State v. Wallace
| Docket Number | 28175,Appellate Case 2021-000332 |
| Decision Date | 30 August 2023 |
| Parties | The State, Respondent, v. Tyrone Anthony Wallace Jr., Petitioner. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of South Carolina |
1
The State, Respondent,
v.
Tyrone Anthony Wallace Jr., Petitioner.
No. 28175
Appellate Case No. 2021-000332
Supreme Court of South Carolina
August 30, 2023
Heard April 5, 2022
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF APPEALS
Appeal from Beaufort County Carmen T. Mullen, Circuit Court Judge
Appellate Defender Susan Barber Hackett, of Columbia, for Petitioner.
Attorney General Alan McCrory Wilson, Senior Assistant Deputy Attorney General Melody Jane Brown, W. Jeffrey Young, and William Joseph Maye, of Columbia; Isaac McDuffie Stone III, of Bluffton, all for Respondent.
OPINION
FEW, JUSTICE.
Tyrone Anthony Wallace Jr. appealed his convictions for murder and kidnapping, challenging the trial court's ruling that a witness who placed Wallace's phone near the two crime scenes based on cell site location information
(CSLI)[1] was "qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education" under Rule 702 of the South Carolina Rules of Evidence. The court of appeals affirmed. We granted Wallace's petition for a writ of certiorari to address only this issue. We find the trial court acted within its discretion. We affirm.
I. Facts and Procedural History
On October 25, 2015, Andre Frazier went to a house on Greene Street in the City of Beaufort looking for his friend Vermone Steve, whom everyone called Mony. Mony lived at the Greene Street house with Varsheen Smith. At the house, Frazier found only Wallace and Smith. Wallace and Smith tied up Frazier and held him at gunpoint. They released Frazier a few minutes later when they learned police officers were in the area on an unrelated call. Frazier left Greene Street without immediately speaking to the officers. Three days later, a Beaufort police investigator interviewed Frazier about Mony's disappearance. Frazier told the investigator Wallace and Smith tied him up at gunpoint. On November 18, Beaufort County Sheriff's deputies discovered remains of Mony's body near Pea Patch Road on Saint Helena Island in Beaufort County.
At trial, the State presented evidence Wallace waited for Mony at the Greene Street house, and shot and killed Mony when he arrived not long after he and Smith kidnapped and released Frazier. The State also presented evidence Wallace and three other men took Mony's body to the Pea Patch Road location and attempted to burn it using gasoline. Wallace eventually admitted to being present during Frazier's kidnapping and Mony's murder.
The State called an investigator in the Solicitor's office named Dylan Hightower as an expert witness. Hightower used CSLI to create a map showing Wallace's cell phone was near the Greene Street house and then traveled to and from the Pea Patch
Road area at specific times on the night of the murder and early the following morning. The State proposed to have Hightower testify-using the map-Wallace's phone connected to four cell towers during the trip, two in particular: one 327 yards from the Greene Street house and the other 2.67 miles from the Pea Patch Road location.
The trial court conducted a lengthy pre-trial hearing and ruled Hightower was qualified as an expert under Rule 702. The jury found Wallace guilty of murder and kidnapping, and the trial court sentenced him to life in prison for murder and twenty-five years for kidnapping. The court of appeals affirmed. State v. Wallace, Op. No. 2021-UP-029 (S.C. Ct. App. filed Jan. 27, 2021).
II. Standard of Review
We review a trial court's ruling on the admission or exclusion of evidence-when the ruling is based on the South Carolina Rules of Evidence-under an abuse of discretion standard. See, e.g., State v. Phillips, 430 S.C. 319, 340, 844 S.E.2d 651, 662 (2020) (citing State v. Dickerson, 395 S.C. 101, 116, 716 S.E.2d 895, 903 (2011)); State v. Council, 335 S.C. 1, 21, 515 S.E.2d 508, 518 (1999) (citing State v. Von Dohlen, 322 S.C. 234, 248, 471 S.E.2d 689, 697 (1996)). We will not reverse a trial court's ruling on an evidence question unless we find the court abused its discretion, or-recognizing the term "abuse of discretion" can be a bit harsh[2]- unless we find the trial court has not acted within the discretion we grant to trial courts. State v. Williams, 430 S.C. 136, 149, 844 S.E.2d 57, 64 (2020). In most cases, we have stated a trial court acts outside of its discretion when the ruling is not supported by the evidence or is controlled by an error of law. See, e.g., State v. Jones, 423 S.C. 631, 636, 817 S.E.2d 268, 270 (2018) ("A trial court's ruling on the admissibility of expert testimony constitutes an abuse of discretion where the ruling is unsupported by the evidence or controlled by an error of law.").[3] We have also
stated that a trial court's failure to exercise its discretion as to the admissibility of evidence is itself an abuse of discretion. See State v. King, 422 S.C. 47, 68-69, 810 S.E.2d 18, 29 (2017) (holding the trial court's refusal to listen to the disputed phone call recording left the court unable to carry out the required balancing under Rule 403, SCRE); 422 S.C. at 71, 810 S.E.2d at 31 (Kittredge, J, concurring) ("agree[ing] with the majority that the trial court abused its discretion in admitting the . . . telephone call recording").
Our statements in cases like Jones and King mean the trial court-when ruling on the admission or exclusion of evidence-must think through the objection that has been made, the arguments of the attorneys, and the law-particularly the applicable evidentiary rules-and must thoughtfully apply the correct law to the information and evidence before it. We recently discussed the thought process inherent in the exercise of discretion in Morris v. BB&T Corp., 438 S.C. 582, 587, 885 S.E.2d 394, 397 (2023).
As we explained in Morris, if the record reflects the trial court "exercise[ed] its discretion according to law," we will almost always affirm the ruling. Morris, 438 S.C. at 585-86, 885 S.E.2d at 396; see also State v. Gibbs, 438 S.C. 542, 551-53, 885 S.E.2d 378, 383-84 (2023) (discussing in detail a trial court's exercise of discretion in ruling on the admissibility of evidence); State v. Herrera, 425 S.C. 558, 562, 823 S.E.2d 923, 925 (2019) (although the witness's "qualifications as an expert present a close question, under our deferential standard of review, we find no abuse of discretion in qualifying him as an expert"); Phillips, 430 S.C. at 340-41, 844 S.E.2d at 662 (reversing a trial court's ruling to admit expert testimony when the trial court did not "meaningfully exercise that discretion" and "we are actually conducting the analysis for the first time"); Hamrick v. State, 426 S.C. 638, 648-49, 828 S.E.2d 596, 601 (2019) (holding the trial court erred because it "failed to make the necessary findings that the State established the foundation required by Rule 702"). As we will explain, the trial court in this case thoughtfully applied a sound view of Rule 702 to the facts and circumstances involved in Hightower's testimony.
III. Analysis
Wallace argues Hightower was not qualified to testify as an expert in the analysis of CSLI. Rule 702 of the South Carolina Rules of Evidence provides, "If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise." To admit expert testimony under Rule 702, the proponent-in this case the State-must demonstrate, and the trial court must find, the existence of three elements: "the evidence will assist the trier of fact, the expert witness is qualified, and the underlying science is reliable." Council, 335 S.C. at 20, 515 S.E.2d at 518. In this case we are concerned with only the second Council element: whether "the expert witness is qualified."[4] Id. (referring to the statement "a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education" in Rule 702).
We begin by addressing an undercurrent in Wallace's arguments that the fact Hightower was employed by the prosecutor in the case renders him unqualified under Rule 702. This fact is certainly important, and trial counsel for Wallace stressed in her closing argument to the jury that Hightower "works for the prosecution." We have no doubt the jury considered this potential bias in determining whether to believe Hightower's testimony. This fact, however, does not relate to whether Hightower was "qualified" under Rule 702. In some other case under other circumstances, perhaps the objecting party may convince the trial court that similar bias is important in analyzing an expert witness's qualifications or the reliability of the underlying science. In this case, however, Hightower's potential bias was a credibility matter for the jury.
A trial court's analysis of whether an expert is qualified is affected by the complexity of the "scientific, technical, or . . . specialized knowledge" to which the witness will be called to testify. When expert testimony is scientific in nature, or when it is based on more complex technical or specialized knowledge, the witness providing the testimony will need a greater degree of "knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education" to be qualified. Compare Hamrick, 426 S.C. at 649, 828 S.E.2d at 602 (stating, "Accident reconstruction is a highly technical and specialized field in which experts employ principles of engineering, physics, and other knowledge," and noting attendance at a few classes was not sufficient "to satisfy the...
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