State v. Luna

378 N.W.2d 229, 1985 S.D. LEXIS 407
CourtSouth Dakota Supreme Court
DecidedNovember 20, 1985
Docket14621
StatusPublished
Cited by59 cases

This text of 378 N.W.2d 229 (State v. Luna) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering South Dakota Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Luna, 378 N.W.2d 229, 1985 S.D. LEXIS 407 (S.D. 1985).

Opinions

MORGAN, Justice.

This appeal is from a jury’s conviction of George Luna (Luna) on two counts of first-degree murder in violation of SDCL 22-16-4. Luna was indicted by a grand jury, a felony arrest warrant was issued, he was arraigned, tried by a jury, and convicted. Luna appeals his convictions. We affirm.

A double murder occurred in the early morning hours of May 1, 1983, in Rapid City, Pennington County, South Dakota. The victims were Helen Thomas (Helen) and Lynn Luna (Lynn), Helen’s daughter and Luna’s estranged wife. Luna and Lynn were engaged in a rather heated divorce proceeding and Luna had expressed considerable animosity toward Helen, his mother-in-law.

A Pennington County Grand Jury heard evidence on the matter four months later and handed down an indictment on September 21, 1983. Counsel was appointed for Luna, notices were filed, and at least one motion for change of judge was granted. Before the jury trial on May 14, 1984, numerous pretrial motions were filed, appointed counsel withdrew, and privately retained counsel took up representation.1 The various motions and rulings that are in issue and the facts of the case will be discussed where they are pertinent to the issues.

Luna raises six issues on this appeal: (1) Whether Luna’s constitutional rights to compulsory process and due process were violated by the trial court’s exclusion of third-party perpetrator evidence; (2) whether Luna’s constitutional right to due process was violated by the State’s failure to produce potentially exculpatory microscopic particle evidence; (3) whether Luna’s consent to search and seizure was involuntary and thus required exclusion of physical evidence, whether use of this physical evidence at trial was plain error, and whether Luna was denied his constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel when his attorney abandoned motions to suppress the physical evidence; (4) whether the trial court’s denial of motions for change of venue predicated on prejudice generated by pretrial publicity violated Luna’s constitutional right to an impartial jury and to due process; (5) whether Luna’s constitutional right to equal protection was denied by the trial court’s failure to provide a preliminary hearing; and (6) whether Luna’s constitutional right to confrontation was violated by the trial court’s admission of hearsay evidence.

Luna first urges that the trial court violated his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by excluding certain third-party perpetrator evidence that he sought to introduce.

The evidence that Luna sought to introduce, as outlined in his brief, is: (1) Joe Leonard (Leonard) entered a convenience store, the Common Cents Store, situated on Rushmore Road, about one-half block from the scene of the crime, about 2:30 a.m. on the morning of May 1. Leonard had blood on his hands and his shirt cuff. On June 18, 1983, approximately seven weeks later, Leonard also confessed to a drinking companion that he had committed the murder and that he was a killer for hire. The drinking companion also made some allegations about Leonard leaving a steel pipe under his davenport and that another steel pipe had been moved from where he usually stored it. (2) Doug Thomas (Thomas), son of Helen and brother of Lynn, had threatened Helen in the fall of 1981 (a year and a half before the crime) and had fired a gun into the ceiling. Although Thomas had not seen the victims for a year prior to the crime; he arrived at the scene shortly after the bodies were found. Thomas was also the beneficiary of a life insurance policy on Helen’s life and a trust account, as well as the devisee/legatee under Helen’s will. (3) There is also some allegation that one of two boxes containing four or five thousand dollars was missing from Helen’s apartment, although the authorities had re[232]*232ported nothing missing. The existence of such boxes was related in an unsworn statement by a friend of Helen’s who was, at that time, apparently on the West Coast eluding investigation on charges regarding illegal taking or possession of eagle feathers.

Luna’s theory of a third-party perpetrator is apparently in the alternative, to-wit: The crime was committed by either Leonard or Thomas individually or by Leonard and Thomas in conspiracy. The trial court reviewed the proffered scenarios. It observed that, to be admissible, the evidence must show some chain of circumstances, of facts or train of facts to point out the possible guilt of a third party other than the defendant. It stated that collateral evidence should be kept out of the proceedings even though marginally relevant.

The bulk of the proffered evidence was in written form — affidavits, statements and depositions. We find very little if any direct oral testimony. Therefore, our review of the evidence is not limited by the clearly erroneous rule and we can review the evidence in the same light that the trial court did as though presented here in the first instance. Ayres v. Junek, 247 N.W.2d 488 (S.D.1976).

Luna alleges that the trial court erred in relying on dicta from State v. Beets, 57 S.D. 486, 233 N.W. 917 (1930), as the rule in South Dakota and urges a number of more recent federal cases and the writings of Professor Wigmore in support of a far more liberal rule. The State argues that the Beets decision contains the proper rule for South Dakota and attempts to align it with the federal authorities. The Beets rule appears to be that for a third-party perpetrator theory “[t]o be available as a defense the proof that another is guilty must show that as a consequence thereof defendant is not guilty.” 57 S.D. at 490, 233 N.W. at 918. Furthermore, the evidence must meet admissibility requirements of genuineness.

We note that since Beets we have adopted the Rules of Evidence. SDCL 19-12-3 is an exact codification of Federal Rule of Evidence 403: “Although relevant, evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by consideration of undue delay, waste of time,, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence.” SDCL 23A-22-2 makes civil rules of evidence applicable also to criminal cases, except as otherwise provided in Title 23A. The State suggests that since SDCL 19-12-3 was not relied on by Luna it is not before the court. We disagree. When the rules of evidence were adopted in 1978, they became the criteria for admissibility of evidence. SDCL 19-9-1. It is noteworthy that neither Beets, nor any of the cases wherein this court has discussed SDCL 19-12-3 since its adoption, were approached from the perspective of constitutional rights. The latter cases were all decided on the basis of the statutory application of the rule and none of the latter involved exclusion of third-party perpetrator evidence.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
378 N.W.2d 229, 1985 S.D. LEXIS 407, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-luna-sd-1985.