Holland v. Commonwealth

114 S.W.3d 792, 2003 WL 22149319
CourtKentucky Supreme Court
DecidedSeptember 22, 2003
Docket1998-SC-0915-MR
StatusPublished
Cited by36 cases

This text of 114 S.W.3d 792 (Holland v. Commonwealth) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Kentucky Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Holland v. Commonwealth, 114 S.W.3d 792, 2003 WL 22149319 (Ky. 2003).

Opinions

KELLER, Justice.

I. INTRODUCTION

A Hardin Circuit Court Jury found Appellant guilty of two (2) counts of Attempted Murder and one (1) count of First-Degree Burglary, fixed Appellant’s sentences at fifteen (15), fifteen (15), and ten (10) years, respectively, and recommended that the sentences run consecutively for a total prison sentence of forty (40) years. The trial court entered judgment in accordance with the jury’s verdict, and Appellant now appeals to this Court as a matter-of-right.1 After a review of the record, we hold that the trial court’s jury instructions were prejudicially erroneous, and we thus reverse the Judgment and Order Imposing Sentence and remand the indictment to the Hardin Circuit Court for a new trial.

II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

In April 1997, a Hardin County Grand Jury returned a three (3) count indictment against Appellant. Counts One and Two charged Appellant with Attempted Murder and alleged that “with the intent to cause the death of Danny E. [and, in Count Two, Rebecca] Darnell or under circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to human life, she wantonly engaged in conduct which created a grave risk of death2 to Danny E. [/Rebecca] Darnell, she shot Danny E. [/Rebecca] Darnell ... and thereby caused serious physical injury to him [/her] at 1411 Kentucky Drive, Apartment C, Elizabethtown, Kentucky, in an attempt to cause his [/her] death.” Count Three charged her with one (1) count of First-Degree Burglary and alleged that “with the intent to commit a crime, she knowingly and unlawfully entered the residence of Danny E. Darnell, 1411 Kentucky Drive, Apartment C, Eliza-[796]*796bethtown, Kentucky, and while in the residence, she was armed with a handgun.”

In her defense, Appellant admitted the majority of the indictment’s factual' allegations. In particular, Appellant did not dispute that she shot Danny Darnell (“Darnell”) and his ex-wife, Rebecca Darnell (“Becky Darnell”), inside Darnell’s apartment with a handgun that she had acquired the previous day. Instead, the issues for jury resolution at trial related to Appellant’s state of mind at the time of the shooting, i.e., her degree of intoxication and whether she intended to kill Danny and Becky Darnell. The Commonwealth’s theory of the case was that Appellant, who was jealous of the fact that her lover, Darnell, was making efforts to reconcile with his ex-wife, unlawfully entered his apartment, waited there with her recently-purchased handgun, and, when Danny and Becky Darnell arrived, shot each of them in cold blood and with the intent to kill. In contrast, Appellant defended against the charges by arguing that: (1) because of an assortment of pain medication she was taking pursuant to prescriptions she was given after her back surgery less than a week earlier, she did not recall much about that day, and specifically did not remember traveling to or entering Appellant’s apartment, (2) “she never wanted to go in there and kill anybody” and she assumes instead that her intent was to kill herself in Darnell’s presence (or to attempt to do so to see if he would try to stop her) with the handgun that she had purchased for that purpose after unsuccessfully attempting to commit suicide by ingesting pills twice earlier that year; and (3) that the shootings themselves “happened so fast” after Darnell sarcastically remarked to her “Go ahead, shoot me, Melissa, right between the eyes. Put me out of my misery” and suddenly moved towards her, but that she “didn’t want to kill anybody” and was in fact unaware that she had shot Becky Darnell at all.

Given the nature of Appellant’s defense to the charges, much of the evidence at trial concerned the deterioration of the romantic relationship between Appellant and Darnell and its effect on her mental state. Because we find Appellant’s testimony3 regarding the relationship important to our analysis of Appellant’s allegation that the trial court improperly denied her a lesser-included offense instruction, we will summarize it in some detail.

In February 1995, Appellant first met Darnell at the Fort Knox enlisted club where Darnell’s band was playing. At that time, each of them was married, but each was separated from his or her spouse. Appellant was married to a man named Stacy Holland with whom she had lived in Colorado, Ohio, and, most recently, Indiana until he left her in January 1995, [797]*797and Darnell was married to Becky Darnell. According to Appellant, however, Darnell told her at that time or soon thereafter that he had been divorced for two (2) years. During March and April 1995, Appellant and Darnell met each other two (2) to three (B) times per week for lunch or dinner. Later in April, however, Appellant discovered that she was pregnant with her husband’s child, and she made a brief attempt to reconcile with him that ultimately proved unsuccessful. Soon after she returned from Oklahoma, she contacted Darnell to tell him that her reconciliation with her husband was not going to work out. The relationship between Appellant and Darnell then became sexual.

Not long after her return, Appellant suffered a miscarriage. She became depressed, considered suicide, applied to purchase a handgun, and contacted a pastor who gave her the number of a suicide crisis line. In August, 1995, Appellant moved in with a friend in Shelbyville, Kentucky, and her relationship with Darnell appeared to progress. Darnell took Appellant with him on a trip to Charleston, South Carolina, and they stopped by Appellant’s father’s place in North Carolina so that she could introduce Darnell to her family. Sometime during this period Darnell gave Appellant a key to his apartment. A couple of months later, however, problems began to develop in the relationship when Appellant began to broach the topic of marriage and children. On Thanksgiving 1995, Darnell met Appellant at her parents’ home and, after receiving a telephone call from his then-ex-wife (his divorce having become final in July 1995), he confessed that he had lied to Appellant when he told her that he had been divorced for two (2) years. Appellant testified at trial that, in retrospect, this event represented a turning point in their relationship because afterwards she began to realize that Darnell did not actually love her, and that she was little more than a young, attractive sexual outlet “rebound.” As mounting debts from her marriage forced her to seek bankruptcy protection, she again began to consider ending her life.

On New Years’ Day 1996, Darnell and Appellant had a conversation that Appellant interpreted as a marriage proposal. A week later, however, when she confronted him and inquired whether he was serious about the proposal, Darnell told Appellant that he had “proposed” merely to keep her in the relationship. This event precipitated Appellant’s first suicide attempt. On January 8, 1996, before retiring to bed with Darnell, Appellant ingested a quantity of the muscle relaxants she took for her back pain, and she later awoke feeling numb and vomiting blood. Darnell called poison control and took her to the hospital, where she was hospitalized for a day-and-a-half in a psychiatric ward.

In March 1996, Appellant was looking for a new place to live because her roommate in Shelbyville was getting married. Darnell located an apartment for Appellant in Radcliff, Kentucky and “fronted” her deposit and first month’s rent because he wanted her to live closer to him. Appellant and Darnell then began spending virtually every night together at either his or her apartment.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
114 S.W.3d 792, 2003 WL 22149319, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/holland-v-commonwealth-ky-2003.