Com. v. Teagle, K.

CourtSuperior Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedNovember 26, 2019
Docket2634 EDA 2018
StatusUnpublished

This text of Com. v. Teagle, K. (Com. v. Teagle, K.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Superior Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Com. v. Teagle, K., (Pa. Ct. App. 2019).

Opinion

J-S49045-19

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF : PENNSYLVANIA : v. : : : KYLEAF TEAGLE : : Appellant : No. 2634 EDA 2018

Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence Entered May 11, 2018 In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County Criminal Division at No(s): CP-51-CR-0002670-2017

BEFORE: BENDER, P.J.E., STABILE, J., and STEVENS, P.J.E.*

MEMORANDUM BY STEVENS, P.J.E.: FILED NOVEMBER 26, 2019

Appellant Kyleaf Teagle appeals from the judgment of sentence entered

in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County following his conviction

by a jury on the charges of first-degree murder, carrying a firearm without a

license, possessing an instrument of crime, and carrying a firearm on a public

street or public property in Philadelphia.1 After a careful review, we affirm

Appellant’s judgment of sentence.

Following his arrest in connection with the shooting death of Salim

Abdul-Latif, Appellant proceeded to a jury trial on May 7, 2018. In its opinion,

____________________________________________

* Former Justice specially assigned to the Superior Court.

1 18 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 2502(a), 6106(a)(1), 907(a), and 6108, respectively. J-S49045-19

the trial court aptly summarized the testimony offered at the jury trial as

follows.

Viewed in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth as the verdict winner, the evidence established the following. On the morning of June 16, 2016, Salim Abdul-Latif [(“Abdul-Latif”)], the decedent, arrived at the house of his friend, Walter Hill, on the 5100 block of Arbor Street. [Appellant’s] brother, Imiear Teagle [(“Imiear”)], was already there. [Appellant] and his brother had been friends with Abdul-Latif their whole lives and, although they were not related by blood, considered Abdul-Latif as their cousin. At that time, Imiear, Abdul-Latif, and Hill often hung out at Hill’s house because Hill was on house arrest for a robbery conviction. [At] [a]round 1:15 p.m., Abdul-Latif began to exchange several phone calls with [Appellant]. After receiving one such call, Abdul-Latif went into the bathroom. When Abdul-Latif came out of the bathroom, he said he would be right back and told Imiear to “come on.” Abdul- Latif exited through Hill’s front door and got into the driver’s seat of his girlfriend’s Pontiac Grand Prix, which was parked right in front of Hill’s house. At approximately 1:37 p.m., [Appellant] arrived at the scene riding a bicycle. Imiear then went to stand next to [Appellant] near the driver’s side of Abdul-Latif’s car. Then Imiear went back inside Hill’s house to ask Hill for a sweatshirt while [Appellant] remained near the driver’s side of the vehicle. Hill brought Imiear a sweatshirt at the front door and Imiear walked out of Hill’s house. At approximately 1:50 p.m., as Imiear was walking from the house toward the car, [Appellant] shot Abdul- Latif six times. [Appellant] then fled on his bicycle. Medics pronounced Abdul-Latif dead at the scene. Abdul-Latif had four gunshot wounds to his head and two to the back of the neck. Police collected six .380 caliber fired cartridge cases and one live cartridge at the scene. Philadelphia police detectives then conducted an investigation of the murder. When Officer David Quaintance arrived on the scene, he noticed a surveillance camera on a nearby homeowner’s property and recovered the video, which recorded Abdul-Latif’s murder. Later, Officer Timothy Stephan, who worked patrol for nearly 8 years in the area where [Appellant] lived, identified [Appellant] as the shooter on the surveillance video.

-2- J-S49045-19

On June 22, 2016, a warrant was issued for [Appellant’s] arrest. Officers could not locate [Appellant], and therefore, Philadelphia’s Homicide Fugitive Squad was tasked with finding him. After several months of unsuccessful searching, on November 17, 2016, the Homicide Fugitive Squad, now aided by the U.S. Marshalls, received an anonymous tip that [Appellant] was in Florida. On November 22, 2016, U.S. Marshalls arrested [Appellant] in Ocala, Florida.

Trial Court Opinion, filed 12/7/18, at 2-4 (footnotes and citations to transcripts

omitted).

At the conclusion of trial, the jury convicted Appellant of the offenses

indicated supra, and on May 11, 2018, the trial court sentenced Appellant to

life in prison for his first-degree murder conviction, with no further penalty for

the remaining convictions. On May 17, 2018, Appellant filed a timely,

counseled post-sentence motion, which the trial court denied on August 24,

2018. This timely, counseled appeal followed on August 24, 2018, and all

Pa.R.A.P. 1925 requirements have been met.

On appeal, Appellant sets forth the following issues in his “Statement of

Questions Involved” (verbatim):

I. Whether the Court erred when it permitted the lay opinions of Rasheeda Wright and Police Officer Timothy Stephan to be expressed to the jury that the images of the person in the video who shot and killed the decedent were the Appellant’s? II. Whether the Court erred when during jury deliberations in response to a jury request to view the video of the shooting on a laptop computer it granted the request when the video was not presented to the jury or to any other witness on a laptop computer during the trial? III. Whether the Court erred in violation of the Appellant’s due process and confrontation rights under the federal and state

-3- J-S49045-19

constitutions when it permitted the video of the shooting to be viewed by the jury during deliberations on a higher resolution laptop computer when the video had not been presented to the jury or to any other witness on a laptop computer during the trial? IV. Whether the adjudication of guilt is against the weight of the evidence and shocking to one’s sense of justice where the identification of the Appellant in the video was based upon a common human mannerism of touching one’s head and face, where the video as presented at trial was of insufficient quality to make a positive identification, where the Appellant’s brother possessed a motive to kill the victim based upon their mutual involvement in controlled substance distribution and where the Appellant and the victim were life long friends? V. Whether the adjudication of guilt is based upon insufficient identification evidence where the video of the shooting upon which the identification was premised was of insufficient quality to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Appellant was the person who shot and killed the victim?

Appellant’s Brief at 6.

In his first issue, Appellant contends that, in violation of Pennsylvania

Rule of Evidence 701, the trial court erred in permitting Rasheed Wright and

Police Officer Timothy Stephan to opine that the image of the person seen in

the video, which was seized from a surveillance camera near the murder

scene, depicted Appellant.2

With regard to the admission of evidence, we give the trial court broad discretion, and we will only reverse a trial court’s ____________________________________________

2 Appellant filed a pre-trial motion in limine seeking to exclude the opinion identification testimony of Rasheed Wright, Officer Stephan, and Probation Officer James Hartnett. See Trial Court Opinion, filed 12/7/18, at 4. The trial court granted Appellant’s motion as to Probation Officer Hartnett, but denied the motion as to Rasheed Wright and Officer Stephan. Id.

-4- J-S49045-19

decision to admit or deny evidence on a showing that the trial court clearly abused its discretion.

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Com. v. Teagle, K., Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/com-v-teagle-k-pasuperct-2019.