State v. Stewart
| Decision Date | 28 April 2017 |
| Docket Number | No. 111,995,111,995 |
| Citation | 393 P.3d 1031 |
| Parties | STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. Maurice Orlando STEWART, Appellant. |
| Court | Kansas Supreme Court |
Korey A. Kaul, of Kansas Appellate Defender Office, argued the cause and was on the brief 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.
A jury convicted Maurice Orlando Stewart of felony murder, aggravated robbery, burglary, and theft for incidents occurring in a hotel room occupied by Stephen Cook, located in the same facility where Stewart was staying at the time. Stewart was accused of burglarizing Cook's room to steal a laptop computer and later returning to the room to kill Cook while robbing him of his wallet. The district court imposed a controlling sentence of life without the possibility of parole for 20 years plus 102 months.
On direct appeal to this court, Stewart argues that (1) the district court erred in instructing the jury on the State's alternative theories of first-degree murder; (2) the district court failed to properly instruct the jury on the element of force required for aggravated robbery; (3) the district court erred in finding him competent to stand trial; (4) the district court erred in admitting blood spatter evidence over Stewart's objection that it did not conform to the test from Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923) ; and (5) cumulative error denied him a fair trial. Finding no reversible error, we affirm Stewart's convictions.
The events leading to Stewart's convictions began to unfold on June 27, 2010, when Cook checked into room 221 at the Econo Lodge in Olathe. Cook worked as a supervisor of a company that was pressure testing a pipe system close by in Kansas City, Missouri. Stewart; his girlfriend, Stephanie Laguna; and her son were staying in room 223, next door to Cook.
The next day, sometime around late morning or early afternoon, Edye Pool visited her ex-boyfriend, Stewart, at room 223 while Laguna was at work. Stewart gave Pool a laptop without attachments or accessories, telling her it was stolen. At approximately 7 p.m., the Olathe Police Department dispatched an officer to investigate a burglary in room 221, where Cook told the officer that, after work, he discovered his laptop missing, although the carrying case and power cord were still in the room. Laguna would relate that Stewart left their room around 10 or 10:30 p.m. that same day, but she would later hear someone running water in the bathroom.
Early the next day, about 1 a.m., Leeana Deherrera answered the front door of the apartment she shared with Tremain Ryan and two sons, less than a mile from the Econo Lodge. Ryan was not home at the time. Stewart stood at the doorway, appearing panicked and out of breath, as if he had been running. Deherrera and Ryan had known Stewart for approximately 12 years. Stewart said that "somebody tried to kill him," and said that he needed to see his brother. Deherrera directed Stewart to the apartment above her but later went up to check on him. She found Stewart in the bathroom cleaning himself and observed that his jeans were "covered in blood" from the mid-thigh to the shins; that he had a cut on his arm; and that he put his bloody clothes in a black trash bag. He would not answer Deherrera's question as to how he cut his arm.
When Ryan returned home around 1:30 a.m., he took photographs while Deherrera helped stitch up and bandage the cut on Stewart's arm. Stewart told Deherrera and Ryan that three men had followed his car from a gas station to the motel and jumped him, with one trying to cut his neck. Deherrera and Ryan had not known Stewart to own a car. Stewart also told Ryan, "I think I may have killed somebody." Stewart showed Ryan the black trash bag containing his bloodied clothes and told Ryan he intended to "burn them." At some point, Stewart mentioned to Ryan that a "gay guy" had come to his aid after the fight with the three men and that he had "stabbed" or "stuck" this man because he had "sexually hit on him." According to Ryan, Stewart had strong opinions against homosexuality.
Stewart borrowed Ryan's car around 3:30 or 4 a.m. to get Laguna and her son from room 223. En route back to Deherrera and Ryan's apartment, Stewart told Laguna he did not go to the hospital for his arm injury because he "did not want to have any involvement with law enforcement." Sometime after 6 a.m., Stewart left the apartment with Pool, Laguna, and her son, taking the black trash bag containing his bloodied clothes with him.
Cook's coworkers became concerned when he did not show up for a 7 a.m. meeting. After repeated failed attempts to reach Cook by phone, Cook's boss went to the Econo Lodge. When Cook's boss and the night manager went up to room 221 and opened the door, they found Cook dead on the floor of the bathroom in a pool of blood.
Crime scene investigators observed a room in disarray and "a substantial amount of blood." The investigators collected swabs from extensive bloodstains throughout Cook's room. Investigators also found multiple footwear impressions in room 221 and leading next door to room 223, where they found bloodstains in the bathroom and recovered some towels and a t-shirt with staining.
Later that day, Deherrera and Ryan contacted the police after watching press coverage of a murder at the Econo Lodge. Based on the information provided by Deherrera and Ryan, detectives began trying to locate Stewart as a potential suspect in the murder of Cook.
That same day, at approximately 10 p.m., a City of Mission police detective conducted a traffic stop of a truck driven by Pool. During a later inventory search of the truck, the detective found a wallet under the driver's seat containing a business card with the name "Stephen Cook." Pool told police that Stewart asked her to hide the wallet. The crime scene investigator who processed the wallet found Cook's California driving license and 23 receipts, 4 of which had bloodstains. Forensic DNA testing on the wallet and receipts identified both Stewart's and Cook's DNA.
Detectives subsequently determined that Stewart boarded a Greyhound bus travelling from Kansas City, Missouri, to Dallas, Texas, on June 30, 2010. Wichita police arrested Stewart at a scheduled stop in Wichita that same day.
Two Olathe police detectives interrogated Stewart in Wichita. Stewart initially denied having been in Cook's room prior to his death, but when confronted with the evidence of the stolen laptop, he admitted to the burglary and theft. As for Cook's death, Stewart asserted that he had acted in self-defense, relating different versions of what happened when he and Cook went to room 221 after Cook had saved Stewart from the attackers outside of the motel.
At first, Stewart told detectives that Cook, who he repeatedly referred to as a "fag," went into the bathroom, came out without a shirt on, propositioned Stewart, and tried to pull at Stewart's pants as he sat on the bed. When Stewart kicked Cook away, Cook brandished a knife and cut Stewart's arm. Stewart then tried to run from the room but tripped and fell. Cook continued toward Stewart, and Stewart kicked Cook's legs. As Cook fell, Stewart grabbed Cook's arm, causing Cook to cut his own neck. Stewart then fled the room. Stewart maintained that he never had the knife in his hand and did not know what happened to the knife or what it looked like. The knife used as the murder weapon was never located.
In rehashing what happened, Stewart added that Cook had crawled after him and their struggle eventually ended up in the bathroom. Later, Stewart changed his story—in the first version, Stewart said that his pants had stayed on when Cook grabbed them, but in a later version Stewart said his pants had come down. Stewart also added the details that Cook had grabbed Stewart's "penis or testicles" in varying places in the room and that Cook exposed himself to Stewart during the attack, then buttoned himself back up and continued to attack him.
When the detectives challenged Stewart's story that he never had the knife and that Cook had cut his own neck, Stewart said that he had the knife once and that he cut Cook only once. Stewart demonstrated himself cutting Cook, but it appeared to the detectives as if Stewart was striking his own arm in the area where he had been stitched. When confronted about the number of injuries to Cook, Stewart changed his story to having cut Cook four or five times. Stewart also described being on the bed in varying positions when Cook allegedly cut Stewart's arm. Stewart's various descriptions of events did not include any struggle or bloodshed having occurred on the west side of the room, where law enforcement collected some of the evidence.
The State charged Stewart in the alternative with first-degree premeditated murder and first-degree felony murder, and with the aggravated robbery of Cook's wallet. The State also charged Stewart with the burglary of Cook's hotel room and the theft of his laptop.
A lengthy procedural history ensued over the next 40 months before Stewart's jury trial commenced in October 2013. Two of the district court's pretrial rulings are germane on appeal.
In June 2011, Stewart filed a motion seeking a Frye hearing on the admissibility of DNA evidence and blood spatter evidence, with the goal of excluding testimony from Jeremiah Morris, a blood spatter expert. At an unrelated suppression hearing in August 2011, Judge Stephen R. Tatum ruled that the blood spatter evidence did not trigger a Frye analysis because the evidence did not qualify as new or experimental. Judge Tatum clarified that the defense was free to revisit the issue if anything new came up and could raise the issue at trial if necessary to challenge Morris' qualifications or conclusions.
In March 2012,...
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