipped to the waist of his pants was empty.
After Tyler's body was discovered, members of Tyler's family began calling Lewis' phone that morning, informing him of Tyler's death and asking him whether he had met with Tyler the previous night. Michael Tyler, Tyler's nephew and Alfred's son, called Lewis, and Lewis told Michael that he had heard what had happened and was on his way to the apartment complex. Later, when Lewis failed to arrive at the apartment complex, Michael called Lewis again to ask where he was, and Lewis told him that people were threatening him. Notably, Lewis told Michael that he had met Tyler the previous night at Lewis' mother's house near Sixth and Parallel in Kansas City, Kansas, and that he had given Tyler some money.
At 12:35 p.m. on April 4, a police officer with the Shawnee Police Department called Lewis' cell phone. Lewis never answered his phone, so the officer left a voice message asking him to contact the police so they could discuss Tyler's murder. Lewis never contacted police. Later, on April 7, 2010, law enforcement made a request to Sprint Nextel, Lewis' cell phone carrier, to ping Lewis' cell phone, i.e., determine which cell tower and tower sector the phone had recently used. Based on the information Sprint provided, law enforcement determined that the cell phone was pinging off of a tower and sector that serviced the area where Lewis'...
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