Skimmerhorn v. Commonwealth

998 S.W.2d 771, 1998 WL 698574
CourtCourt of Appeals of Kentucky
DecidedDecember 4, 1998
Docket1997-CA-000532-MR, 1997-CA-000537-MR
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 998 S.W.2d 771 (Skimmerhorn v. Commonwealth) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Kentucky primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Skimmerhorn v. Commonwealth, 998 S.W.2d 771, 1998 WL 698574 (Ky. Ct. App. 1998).

Opinion

OPINION

JOHNSON, Judge:

John Daniel Skimmerhorn (John) and Mark Dewayne Skimmerhorn (Mark), brothers, each appeal from final judgments of conviction of the Daviess Circuit Court entered on February 18, 1997, which convicted each man of burglary in the second degree in violation of Kentucky Revised Statutes (KRS) 511.030. 1 John was also convicted of the status offense of persistent felony offender in the second degree and Mark was convicted of being a persistent felon in the first degree, both offenses in violation of KRS 532.080. John was sentenced to a ten-year term of imprisonment while Mark was sentenced to a fifteen-year term of imprisonment. On appeal, both men argue that the trial court erred in not directing a verdict in their favor and Mark argues that the trial court erred in allowing the use of certified copies of out-of-county convictions for purposes of proving persistent felon status without the presence of the custodian of records and without verification that he was the same person referred to in the Hopkins Circuit Court judgment of conviction. We affirm.

On December 6, 1993, Charles Russell (Russell) contacted Detective Susan De-Witt (Detective DeWitt) to report that a safe which he kept in his bedroom was missing and had apparently been taken the previous night while he and his wife had visited a friend for dinner. Russell claimed that the safe contained jewelry, $14,000 in cash 2 and various documents.

That evening, Russell’s stepson, Chuck Manaway (Manaway), contacted Detective DeWitt to tell her that he could find out who committed the burglary. The next day Manaway called Detective DeWitt to tell her that Jason Key (Key), John and Mark’s sixteen-year-old nephew, wanted to meet with her. Key went to Detective DeWitt’s office that day and gave a written statement admitting his own involvement in the burglary and implicating John and Mark and their respective wives, Dottie and Shari.

When Key testified at the trial, he recanted his written statement. However, Key was asked about the written statement in which he had stated: He had gone to John’s house, they had talked about safes, he had mentioned that Manaway’s parents had a safe and he knew where Manaway lived. He and the four Skim-merhorns drove to Russell’s house in John’s car and pulled in the driveway. Dottie turned the car around and John and Mark took the safe from the house and placed it in the trunk. They drove to John’s house, unloaded the safe and Key then left. Key returned later to find out what had been found in the safe. John showed him a ring and told him that the ring was the only thing in the safe. They loaded the safe into Mark’s car and took it to Mark’s house. Key then bought John’s car, an old Pontiac Bonneville, for $200, and the four Skimmerhorns left for Atlanta that night.

The next day, December 8, Detective DeWitt obtained a search warrant and searched the house John and Dottie were renting. She took photographs of cement-like particles under a couch. She recov *773 ered the cement-like particles and a ball peen hammer and sent these items to a forensics laboratory. Detective DeWitt did not find the safe or its contents.

The following day, John, Dottie, Mark and Shari returned from Atlanta and were arrested and taken to the police station where each suspect was placed in a separate room. Dottie became upset and gave a written statement admitting that she and the others had burglarized Russell’s house. She stated that she went for a car ride with John, Mark, Shari and Key and they had taken the safe. However, she stated that they found nothing in the safe but Russell’s personal papers. After Dottie finished her statement, Detective DeWitt allowed her to speak with John. When she returned from speaking with John, she told Detective DeWitt that she had given a false statement because she was afraid she would go to jail and lose her kids. Dottie was pregnant at the time and had two small children at home.

Between December 1993 and January 1997, the trial was rescheduled approximately seventeen times and during those three years, John and Dottie went through a bitter divorce. In September 1996, John filed abandonment charges when Dottie left the children for several days with a teenage babysitter and he obtained temporary custody of the children. When Dottie regained custody of the children, she contacted Detective DeWitt and told her that she was afraid she would lose her children if she did not come forward and make another 'written statement. Some of the details in her 1996 statement varied somewhat from her 1993 statement. In exchange for her testimony, Dottie received a twelve-month suspended sentence with two years of unsupervised probation.

On January 27 and 28, 1997, John, Mark and Shari were tried together. Key was the first witness for the Commonwealth. He acknowledged that he had given a written statement but at trial he denied all details of that statement except that he bought John’s car for $200. Key admitted that he told not only Detective DeWitt about the burglary but that he had also told his father about it. 3 Russell testified that he had been out late the evening of the burglary at a friend’s house to have dinner and he did not discover the burglary until the next morning. Forensic trace specialist, Barbara Wheeler, testified that her analysis of the cement-like particles revealed them to be safe insulation. She also testified that she found traces of this insulation on the hammer. Dottie testified substantially to the facts given in her two written statements with, again, a few discrepancies.

John testified that on December 5 or 6, 1993, he and Dottie talked about going out of town, they went to Mark and Shari’s house and they all decided to make a short trip to Atlanta. John testified that they went to Atlanta, stayed at a motel, went to a bar, and generally had a good time. He denied Dottie’s claim that he sold the stolen jewelry to a pawn shop. John admitted that he had sold his car for $200 just before they left and he spent $300 of his money to buy a newer used car. He also admitted that before he left, he paid $150 to his landlord to cover an unpaid rent deposit. He estimated that he spent about $150 on the trip. He testified that when they returned from Atlanta, he noticed that their house was in an unusual state of disarray. John acknowledged the hammer was his, but he denied using it to break open the safe. He testified that he never had any disagreements with his nephew and could not imagine why Key had accused his uncles of the Russell burglary. John claimed that Dottie accused him of the burglary because she feared losing her children. The jury convicted John and Mark of burglary in the second degree.

Prior to the penalty phase proceedings, Mark objected to the Daviess Circuit Court deputy clerk testifying from two out-of-county judgments of conviction *774 against him because she was not the custodian of records from those counties. The deputy clerk testified that she was the custodian of court records for the Daviess Circuit Court and that she had with her certified copies of two judgments of conviction naming Mark Skimmerhorn as the defendant.

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Related

Montgomery v. Commonwealth
320 S.W.3d 28 (Kentucky Supreme Court, 2010)
C.M.C. v. A.L.W.
180 S.W.3d 485 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky, 2005)
Cobb v. Commonwealth
105 S.W.3d 455 (Kentucky Supreme Court, 2003)

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Bluebook (online)
998 S.W.2d 771, 1998 WL 698574, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/skimmerhorn-v-commonwealth-kyctapp-1998.