State v. Shields

• Decision Date: 17 June 2022
• Docket Number: 122,897
• Parties: STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. Melvin Lavon SHIELDS, Appellant.
• Court: Kansas Supreme Court

511 P.3d 931

STATE of Kansas, Appellee,

v.Melvin Lavon SHIELDS, Appellant.

No. 122,897

Supreme Court of Kansas.

Opinion filed June 17, 2022.

Kai Tate Mann, of Kansas Appellate Defender Office, argued the cause and was on the briefs for appellant.

Daniel G. Obermeier, special prosecutor, argued the cause, and Marc A. Dupree Sr., district attorney, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, were with him on the brief for appellee.

The opinion of the court was delivered by Wall, J.:

In 1988, two victims were found shot to death in a ditch in Wyandotte County. Investigators developed no solid leads, and the case went cold until DNA testing tied Melvin Shields to the killings 15 years later. Despite the DNA test results, prosecutors declined to file charges for another decade because no murder weapon had been recovered. But the State eventually changed course and charged Shields with two counts of first-degree premeditated murder. A jury convicted Shields on those charges. He now appeals directly to our court to challenge the jury's verdict.

Shields asks us to reverse his convictions based on seven separate claims of trial error. For the most part, Shields' arguments fail to establish error. But the district court did err in one respect: it should have provided a cautionary instruction to the jury on the reliability of eyewitness identifications. Such an instruction was legally and factually appropriate because eyewitness testimony identifying Shields was critical to the State's case and there was a serious question about the reliability of the identification.

Despite this error, we affirm Shields' convictions. Shields did not request the cautionary instruction at trial. Thus, we cannot reverse his convictions unless the failure to give the instruction was clearly erroneous. To establish clear error, Shields must firmly convince us that the jury would have reached a different verdict had the district court given the instruction. But on cross-examination, Shields' trial counsel impeached the credibility of the eyewitness and the reliability of the eyewitness' identification. And during closing argument, Shields' counsel asked the jury to remain mindful of these credibility issues when deciding whether the eyewitness was telling the truth. The reliability of the eyewitness identification was squarely before the jury. And the district court instructed the jury to determine the weight and credit to be given the testimony of each witness. We are not convinced that a cautionary instruction would have changed how the jury resolved that question of fact and, ultimately, its verdict.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

The two victims found shot in Wyandotte County were Steve Ray, a pastor, and J.J., who we refer to by her initials because she was the alleged victim of a sex crime. See Supreme Court Rule 7.043(b)(3) (2022 Kan. S. Ct. R. at 50). They went missing one April afternoon in 1988 in Kansas City, Kansas, after leaving work to meet each other for lunch. Their bodies were found the next day in a ditch on the side of a service road in the Armourdale district of Kansas City. Both had been shot, and J.J.'s pantyhose and underwear were torn, exposing her vagina, which was bruised. The day after the gruesome discovery, J.J.'s car was found abandoned in an alley. Blood samples, cigarette butts, and fingerprints were collected from the car, but the case eventually went cold after investigators developed no leads.

Fourteen years later, a detective reviewing the case ordered DNA testing of the cigarette butts, J.J.'s underwear, and samples collected as part of a sexual examination during J.J.'s autopsy. The results established that Shields was a possible contributor. Shields' fingerprints were also matched to those recovered from J.J.'s car. Even so, the prosecutor responsible for the case declined to charge Shields without first recovering a murder weapon.

More than a decade later in 2016, a different prosecutor decided that the State should pursue the case and charged Shields with two counts of first-degree premeditated murder and, alternatively, two counts of felony murder, which occurs when a person kills someone while committing, trying to commit, or fleeing from certain felonies designated as "inherently dangerous." See K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 21-5402(c). Together with the DNA and fingerprint evidence described above, the State's case at trial depended on the eyewitness testimony of J.J.'s cousin Reginald Reed, who identified Shields as a man he twice saw in J.J.'s car on the day of her disappearance.

Reed testified that he saw Shields and another man cleaning J.J.'s car, which was damaged and muddy, at a carwash on the afternoon she went missing. When Reed asked them where J.J. was, they answered that she was at home. Later that day, after Reed learned that J.J. was missing, he again saw Shields driving J.J.'s car, this time with two other men. When he confronted the men in the car, they sped away and eventually evaded Reed.

Reed's testimony at trial was the first time he had identified Shields as one of the men with J.J.'s car, but it was not the first identification he had made. As part of the initial investigation, Reed had identified a man named Frank Scott as one of the persons he observed in J.J.'s car. At that time, Reed said that Scott was "definitely" the person and that he had "no doubt." During his testimony, Reed defended his identification of Scott because "that was the name that was being tossed around at that time." Then, when detectives reopened the case in 2004, Reed identified a different person from a photo lineup, even though Shields was one of the individuals depicted in the photo array. Shields' trial counsel extensively cross-examined Reed about these prior identifications and repeatedly challenged his credibility and motivations. The reliability of the in-court identification was a central theme of the defense during closing argument.

After the jury convicted Shields of two counts of premeditated first-degree murder, the district court sentenced him to two consecutive sentences of life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 15 years. Because the district court imposed a sentence of life imprisonment, Shields appealed directly to the Kansas Supreme Court. Jurisdiction is proper. See K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 22-3601(b)(3).

ANALYSIS

Shields raises seven challenges to his convictions. As we explain below, all but one lack merit. We do, however, agree with Shields that the district court should have instructed the jury on eyewitness identifications because the testimony of J.J.'s cousin was central to the case and there was a serious question about the reliability of the identification. But Shields has not firmly convinced us that such an instruction would have affected the jury's verdict, so we hold that the district court's error does not warrant reversal. We address the district court's instructional error first and then explain why Shields' other claims fail to establish district court error.

I. The District Court Erred by Not Providing a Cautionary Jury Instruction on Eyewitness Identification, but that Error Does Not Warrant Reversal

Shields' strongest argument on appeal is that the district court should have given the jury a cautionary instruction on eyewitness identifications based on the testimony of J.J.'s cousin Reed. Such a cautionary instruction is often prudent because although "juries usually attach great weight to eyewitness identification" those in the legal profession know "that such identification is often unreliable." State v. Hunt , 275 Kan. 811, 818, 69 P.3d 571 (2003). A properly worded cautionary instruction alleviates some of that concern by providing the jury with factors to consider when evaluating the reliability of an eyewitness identification. See PIK Crim. 4th 51.110 (2020 Supp.) (instructing the jury on six factors affecting reliability).

When a party challenges a district court's failure to give a particular instruction, we review the challenge in three steps. First, we decide whether a failure to preserve the issue or a lack of appellate jurisdiction precludes us from reviewing the challenge at all. State v. Holley , 313 Kan. 249, 253, 485 P.3d 614 (2021). Parties generally cannot raise issues for the first time on appeal, and Shields concedes he did not ask for a cautionary instruction at trial. See State v. Kelly , 298 Kan. 965, 971, 318 P.3d 987 (2014). But a party may raise a jury-instruction challenge for the first time on appeal under K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 22-3414(3) if the "failure to give an instruction is clearly erroneous." Shields argues that it was, and the State has not disputed his ability to raise that claim for the first time on appeal. Thus, our review is not foreclosed under the first step of the analysis, and we will reach the merits of the instructional challenge.

At step two of our analysis, we evaluate the merits of the claim to determine whether the district court erred by failing to give the instruction. In this step, we examine whether the proposed instruction was both legally and factually appropriate. But we are also mindful that a party is not entitled to any proposed instruction merely because it is legally and factually appropriate. State v. Wimbley , 313 Kan. 1029, 1035, 493 P.3d 951 (2021). Thus, if the requested instruction is legally and factually appropriate, we must also determine whether the instructions given by the district court, considered together as a whole, properly and fairly stated the applicable law and were not reasonably likely to mislead the jury. 313 Kan. at 1035, 493 P.3d 951. If so, the district court's failure to give the requested instruction does not constitute error. See State v. Potts , 304 Kan. 687, 703-04, 374 P.3d 639 (2016) (failure to give requested instruction that was legally proper did not constitute error where instructions clearly conveyed the law to the jury). Our review at this step is unlimited, meaning we need not defer...