State v. McCullar

• Citation: 2014 UT App 215,335 P.3d 900
• Decision Date: 11 September 2014
• Docket Number: No. 20120648–CA.,20120648–CA.
• Parties: STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Robert L. McCULLAR, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Court of Appeals of Utah

335 P.3d 900
2014 UT App 215

STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Appellee
v.
Robert L. McCULLAR, Defendant and Appellant.

No. 20120648–CA.

Court of Appeals of Utah.

Sept. 11, 2014.

335 P.3d 901

Samuel P. Newton, for Appellant.

Sean D. Reyes and Jeffrey S. Gray, Salt Lake City, for Appellee.

Judge J. FREDERIC VOROS JR. authored this Opinion, in which Judge MICHELE M. CHRISTIANSEN and Senior Judge PAMELA T. GREENWOOD concurred.¹

Opinion

VOROS, Judge:

¶ 1 Robert L. McCullar was convicted of murdering Filiberto Robles Bedolla. McCullar told his girlfriend (by then a police informant) that he had slashed Bedolla's throat with a piece of broken glass. At trial, McCullar sought to raise a reasonable doubt of his own guilt by pointing the finger at Dawna Finch, Bedolla's girlfriend and “main prostitute.” The jury convicted McCullar without having heard much of the evidence implicating Finch. On appeal McCullar contends that he was unduly restricted in attempting to present his defense to the jury. We agree. We therefore reverse McCullar's conviction and remand for further proceedings.

BACKGROUND²

The Murder

¶ 2 Filiberto Robles Bedolla and his roommate shared a studio apartment in Ogden. Bedolla's roommate spent the morning of December 22, 2009, looking for work. When he returned to the apartment that afternoon to drop off groceries, he noticed Bedolla still in bed, completely under a bedsheet. The roommate said, “Hey buddy,” but Bedolla did not respond. As the roommate left the apartment, he ran into Bedolla's brother. The two returned to the apartment to wake Bedolla. The roommate shook Bedolla's foot but Bedolla did not respond. Bedolla's brother then pulled back the bedsheet. Bedolla was dead, his bedding bloodstained, his neck covered with stab wounds. The fly on his jeans was unbuttoned and a pornographic movie was playing on a loop on the television near the foot of his bed.

335 P.3d 902

¶ 3 The crime scene revealed no obvious suspect. The first officer to arrive saw no evidence of a struggle, and the door showed no sign of forced entry. Bedolla's wounds indicated that the killer used a knife with a single-edged blade, but police found no weapon at the scene. Investigators found blood prints on a lightswitch, a doorknob, and a DVD case, all left by someone wearing knit gloves. They also found blood prints on an outturned pocket of Bedolla's jeans. Three thousand dollars in cash, with which Bedolla had intended to purchase a car, was missing.

The Investigation

¶ 4 Police focused initially on two suspects: Bedolla's roommate and Dawna Finch, a woman investigators described as Bedolla's “main prostitute.” One detail in particular piqued police interest in Finch. Bedolla reportedly kept a picture of Finch on his headboard. The picture was gone when Bedolla's body was found.

¶ 5 Other suspects soon emerged. An informant told police of a woman seen sharpening a crack pipe, and police briefly entertained a theory that Bedolla's wounds could have been caused by that type of weapon. Another informant told police that a local man named Michael had bragged about committing the murder.

¶ 6 But the police investigation eventually narrowed to a single suspect: Robert McCullar. Police first sought out McCullar because they believed he might provide them with information about Finch. Soon after their search began, McCullar approached two officers on the street. He had heard police were investigating “a murder or something” and were looking for him. McCullar seemed to be unfamiliar with the details of the investigation. He believed the murder had taken place the previous Friday, for example, when it had actually taken place the previous Tuesday. He told police, “This is bullshit. I didn't do no murder. I don't even know the guy.” But McCullar then asked the police why they were investigating him “if there was no forced entry” into Bedolla's apartment. That question struck the officers as suspicious—they considered the lack of a forced entry to be a nonpublic detail of the crime.

¶ 7 Several weeks later police received another tip. While in custody after a drug arrest, a woman named Donna Major told police that she had information about the Bedolla murder. She told police that she and McCullar were “close associates” and that McCullar had “made some comments and statements that led her to believe that he was the murderer.” Major first told police that Finch was in Bedolla's apartment when McCullar killed him. But Major changed her story, telling police that she had been with McCullar herself and had smoked a cigarette outside Bedolla's apartment as McCullar killed Bedolla. When McCullar emerged from Bedolla's apartment building, Major said, blood marked his clothing.

McCullar's Confessions and Trial

¶ 8 Major did, in fact, know McCullar well. They met in the summer of 2009 and, for some time, had a romantic relationship. Though that relationship ended before police began investigating McCullar, during the investigation Major still told McCullar that she loved and cared for him and that she wanted to leave Ogden and run away with him to Dallas. Major testified that neither of them ever “totally gave up” on the relationship and that she thought McCullar “still had feelings” for her. Major also testified that she believed she was able to “manipulate those feelings” to “get [McCullar] to confess or incriminate himself” in Bedolla's murder.

¶ 9 In spite of their affection, Major was angry at McCullar for his failure to bail her out of jail when she was held on drug charges. In a conversation from jail, Major “vented” to McCullar about her “so-called friends” who never “step up for you when you need them.” Major told McCullar, “When I get out of here, ... karma is coming to town and that bitch is named Donna.”

¶ 10 Though they were skeptical of her initial story implicating McCullar in Bedolla's murder, police remained interested in Major's willingness to implicate McCullar. Major told police she could “set up a meeting” and “get a confession” from McCullar. Police told Major that if she did, they might be

335 P.3d 903

able to negotiate her release from prison and drop the felony drug charge against her.

¶ 11 Once Major agreed to cooperate with an investigation into McCullar's involvement in the murder, police “initiated the discussion that led to her release.” They then outfitted a hotel room with a modified clock radio capable of audio and video recording. McCullar met Major at the hotel room, and police monitored and recorded at least an hour and fifteen minutes of McCullar's activity in the hotel room. During his conversation with Major, McCullar confessed to killing Bedolla. He told Major that after a “run in” with Bedolla, he followed Bedolla home, scooped up a piece of broken glass outside the apartment complex, barged through the apartment door before Bedolla could close it, and cut Bedolla's throat. As McCullar described the killing to Major, he indicated the length and location of the fatal wound by tracing a path with his finger from “right under the right ear to about the center” of the throat.

¶ 12 While in prison awaiting trial, McCullar met a pastor serving five years to life for statutory rape. On one occasion, McCullar asked the pastor, “Does God forgive murder?” On another occasion, McCullar seemed to acknowledge killing Bedolla, saying, “That paisa motherfucker, I had to handle my business, and so I had to do what I had to do.”³ McCullar told the pastor he “left the body” at the scene of the crime and that “he didn't think it would be found for anywhere from 12 to 24 hours.” McCullar also suggested that he was not alone at the murder scene. As the pastor related it, McCullar “was very frustrated” with a woman named “Dawanna,” because “if she hadn't gone back inside to get something else and ... [left] a piece of evidence behind,” McCullar believed he “would have got off.”

¶ 13 Those confessions anchored the State's case against McCullar. In fact, the prosecutor's closing argument began, “I'm a little surprised that [Bedolla's roommate] is still being talked about as a suspect, but when you have a client that confessed to committing a murder and gave numerous specific details about that murder, you throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.” Several minutes later, the prosecutor closed, “Ladies and gentlemen, we don't know everything that happened. We don't know exactly how.... [But McCullar] knew way too many details.... You don't come up with those by guessing.... You come up with those because you were there, and you did it, and that's why I'm asking you to find the defendant guilty.”

¶ 14 McCullar countered that his confessions did not square with other evidence and that he had confessed to Major because he believed that if he did, she would run away with him to Dallas. McCullar denied confessing to the pastor and pointed out several flaws in the pastor's testimony. McCullar also sought to present an alternative theory to the jury: the evidence at the scene and the testimony of key witnesses strongly suggested that Dawna Finch killed Bedolla. But several evidentiary rulings by the trial court...