State v. Walker ( 2023 )

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF IDAHO
Docket No. 49124
STATE OF IDAHO, )
) Filed: April 17, 2023
Plaintiff-Respondent, )
) Melanie Gagnepain, Clerk
v. )
) THIS IS AN UNPUBLISHED
KYLE JAMES DALLAS WALKER, ) OPINION AND SHALL NOT
) BE CITED AS AUTHORITY
Defendant-Appellant. )
)
Appeal from the District Court of the Fourth Judicial District, State of Idaho, Ada
County. Hon. Darla S. Williamson, Senior District Judge.
Judgment of conviction for rape, affirmed.
Eric D. Fredericksen, State Appellate Public Defender; Kimberly A. Coster, Deputy
Appellate Public Defender, Boise, for appellant.
Hon. Raúl R. Labrador, Attorney General; Andrew V. Wake, Deputy Attorney
General, Boise, for respondent.
________________________________________________
GRATTON, Judge
Kyle James Dallas Walker was found guilty of rape. Idaho Code § 18-6101(2). Walker
appeals from the judgment arguing the district court violated: (1) his confrontation rights; (2) his
right to present his defense; and (3) his right to the assistance of counsel. All three arguments are
based on Walker’s assertion that the district court erred by instructing the jury not to consider that
S.K., the victim, was not charged with a crime for false statements to police and by instructing
defense counsel not to argue this in closing argument. For the reasons detailed below, we affirm.
I.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
Police were dispatched to S.K.’s home in response to an unrelated 911 call. The responding
deputy asked S.K., a minor child, about her pregnancy. S.K. told the deputy that Walker is the
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father of her child. Walker was investigated for a possible sex offense and later charged with rape
pursuant to I.C. § 18-6101(2).
S.K. testified at trial that she met and began a sexual relationship with Walker when she
was sixteen and Walker was twenty. She became pregnant two months into the relationship and
believes Walker is the father because she was not sexually active with anyone else. Walker knew
how old S.K. was during the relationship.
S.K. also testified that after she initially disclosed to the deputy that Walker is the father,
she later sent a text to the deputy stating that Walker was not the father, denying she ever had sex
with Walker, and asking for the investigation to be dropped. S.K. further testified she made these
untrue statements to the deputy to keep Walker out of trouble, although she was aware that the
deputy was a law enforcement officer investigating the case and that legal consequences could
result from these false statements. S.K. testified that despite her inconsistent statements, she
truthfully told the jury she had a sexual relationship with Walker during the time specified.
On cross-examination, defense counsel asked S.K. if she had been prosecuted for false
statements to the police. The State objected. The district court sustained the State’s objection and
ruled that while the inconsistent statements were relevant, the implication and inference that S.K.
committed a crime was not relevant and, alternatively, that the inreference was unfairly prejudicial
to the State. The district court instructed the jury “not to consider any inference or speculation in
the cross-examination of [S.K.] that she may have committed a crime.” The district court also
instructed defense counsel not to assert in closing argument that S.K. had committed an uncharged
crime.
The jury found Walker guilty of rape. Walker timely appealed from the district court’s
judgment of conviction.
II.
STANDARD OF REVIEW
We review questions of relevance de novo. State v. Jones, 167 Idaho 353, 358, 470 P.3d
1162, 1167 (2020); State v. Aguilar, 154 Idaho 201, 203, 296 P.3d 407, 409 (Ct. App. 2012). A
trial court’s determination under Idaho Rule of Evidence 403 will not be disturbed on appeal unless
it is shown to be an abuse of discretion. State v. Enno, 119 Idaho 392, 406, 807 P.2d 610, 624
(1991); State v. Clark, 115 Idaho 1056, 1059, 772 P.2d 263, 266 (Ct. App. 1989). When a trial
court’s discretionary decision is reviewed on appeal, the appellate court conducts a multi-tiered
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inquiry to determine whether the trial court: (1) correctly perceived the issue as one of discretion;
(2) acted within the boundaries of such discretion; (3) acted consistently with any legal standards
applicable to the specific choices before it; and (4) reached its decision by an exercise of reason.
State v. Herrera, 164 Idaho 261, 270, 429 P.3d 149, 158 (2018).
III.
ANALYSIS
Walker appeals from his judgment of conviction for rape, claiming the district court erred
by violating his confrontation rights, his right to present his defense, and his right to the assistance
of counsel. Specifically, Walker asserts the district court erred by sustaining the State’s objection
to the question as to whether S.K. had been prosecuted for making a false report to police,
“instructing the jury not to consider evidence that was relevant to the witness’ bias and motivation
to testify for the State and by admonishing defense counsel not to argue that evidence [during] his
closing argument.” The State argues the district court did not err, and even if it did, such error was
harmless.
Walker contends that evidence S.K. allegedly committed a crime by giving false statements
to a law enforcement officer and was not charged for such crime was relevant to show S.K. had
bias and motivation to testify for the State. Walker relies on State v. Gomez, 137 Idaho 671, 52
P.3d 315 (2002) to support his argument that “Idaho’s appellate courts have repeatedly held that a
defendant has the right to present the jury with information that the witness committed a crime and
was not prosecuted, as such evidence is relevant to the witness’ possible motivation to testify in
favor of the State.” While bias and motive are properly the subject of direct or cross-examination
of a witness, such inquiries are limited by the rules of evidence, including I.R.E. 401 and
I.R.E. 403, which require the evidence to be both relevant and not unfairly prejudicial. Gomez
does not, as Walker suggests, allow for the admission of evidence of bias and motive without
limitation, and the facts of Gomez are distinguishable from this case.
In Gomez, the defendant sought to cross-examine a witness about not being prosecuted for
a significant felony, i.e., growing marijuana within their residence with children present, and the
State objected on relevancy grounds. Id. at 674-75, 52 P.3d at 318-19. The witnesses in Gomez
were specifically advised by the prosecution that they would not be prosecuted for the significant
felonies because of the statements they made in cooperation with the State. Id. at 674, 52 P.3d at
318. Conversely, the prosecution made S.K. no such promise, nor is there any evidence in the
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record to support Walker’s argument that S.K. testified against Walker in order to avoid
prosecution for making a false statement to law enforcement. The district court found as much.
S.K. acknowledged, and the jury was allowed to consider, that she sent a text message to
the deputy with false statements. Walker’s argument that he should have also been allowed to
characterize S.K.’s text message as a crime presumes it, in fact, was a prosecutable offense. Such
a presumption is unwarranted on the facts of this case. Indeed, taking Walker’s argument to its
logical conclusion would mean that a victim like S.K. would be subject to prosecution for a false
report to law enforcement no matter what because either the original report would be false or the
retraction would be false. The district court found “[w]hat’s not relevant is the defense counsel’s
implication to the jury that the witness committed a crime, and for the jury then to determine
whether or not she committed a crime.” Thus, the district court did not err in precluding Walker
from characterizing S.K.’s inconsistent statements as a crime and preventing trial counsel from
arguing such in closing.
To the extent the possibility that S.K. could have been prosecuted for a false statement
would have some minimal relevance, the district court concluded allowing the jury to determine
whether S.K. committed a crime “gets into the realm of speculation, and . . . it’s prejudicial to the
State” and the prejudice “outweighs any relevance that the implication would have. So the jury
should not be left with an impression that the witness committed a crime.” Walker argues the
district court erred in alternatively ruling the evidence was more prejudicial than probative.
Walker contends the district court exceeded the outer bounds of its discretion and failed to act
consistently with applicable legal standards when considering I.R.E. 403. Walker argues that the
district court’s “failure to identify the probative value of the evidence as exposing S.K.’s possible
bias and motivation . . . undermines any exercise of reason in the court’s ‘weighing’ of value
against the ‘prejudice’” and that the prejudice was not unfair but is precisely what a defendant is
entitled to suggest and argue to the jury in testing the witness’s credibility. Walker further argues
the jury would not be misled by learning that S.K. could be prosecuted for sending a knowingly
false text message regarding an ongoing criminal investigation with the intent the investigation be
dropped. Walker asserts that, because the cross-examination of S.K. was short and simple, the
jury understood S.K.’s desire to avoid prosecution (despite no evidence that she was avoiding
prosecution by doing so) motivated her to testify that she had a sexual relationship with Walker.
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Even if the fact that S.K. was not prosecuted for giving false information was marginally
relevant, the district court correctly made the I.R.E. 403 determination. Asking the jury to consider
whether S.K.’s conduct constituted a crime would require the jury to speculate and would be
unfairly prejudicial to the State. S.K. testified that she made inconsistent statements to law
enforcement and that she was aware that there could be legal consequences for false statements to
police. There is little or no probative value provided by asserting these statements constituted a
crime. As a general matter, it is not enough to be obstruction of an officer’s duties where the false
statement did not impede or increase the burden of officers. State v. Brandstetter, 127 Idaho 885,
888, 908 P.2d 578, 581 (Ct. App. 1995). While S.K. may have intended for her text message to
influence officers to stop their investigation of Walker, there is no evidence it stopped or even
impeded the investigation. The district court determined it was unclear or speculative whether the
text message constituted a false report and a crime, thus the impeachment value is more attenuated.
The State argues although uncharged criminal conduct may be relevant, that does not diminish the
potential for unfair prejudice associated with hearing testimony regarding convictions or crimes
not directly at issue in the case. If Walker presented evidence that S.K.’s conduct was a crime, the
court would need to instruct the jury what constitutes a false report; the jury would need to
determine if a separate criminal violation occurred; and the door would be opened to the parties
presenting additional evidence and argument on this issue. As a result, there would be a high
probability of the jury confusing the issues and being misled. We defer to the district court’s
I.R.E. 403 determination and cannot say it was an abuse of discretion. Thus, the district court
properly instructed the jury not to consider any inference or speculation in the cross-examination
of S.K. that she may have committed a crime and instructed defense counsel not to argue that S.K.
committed an uncharged crime.
The State further argues that if the district court’s ruling was in error, it was harmless.
Error is not reversible unless it is prejudicial. State v. Stell, 162 Idaho 827, 830, 405 P.3d 612, 615
(Ct. App. 2017). With limited exceptions, even constitutional error is not necessarily prejudicial
error. Id. Where a criminal defendant shows a reversible error based on a contemporaneously
objected-to constitutional violation, the State then has the burden of demonstrating to the appellate
court beyond a reasonable doubt that the constitutional violation did not contribute to the jury’s
verdict. State v. Johnson, 163 Idaho 412, 421, 414 P.3d 234, 243 (2018). Thus, we examine
whether the alleged error complained of in the present case was harmless. See State v. Lopez,
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141 Idaho 575, 578, 114 P.3d 133, 136 (Ct. App. 2005). The reviewing court must take into
account what effect the error had, or reasonably may have had, on the jury in the context of the
total setting and in relation to all else that happened, which necessarily includes the evidence
presented. Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 764 (1946).
Assuming the district court erred in excluding evidence that S.K. may have committed an
unprosecuted crime by providing false statements to the officer, any such error is harmless beyond
a reasonable doubt. First, as noted above, the probative force of the excluded evidence of the
possible commission of a specific uncharged crime was of limited additional probative value in
light of the admission of evidence that she made inconsistent statements to law enforcement. The
jury already knew that S.K. sent a text to the officer that was inconsistent with her original report
and her trial testimony; and there could be legal consequences for having done so. The probative
force of the record as a whole is strong in relation to the probative force of any error in excluding
the additional implication that S.K.’s inconsistent statement constituted a crime. Further, S.K.’s
trial testimony was corroborated by the recordings, which contained statements by Walker that he
had a sexual relationship with S.K. while he was twenty and she was sixteen and that S.K.’s child
could be his because he and S.K. had unprotected sex. Detective Lam Thai interviewed Walker
by phone and, though Walker initially claimed to only be friends with S.K., he later acknowledged
that he had a sexual relationship with her when he was twenty years old and she was sixteen. In a
second phone interview with Detective Thai, Walker again acknowledged that he had a sexual
relationship with S.K., including vaginal, oral, and anal sex; they never used a condom; and S.K.’s
child might be his. These recorded interviews were played for the jury. In addition, Detective
Thai listened to another recorded phone conversation between Walker and a family member in
which Walker said that S.K. is the “mother of my child.”
In his reply brief, Walker minimizes the evidentiary value of the recorded phone
conversations because the detective admitted to the jury he did not know Walker, had never met
him face-to-face, did not verify Walker’s identity, and did not recognize Walker’s voice. Walker
further argues the jury did not have an opportunity to compare the recordings to Walker’s voice
since he did not testify. At trial, defense counsel raised an objection that there was insufficient
foundation to admit the recordings. The district court overruled the objection. The district court
necessarily determined that there was foundation to establish the conversations on these recordings
were with Walker. The admission of the recordings and Detective Thai’s testimony is not an issue
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raised in the appellant’s opening brief and, thus, is not at issue on appeal. State v. Raudenbaugh,
124 Idaho 758, 763, 864 P.2d 596, 601 (1993). Walker’s attempt to minimize the probative force
of this evidence despite its admission at trial and the record as a whole is unconvincing. Thus,
even if the district court erred in prohibiting evidence of a potential crime by S.K., the error was
harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Moreover, even if Walker is correct that it is relevant S.K.
could have committed a crime and was not charged for it, the court correctly determined to exclude
such evidence and, therefore, properly instructed defense counsel not to argue this in closing
argument. Thus, the district court also did not err in precluding defense counsel from arguing S.K.
committed an uncharged crime in closing argument.
IV.
CONCLUSION
The district court did not err in ruling that the implication S.K. committed an uncharged
crime was inadmissible and further instructing defense counsel not to argue such in closing.
Accordingly, we affirm the judgment.
Chief Judge LORELLO and Judge BRAILSFORD CONCUR.
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