Jeffers v. State

605 N.E.2d 196, 1992 Ind. App. LEXIS 1861, 1992 WL 380841
CourtIndiana Court of Appeals
DecidedDecember 28, 1992
DocketNo. 45A05-9202-CR-50
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 605 N.E.2d 196 (Jeffers v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Jeffers v. State, 605 N.E.2d 196, 1992 Ind. App. LEXIS 1861, 1992 WL 380841 (Ind. Ct. App. 1992).

Opinion

SHARPNACK, Chief Judge.

Jeffers appeals from his conviction of felony murder. We affirm.

Jeffers raises three issues for our review which we separate and restate as:

1. Did the trial court abuse its discretion in admitting the hearsay testimony of a detective with regard to statements made by a witness who later testified?
2. Were the jury verdicts finding Jef-fers guilty of both voluntary manslaughter and felony murder inconsistent?
3. Did the trial court properly sentence Jeffers on the greater offense of felony murder as opposed to voluntary manslaughter?
4. Did the trial court improperly fail to vacate Jeffers’ voluntary manslaughter conviction?

Robert Montgomery, the victim in this case, went out to get some tacos on the night of June 8, 1990. Montgomery met Jeffers and Zachary Scott, and he gave them a ride to an intersection at 49th Avenue and Rhode Island in Gary, Indiana. There, they shot Montgomery and took his wallet.

The state charged Jeffers by information with murder pursuant to I.C. § 35-42-1-1 (Count I) and felony murder during the commission or attempted commission of robbery, also pursuant to I.C. § 35-42-1-1 (Count II). At trial, the state called Detective Outlaw, who had taken the statement of Jeffers’ girlfriend Lillian Taylor. Over Jeffers’ hearsay objection, Outlaw was allowed to testify that Taylor told him that Jeffers had told her that he and Scott shot Montgomery.1 On the witness stand, Taylor later acknowledged making the statement and testified to essentially the same facts.

The jury returned guilty verdicts on the felony murder charge and on voluntary manslaughter, a lesser included offense under Count I. The court entered judgment on both counts. Following a sentencing hearing, the court expressed its intention to vacate the voluntary manslaughter conviction and sentence Jeffers to forty years for felony murder. The court then entered an order stating that the conviction on Count I merged into Count II.

Jeffers first contends that the trial court erred in admitting Detective Outlaw’s testimony regarding Taylor’s statement. Jeffers correctly asserts that the statement was hearsay. The focus of the parties’ arguments, however, is whether the statement was admissible under the Patterson2 exception to the hearsay rule. Although Patterson and its progeny have been overruled by our supreme court in Modesitt v. State (1991), Ind., 578 N.E.2d 649, 653-654, that particular holding of Modesitt was designed for prospective application only. See id. at 654; Gray v. State (1991), Ind., 579 N.E.2d 605, 608. We must therefore [198]*198consider the application of the Patterson exception to this case.

The Patterson exception states, in essence, that the out of court statements made by a declarant who is present and available for cross-examination, may be used as substantive evidence. Traver v. State (1991), Ind., 568 N.E.2d 1009, 1011. There are two major foundational prerequisites to the admission of evidence under the Patterson exception: the declarant must be present and available for cross-examination and the declarant must be confronted with the statements and acknowledge or disavow them. Stone v. State (1989), Ind. App., 536 N.E.2d 534, 536. With regard to the former, our supreme court has explicitly held that the declarant need not testify prior to the admission of the hearsay evidence, provided that the declarant actually testifies during the trial. Stamps v. State (1987), Ind., 515 N.E.2d 507, 510; See also Allen v. State (1990), Ind.App., 562 N.E.2d 39, 41.

Jeffers maintains that the trial court erred in admitting the testimony of Detective Outlaw prior to Taylor’s in-court testimony. As noted above, our supreme court in Stamps specifically held that the fact that the hearsay testimony is admitted pri- or to the declarant’s in-court testimony is not error. 515 N.E.2d at 510. However, Jeffers’ position arguably draws some support from the court’s first holding in Mode-sitt, which, because it purported to interpret the Patterson rule as it existed at the time, is not limited to prospective application. In Modesitt, the court found reversible error where, prior to the testimony of the child victim, three separate witnesses testified that the victim had told them that Modesitt had molested her. 578 N.E.2d at 650.

In its discussion, the Modesitt court first noted that the Patterson rule had been criticized and that prior cases had warned against the use of hearsay statements as a substitute for in-court testimony. 578 N.E.2d at 561. In support, the court cited Lewis v. State (1982), Ind., 440 N.E.2d 1125, cert. denied 461 U.S. 915, 103 S.Ct. 1895, 77 L.Ed.2d 284, where it had allowed three witnesses to testify to hearsay statements after the declarant had already testified and had been cross examined regarding the subject matter of those statements. In quoting from Lewis the court highlighted the fact that, in Lewis, the declarant had already withstood both direct and cross-examination regarding the out-of-court statements before those statements were submitted as substantive evidence. Modesitt, 578 N.E.2d at 651. The court went on to say:

“Here, by putting into evidence the victim’s out-of-court charges against Mode-sitt by three separate and repetitive witnesses prior to calling the victim herself, the prosecutor effectively precluded Mo-desitt from effective cross examination of these charges. The jury first heard and was allowed to consider, as substantive evidence, the victim’s statements made to her mother many months prior to trial. At this point, Modesitt had not yet had an opportunity to cross examine the victim herself concerning these charges and, obviously, he could not cross examine the mother concerning the truthfulness of the charges which had been leveled by her daughter. This lack of ability to cross examine the veracity of the statements continued through the repetitive testimony of the welfare caseworker and the psychologist. Prior to putting the victim on the stand, the victim’s veracity had been, in essence, vouchsafed by permitting the three witnesses to repeat the accusations of the victim. We believe that immediate cross examination is the most effective, and that delayed cross examination is the least effective. Here, three witnesses told the victim’s story before the victim herself testified. We hold, as did the Court of Appeals in Stone v. State (1989), Ind.App., 536 N.E.2d 534, that we could not say that the drumbeat repetition of the victim’s original story prior to calling the victim to testify did not unduly prejudice the jury which convicted Mo-desitt.”

578 N.E.2d at 651-652.

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605 N.E.2d 196, 1992 Ind. App. LEXIS 1861, 1992 WL 380841, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/jeffers-v-state-indctapp-1992.