Walker v. Commonwealth of Ky., 2010–SC–000409–MR.

• Decision Date: 22 September 2011
• Docket Number: No. 2010–SC–000409–MR.,2010–SC–000409–MR.
• Citation: 349 S.W.3d 307
• Parties: Ronny D. WALKER, Appellant,v.COMMONWEALTH of Kentucky, Appellee.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky

349 S.W.3d 307

Ronny D. WALKER, Appellant,

v.COMMONWEALTH of Kentucky, Appellee.

No. 2010–SC–000409–MR.

Supreme Court of Kentucky.

Sept. 22, 2011.

James David Niehaus, Deputy Appellate Defender, Annie O'Connell, Assistant Appellate Defender, Office of the Louisville Metro Public Defender, Louisville, KY, for appellant.Jack Conway, Attorney General, Jason Bradley Moore, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Attorney General's Office, Frankfort, KY, for appellee.Opinion of the Court by Justice ABRAMSON.

Ronny Walker appeals as a matter of right from a Judgment of the Jefferson Circuit Court convicting him of murder, first-degree burglary, tampering with physical evidence, intimidating a participant in the legal process, and tampering with a witness. For the murder, Walker was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for twenty-five years. Walker was also found to be a first-degree persistent felon and as such was sentenced for the other offenses to a total of fifty-five years in prison to be served concurrently with the life sentence. Walker was accused of having beaten and strangled to death Derek Scott of Louisville, a man who resided with Lisa Thomas, Walker's estranged girlfriend and the mother of his four children. Walker admitted the killing, which his children witnessed, but he argued that it amounted to manslaughter rather than murder. He now raises three issues on appeal. He claims that the trial court erred (1) by permitting the video recording of his police interview to be shown to the jury; (2) by advising the jurors, before opening statements how they might go about assessing the credibility of witnesses; and (3) by mis-instructing the jury with regard to the alleged burglary. Finding no reversible error, we affirm.

RELEVANT FACTS

In addition to the recording of Walker's statement to the police, the Commonwealth's proof included testimony by three of the children who were present at the time of Walker's assault upon Scott, and by Lisa Thomas, Walker's former girlfriend, at whose residence on Fordson Way in Louisville the assault occurred. This proof tended to show that Walker and Thomas had lived together and had had their children during the 1990s, but that sometime around 2002 they had become estranged. Walker then moved with the children to Georgia, where they lived with Walker's mother. Lisa Thomas regained custody of the children in 2006. In about March of 2007, Thomas began seeing Derek Scott, and in about June of that year they moved in together at the Fordson Way apartment. According to Thomas, Scott helped her with the housework, with the cooking, and with the care of the children. Sometime that spring or summer, Walker returned to Louisville from Georgia. According to his police statement, he saw his children a couple of times and was making some effort to reestablish a relationship with Thomas. He spent several hours with her on September 14, 2007, but at some point friction developed and Thomas left him at a cousin's house.

At about 5:00 the following morning, Walker entered the Fordson Way apartment and found Scott asleep in the master bedroom with the children. Three of the children were sleeping on the bed with Scott, and one was sleeping on a palette beside the bed. According to Walker's police statement, at the sight of his children in the same bed with Scott, he “lost it” and attacked Scott. One of the children testified to being awakened by a fight between the two men, and another testified that he came from the bathroom and saw the men fighting. At Scott's urging, the two older ones sought help from Scott's cousin who lived nearby, but they were unable to rouse him. When they returned home, they saw Scott lying motionless on the bedroom floor. Walker chided them for not being on his “team” and told them at one point that they had seen and heard nothing. He later told them to say that Scott had raped them. They testified that Walker then looped a belt around Scott's neck and dragged him down the steps to the basement. From the basement they heard loud noises, and a short time later Walker came back upstairs.

Thomas testified that she had gone out about midnight and returned home at about 6:00 the morning of September 15. She described being surprised at the door by Walker and his taking her to the basement, where she saw Scott's body lying on the laundry room floor and saw blood spattered “everywhere,” on the walls and even on the ceiling. She testified that Walker insisted that Scott was not dead, but only unconscious, and that he would not let her call 911. Eventually, however, Walker fell asleep on the living room sofa. Thomas then fled with the children to her uncle's house, and her uncle summoned the police.

The Commonwealth's proof also included testimony by the medical examiner, who opined that Scott died from multiple blunt force injuries to the head and from strangulation. Police testimony confirmed Thomas's description of the bloody laundry room.

As noted, in light of the Commonwealth's proof, the jury found Walker guilty of intentional murder, of first-degree burglary, and of the various tampering and intimidation offenses. Seeking relief from all of his convictions, Walker contends that his trial was rendered unfair by the admission into evidence of his recorded police statement. We begin our analysis with this allegation of error.

ANALYSIS

I. The Admission Into Evidence of Walker's Statement to an Investigator, Including the Investigator's Questions and Comments, Did Not Amount to Palpable Error.

When the police arrived at Thomas's apartment, Walker was still asleep on the sofa and was soon taken into custody. He was duly advised of his Miranda rights and was interviewed that evening by a homicide detective. The interview lasted slightly more than two hours, and the transcript of it fills some 175 typed pages. Walker initially told the detective about his return to Louisville and his gradual resumption of a tenuous relationship with Thomas. He claimed to have been with her most of the preceding day into the wee hours of that morning. He was surprised, he claimed, when she left him at his cousin's house, as he had expected her to wait for him, and so he got a ride to her apartment to find out why she had left. He found the door unlocked, entered, and discovered Scott sleeping with the children. He admitted becoming enraged and attacking Scott, but claimed that before he did so two of the children told him that Scott had molested them. He described his “tussle” with Scott as more-or-less a fist fight that began in the bedroom and wound up in the basement, where, he claimed, he left Scott unconscious but alive.

The detective told Walker that this account did not jibe with what the children had told the police or with the evidence found at the scene, and urged him to be more honest. In response to particular questions, Walker told a slightly different story, and again the detective confronted him with what the detective maintained was inconsistent evidence. That was the pattern of the interview for the full two hours: Walker's statement; the detective's insistence that the statement could not be true; the detective's urging Walker, for his own sake and for the sake of his children, to be honest; and then Walker's revised statement. Gradually Walker admitted, more-or-less, that the children had not accused Scott of sexual contact or at least not until after the violence; that he had perhaps choked Scott; that he had dragged Scott toward the basement steps with a belt, although Walker claimed that the belt had been around Scott's wrists and not his neck; and that he had kicked Scott as well as punched him. Never, though, did he admit knowing, before being told by the police, that Scott was dead. Walker denied that he intended to kill Scott.

In urging Walker to be more forthcoming and to admit that jealousy rather than concern for the children's safety had prompted his conduct, the detective confided that his ex-wife had remarried and that he well understood how painful it can be to see another man occupying one's place as spouse and parent. In response to that confidence, Walker retreated somewhat from his claim that the children had accused Scott of abusing them.

Prior to trial Walker sought to have the entire interview excluded from evidence on the ground that many of his statements in the course of it were not inculpatory and so were not admissible under Kentucky Rule of Evidence (KRE) 804(b)(3). That rule excepts from the general rule disallowing hearsay evidence, KRE 802, certain statements, including statements tending to subject the declarant to criminal liability where corroborating circumstances clearly indicate the statements' trustworthiness. As a party opponent, however, Walker's interview statements were admissible under KRE 801A (b), which does not require that such statements be against the declarant's interest. Cf. United States v. McDaniel, 398 F.3d 540 (6th Cir.2005) (construing and distinguishing the virtually identical federal rules); United States v. DiDomenico, 78 F.3d 294 (7th Cir.1996) (same).

Conceding this point, Walker has changed tack and now argues that the interview should have been excluded because much of it consisted not of his statements but those of the detective, statements, as noted, accusing Walker of lying, statements commenting on other evidence, and statements relating to the detective's personal life. Walker takes exception in particular to the detective's personal remarks and insists that they should have been excluded because they were irrelevant. This specific issue was not preserved at trial, and our review is therefore limited under either KRE 103(e) or Kentucky Rule of Criminal Procedure (RCr) 10.26 to asking whether admission of the interrogation video was palpably erroneous resulting in manifest injustice. Walker contends that the admission of the detective's...