State v. Tuinman

• Docket Number: 20210242-CA
• Decision Date: 03 August 2023
• Citation: 535 P.3d 362
• Parties: STATE of Utah, Appellee, v. Stephanie Ann TUINMAN, Appellant.
• Court: Utah Court of Appeals

535 P.3d 362

STATE of Utah, Appellee,

v.Stephanie Ann TUINMAN, Appellant.

No. 20210242-CA

Court of Appeals of Utah.

Filed August 3, 2023

K. Andrew Fitzgerald, Attorney for Appellant

Sean D. Reyes, Salt Lake City, and John J. Nielsen, Attorneys for Appellee

Judge Ryan M. Harris authored this Opinion, in which Judges David N. Mortensen and Amy J. Oliver concurred.

Opinion

HARRIS, Judge:

¶1 A jury convicted Stephanie Ann Tuinman of murder, aggravated assault, and aggravated burglary.Stephanie¹ appeals her convictions, asserting that her right to a speedy trial was violated, that the trial court made certain erroneous evidentiary rulings, and that her trial attorney rendered constitutionally ineffective assistance.We reject all of Stephanie's arguments and affirm her convictions.

BACKGROUND²

The Attack

¶2 On the evening of April 6, 2018, Stephanie was at her mother's (Mother) house with several family members, including her brother Thomas and his wife Samantha.Just days earlier, Thomas and Samantha had contacted police to report that their eight-year-old son (D.T.) had told them that he had been sexually abused by a family acquaintance (Roy).Thomas and Samantha had known Roy and his longtime life partner (Sandra)³ for over a decade.The two couples were once close enough that Roy and Sandra would sometimes babysit Thomas and Samantha's children.Samantha testified at trial that she believed Sandra was "just as involved" in the abuse as Roy and had been "in the room" when it occurred.That April evening, D.T. asked if Roy had been arrested yet and when he was told that Roy had not been arrested, D.T. stated, "They didn't believe me, did they?"Thomas, who had been drinking heavily that night, asked D.T., "Do you want dad to go beat him up?"D.T. answered, "Yes."

¶3 Intent on taking "justice into [their] own hands," Thomas and Samantha got into their minivan, perhaps with certain other family members, and headed for Roy and Sandra's place, leaving Mother's house just after 9:00 p.m. Stephanie denies accompanying Thomas and Samantha to Roy and Sandra's place that night, and claims that she wasn't involved at all in what happened next.Indeed, the main issue that the jury had to decide was whether Stephanie was present during the events in question.

¶4 Samantha testified at trial that Stephanie did get into the minivan and join them.As Samantha described it, she and Thomas were joined in their endeavor by not only Stephanie but also Stephanie's fiancé Byron and Stephanie's sister Kristy, as well as by a cousin, Michael.She testified that she and Thomas traveled to Roy and Sandra's place in the minivan, with Stephanie and Byron in the back seat; that Kristy followed behind in her own "little silver SUV"; and that Michael met them at Roy and Sandra's place in a different vehicle.

¶5 Roy and Sandra were at their house that evening, sitting at the kitchen table after dinner when Sandra heard a noise, went to the front door, and yelled, "Tommy!"When he looked out the front door, Roy "could see Tommy and Sammy," and he told Sandra to run out the back door.Thomas hit the front door with both fists, breaking the windows in it and then stepping through.Roy testified at trial that "Mikey" was there too, as well as Byron and "one of the [Tuinman]sisters"; he stated that he couldn't tell which one because "[t]hey look alike."Roy ran outside, following Sandra, but "Tommy" got to him in the backyard and "just started putting the boots to" Roy, kicking and hitting him while he was on the ground and later hitting him with a piece of wood that Roy thought was a "2x4."Roy remembered being hit or struck not only by Thomas, but also by "Sammy,""Mikey," Byron, and "one of the [Tuinman]sisters."

¶6 Samantha testified that she"had intentions to beat [Sandra] up," and when she saw Sandra "going through the gate" in the yard, she began to chase her.In Samantha's telling, she met up with Stephanie during the chase, and the two of them "kind of cornered" Sandra near a fence.Samantha grabbed Sandra by the hair, "pulled [her] down to the ground," and then "punched her five or six times" and "kicked her once in her back."Samantha testified that Byron, Kristy, and Michael also participated in the attack on Sandra; she saw Byron kick Sandra in the face, Michael kick Sandra in the head, and Kristy hit Sandra with a hammer.

¶7 With regard to Stephanie, Samantha testified that Stephanie had a baseball bat in her hand, and that Stephanie "brought the bat up over her head, and brought it down on top of [Sandra's] head."Samantha stated that she was standing only about four feet away from Stephanie at the time, and that Stephanie hit Sandra "very hard."After the blow with the bat, Sandra stopped screaming and Samantha heard her make "a moaning sound."Roy had been able to hear Sandra "screaming ‘help’ " during "the whole time when they were kicking" him.After the attack was over, Roy found Sandra, and she said, "They got me.They hit me with a baseball bat in the face."

¶8 The attackers soon left, and one of them threw the bloodied baseball bat out the minivan window as they drove away.Roy and Sandra were eventually discovered by a neighbor (Neighbor), who called 911 and reported that Sandra was "bleeding really bad" from "her nose and her mouth" and looked like she'd been "beat up pretty bad."Neighbor reported to the 911 dispatcher that Sandra was saying that "the Tuinmans did this to her."

¶9 Roy sustained bruises and cuts all over, as well as several broken ribs and severe damage to his knee.But Sandra was hurt even worse, and medical personnel eventually decided to "life flight[ ]" her to a hospital in Provo, Utah.Roy was taken to a local hospital, where he spent nearly two weeks recovering; the injuries to his knee required surgery.But Sandra never left the hospital; she died about two weeks later from what the medical examiner determined was "a stroke which resulted from blunt injuries to her head" that she sustained in the attack.

The Investigation

¶10 On the night of the attack, police officers arrived at the scene and began questioning witnesses and collecting evidence.One officer testified that Sandra was "distressed,""hysterical," and "[v]ery bloody."That same officer described Roy as "a bloody mess," and observed that his hair was "tangled in blood" and that he was "bleeding from his face pretty bad too."While still at the scene, both Roy and Sandra told officers that "the Tuinmans" had committed the assault.Officers also spoke with Roy and Sandra again after they arrived at the hospital.Roy did not specifically identify Stephanie as one of the Tuinmans who had been at the house on the night in question because, as he explained at trial, he could not tell the Tuinman sisters apart.But at the hospital, Sandra apparently made certain statements to the effect that Stephanie had been one of the Tuinman sisters who had participated in the attack; in particular, Sandra stated that the Tuinman sister who was dating Byron was among her attackers.

¶11 In addition to speaking with Roy and Sandra, officers also began looking for and questioning members of the Tuinman family that night.At first, officers believed that the only Tuinmans involved in the attack were Thomas, Samantha, Byron, and a different Tuinman sister(Amy), who officers mistakenly believed was the sister in a relationship with Byron.So when an officer who had been instructed to look for Amy encountered Stephanie in a traffic stop at about 1:00 a.m. later that night, he simply asked her some questions largely aimed at ascertaining Byron's whereabouts.In responding to those questions, Stephanie denied knowledge of or participation in the events at Roy and Sandra's house that night.She claimed to have left Mother's house that evening because she had been "bleeding really heavy" and had gone to her house to "change [her] tampon"; she claimed that, by the time she returned, her family members had come back and she did not know where they had gone.Stephanie also claimed that Byron did not go with Samantha and Thomas that night.During this initial traffic stop encounter, the officer asked Stephanie for her cell phone; she had it with her at the time and provided it to him.But because the officer did not at that point consider Stephanie a suspect, he did not retain or search the phone, and returned it to her after the encounter was over.

¶12 At various points during that first night, officers also interviewed (among others) Samantha, Amy, and Byron.Samantha told officers that she would only "talk about [her own] involvement," a statement officers took to mean that others were involved as well.But Samantha would not state that anyone else—other than she and Thomas—was involved.In fact, when asked if anyone else had been there that night, she said no. Amy denied any involvement at all.But Byron told officers that he and Stephanie were in the minivan with Thomas and Samantha, that they were at Roy and Sandra's place on the night in question, and that Stephanie had brought a baseball bat.

¶13 After conducting some of the other interviews—most notably Byron's—officers came to view Stephanie (rather than Amy) as a potential suspect, and asked to speak with her again, and she willingly complied.Officers conducted a second interview with Stephanie at about 4:00 a.m. at a police station, some three hours after their previous encounter.Wearing the same gray sweatshirt and black sweatpants as earlier, Stephanie again denied any involvement in the attack on Roy and Sandra.Officers who interacted with Stephanie testified that they saw no blood on Stephanie's clothing or on the places where she sat.

¶14 Officers had a third pre-arrest encounter with Stephanie the next night, on April 8, in connection with another traffic stop.During this encounter, officers asked to see her cell phone that she had willingly let them look at less than 48 hours earlier, but Stephanie did not have...