State v. Huddleston

318 P.3d 140, 298 Kan. 941
CourtSupreme Court of Kansas
DecidedFebruary 14, 2014
DocketNo. 106,273
StatusPublished
Cited by41 cases

This text of 318 P.3d 140 (State v. Huddleston) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Huddleston, 318 P.3d 140, 298 Kan. 941 (kan 2014).

Opinion

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Luckert, J.:

In this direct appeal, Sharon Huddleston presents two arguments for reversing her conviction of premeditated first-[942]*942degree murder. We reject both arguments. As to her first issue, although we agree the two prosecutors who made arguments to the jury misstated the law by suggesting premeditation could occur after a homicidal act, we conclude it is not reasonably probable that these misstatements affected the outcome of the trial given the strong evidence of premeditation, the jury instructions, and the prosecutors’ correct statements of the law regarding premeditation. As to tire second issue, we hold the trial judge did not err when he admitted into evidence two jailhouse letters written by Huddleston because the letters were relevant and reasonable people could agree with the trial judge’s assessment that their probative value outweighed any potential prejudicial impact.

Facts and Procedural Background

Huddleston’s conviction for premeditated first-degree murder arose from the death of Todd Stover in 2000. No charges were brought in the case for over 10 years.

In May 2000, Stover’s body was found in a ditch by the side of a dirt road in Greenwood County. Because of decomposition, Sto-ver’s face was unrecognizable, but forensic scientists were able to identify him by his fingerprints. At that time, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) was assigned to tire case. The KBI discovered that Stover’s family had last seen him approximately 13 days earlier and that Stover had been picked up from an apartment in Wichita around May 25, 2000, between 9 and 10 a.m. by three women in a tan, four-door sedan. The only name tire KBI developed was “Rhonda,” who was possibly living in the Park City area. These leads were insufficient to produce a suspect or suspects at that time.

The investigation became dormant and remained so for many years until, in March 2010, law enforcement officers in Carthage, Missouri, contacted the Park City Police Department and reported that a woman named Sharon Edwards had information regarding a 10-year-old murder involving Sharon Huddleston and Rhonda Pischel. Upon looking for unsolved murders in the area, a Park City police officer came across the case involving Stover in Green[943]*943wood County. The officer contacted the KBI for assistance, and Edwards, Huddleston, and Pischel were located and interviewed.

At the time of Stover s death in 2000, Huddleston and Edwards had been domestic partners who lived in Park City with Pischel, Huddleston’s sister. The three women had been acquainted with Stover through his friendship with Pischel. In the years between Stover’s death in 2000 and Edwards’ report to law enforcement in 2010, the three women had moved to separate residences.

Officers first interviewed Huddleston on May 27, 2010. She acknowledged she had been in a relationship with Edwards in 2000, but she denied knowing Stover. When the officers showed her a photograph of Stover, Huddleston said she did not recognize him. At one point in the interview, however, Huddleston said her sister, Pischel, had been “involved” with a tall, skinny man with a ponytail. These details matched the general description of Stover’s body as it was discovered in 2000. According to Huddleston, Pischel’s friend had spent one night at the Park City house and “they” had driven him back to an apartment in Wichita the next day.

On June 24, 2010, officers conducted a second interview with Huddleston at her residence. This time she admitted that she had known Stover and that he had promised to get her a job. Hud-dleston explained that she got angry because she had spent money on Stover but he did not actually have the resources to get her a job. Huddleston felt Stover was “conning her out of money,” which made her feel stupid. She told Edwards that she “wanted to kill that son of a bitch.” Edwards, who was diabetic, suggested that Huddleston could kill him by giving him a shot of insulin. Hud-dleston indicated she considered Edwards’ plan for a couple of days. At another point in the interview, Huddleston also mentioned Stover’s alleged mistreatment of a disabled veteran at a Wichita bar. She told officers that she felt like a “vigilante,” paying Stover back for the way he treated the veteran.

According to Huddleston’s statement, on a May morning in 2000, the three women—Huddleston, Edwards, and Pischel— drove Edwards’ tan 2000 Mitsubishi Diamante sedan to an apartment in Wichita where Stover was staying. When they arrived, Huddleston looked into the apartment window and saw Stover [944]*944sleeping on the floor. They roused him, and the foursome got into the car and drove back to the Park City house. When they arrived, Huddleston and the others got drunk and used cocaine.

Around 2 or 2:30 p.m., Huddleston injected insulin twice into Stover’s back as he walked from the kitchen into the living room. Huddleston indicated that each injection contained half a bottle of insulin or 50 units; thus, Stover received approximately 100 units of insulin. When Huddleston first injected Stover, he turned to her and said, “[Y]ou just gave me a shot of insulin.” Huddleston told him, “[N]o, it was Valium.” She told Stover to go lie down and that he would be okay.

The insulin overdose caused a long, drawn-out death. Shortly after die injections, Stover lay down in one of the bedrooms. Around 6 p.m., Edwards left for work. By that time, Stover was having trouble breathing and was sweating, so Huddleston and Pis-chel decided to move him to a couch in the garage. Huddleston revealed that at some point after taking Stover to the garage, they tried to counteract his low blood sugar level by attempting to put “sugar water” into his veins, but this technique did not work. Hud-dleston went to rest in her bedroom while Pischel stayed with Sto-ver for a while, holding his head and combing his hair. Eventually Pischel also left Stover and went to sleep. Around 11 p.m., Pischel woke up and, upon looking into the garage, saw that Stover was not breathing. She woke up Huddleston, and they went into the garage together.

Huddleston determined Stover was dead. She explained to the officers that she had training and experience as a nurse’s aide and, therefore, was able to make the determination of death. She also indicated that because of her training and experience she knew the effects of insulin on a nondiabetic person and knew it would eventually cause the heart to stop. But at various points during her interview, Huddleston also said she “didn’t mean to kill him,” she “just wanted to knock his ass out,” and she merely wanted to “mess him up.” At other times she equivocated by stating, “I didn’t drink it would really kill him. In a way I did and in a way I didn’t.”

Recounting what happened after Huddleston determined Stover was dead, Huddleston told the officers she drove her pickup truck [945]*945to Edwards’ place of employment and traded vehicles with her. Huddleston then drove the tan Diamante back home, where she and Pischel loaded Stover s body into the trunk and covered it with a blanket, planning to dump the body into Grand Lake in Oklahoma. On their journey, the body started to have a foul odor. They decided to stop and dispose of the body in a field, but when they got the body out of the trunk, it was too heavy for them to carry. So Huddleston and Pischel left the body in a ditch near the road.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
318 P.3d 140, 298 Kan. 941, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-huddleston-kan-2014.