State v. Moore
| Decision Date | 21 August 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 121,040,121,040 |
| Parties | STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. Quinton MOORE, Appellant. |
| Court | Kansas Supreme Court |
Michelle A. Davis, of Kansas Appellate Defender Office, was on the brief for appellant.
Keith E. Schroeder, district attorney, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, were on the brief for appellee.
A Reno County jury convicted Quinton Moore of first-degree premeditated murder for the 2017 shooting of Clarence "Avalon" Allen. Moore raises four challenges to his conviction: (1) the district court judge should have suppressed evidence of his incriminating statements made during his police interview; (2) it was error to refuse to give voluntary intoxication instructions; (3) the prosecutor committed error in closing argument; and (4) cumulative error requires reversal.
We hold there was a single instance of prosecutorial error during closing argument, but the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. We thus affirm Moore's conviction.
This case is characterized by multiple evolving stories from the defendant and several witnesses. We detail the evidence here to support our analysis of Moore's issues on appeal, particularly his insistence that any and all errors warrant reversal.
After responding to a 911 call the morning of September 22, 2017, police found Allen dead from multiple gunshot wounds
in a Hutchinson home. The same morning, police identified Moore as a suspect. Police located Moore at a local hospital. When Moore was discharged later that morning, he agreed to go with police to the Hutchinson Law Enforcement Center for questioning.
Detective Curtis Black interviewed Moore for about four and one-half hours. Initially Moore denied involvement in the shooting, but he eventually confessed to buying a gun about a month earlier and shooting Allen. The State charged Moore with first-degree murder.
Before trial, Moore moved to suppress the statements he made during his interview with Black. Moore argued that police violated his Miranda rights by continuing to question him after he said, "Well, I guess it's lawyer time now then," and, later, "I'm done, alright." The State opposed the motion. It argued that Moore did not unambiguously or unequivocally make a request for counsel.
The district court judge held a hearing on the motion to suppress. Black testified for the State. Black explained that he went over a Miranda waiver with Moore and that Moore agreed to waive his rights and speak with Black.
Moore admitted to Black that he had used methamphetamine the previous morning, and he blew a .089 or .087 on a breath alcohol test an hour or two before the interview. Black provided Moore with water and a quesadilla from Taco Bell and asked Moore if he was too intoxicated to be interviewed. Moore said he was not intoxicated. Black testified that at one point during the interview Moore said "it's lawyer time" but "continued to speak" about the events at issue.
The State put a videotape and a transcript of Moore's interview with Black into evidence. They included a more complete version of the exchange about "lawyer time."
Ten minutes later, Black and Moore continued:
The district judge found that "[t]aken in context of the conversation, the Defendant is indicating each side has stated their position and unlikely to change their positions, so ‘it's lawyer time’ or time to proceed to court." The district judge ruled that the statement was not an unequivocal request for counsel and that Black did not violate Moore's Miranda rights by continuing to question him. Likewise, the district judge concluded that, in context, Moore's "I'm done" statement was not an "unequivocal request for the interview to cease." The district judge denied Moore's motion to suppress.
Moore's case proceeded to a jury trial. Sedgwick County Deputy Coroner Jamie Oeberst testified that Allen had seven gunshot wounds
.
Detective Daniel Styles testified that he and another officer entered the home where Jessica Crowe and her mother, Sara O'Neal, had found Allen dead on a bed. Several shell casings surrounded the body, but there was no gun in the room.
Another officer reported to Styles that he had found a pair of sandals on the street near the house. Styles photographed and collected the sandals. He noticed apparent wet blood stains on the shoes, which were later swabbed for DNA.
Officer Robert Winslow testified that he spoke with Crowe and O'Neal at the house after police arrived.
O'Neal told Winslow that Crowe had come to O'Neal's house across town and said that "somebody had emptied a clip into her boyfriend's head."
According to Winslow, Crowe told him she had gone for a walk after midnight. After she walked down the street for a while, she used her cell phone to call her brother, Steven Griffith, Jr., about 1:40 a.m. Griffith picked her up and drove her to O'Neal's house. At O'Neal's, people "were sitting on the front porch just smoking and talking and then a male walked up to them, made some concerning statements." Crowe did not identify this man.
Winslow described Crowe's three somewhat distinct accounts of what the man said:
After the "concerning" statement, according to Crowe, she and O'Neal drove back to Crowe's house and found Allen's body.
While Winslow was talking to Crowe, a neighbor came up and asked, "[W]here's Q?" This apparently surprised Crowe. Winslow asked who "Q" was. Crowe hesitated and then said "Q" was Moore. When Winslow asked who Moore was, Crowe told him that Moore lived with her and Allen at the house. When Winslow asked where Moore was, Crowe "didn't really respond."
Officer Cory Schmidt testified that he had also spoken with Crowe and O'Neal at the house, after they had spoken with Winslow.
O'Neal told Schmidt that Crowe was at O'Neal's house all night, and the pair went over to Crowe's house to check on Allen only because he was not answering his phone.
Crowe told Schmidt that she "didn't tell that other first officer the truth." Crowe told Schmidt that the previous evening she had seen Moore drunk, sitting in the living room. Crowe said Moore displayed a gun and said he was "going to kill this, quote, ‘N’ word." Crowe asked if he meant that he was going to kill Allen. When he said yes, Crowe urged him not to kill Allen; then the pair went across the street to Katherine Hendricks' house. Moore left Hendricks' house and went back to the house he shared with Crowe and Allen. Then, according to Crowe, she and her brother, who was also at Hendricks' house, heard gunshots. Moore then returned to Hendricks' house and said "they all needed to leave." According to Crowe, Moore told her he had "emptied the clip into [Allen's] face." Moore, Crowe, and Griffith then left Hendricks' house.
Lieutenant Dustin Loepp testified that he spoke with Crowe the morning after the murder about photos she had discussed the night before with Hendricks. Crowe described one of the photos as "a very blurry picture that was kind of bright and it had what appeared to be a, a big child's face in the center of the picture." Crowe told Loepp she believed Allen had been molesting her kids. The night before the murder, Crowe had asked others at Hendricks' house what they thought a photo showed. Crowe thought the picture might show Allen's penis, with two of her children in the background. Loepp photographed the picture on...
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