Wyles v. State

182 S.W.3d 142, 357 Ark. 530, 2004 Ark. LEXIS 349
CourtSupreme Court of Arkansas
DecidedMay 27, 2004
DocketCR 03-00796
StatusPublished
Cited by21 cases

This text of 182 S.W.3d 142 (Wyles v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Wyles v. State, 182 S.W.3d 142, 357 Ark. 530, 2004 Ark. LEXIS 349 (Ark. 2004).

Opinion

Annabelle Clinton Imber, Justice.

Appellant Robert Wyles ustice. murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. On appeal, Mr. Wyles asserts that the circuit court erred in refusing his proffered instructions on second-degree murder and manslaughter. He also challenges four evidentiary rulings by the circuit court and claims his Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated when the trial court appointed new counsel after determining that his original counsel had a conflict of interest. We hold that the circuit court erred in refusing Mr. Wyles’s proffered instructions and reverse his conviction.

The facts as developed at trial are as follows. On October 13, 2001, Kenneth Matthews visited his married daughter, Lisa Wyles, at her home in Dover, Arkansas. About that time, Lisa had been having an on-and-off extramarital affair with Jason Crow. On October 30, 2001, Mr. Matthews attempted to call Lisa at her home in Dover, but was told by his son-in-law, Robert Wyles, that she had gone to northern Arkansas to be with her paramour, Mr. Crow.

Trisha Wyles, the Wyleses’ daughter, testified that she last saw her mother on October 25, 2001. On that day, Mr. Wyles explained to Trisha that he was having an affair with another woman named Carolyn Carpenter. There was some discussion indicating that Trisha’s parents intended to separate. Later that day, however, Trisha saw her parents walking down the road holding hands. The Wyleses told Trisha they had worked things out and then took her to a friend’s house in Benton where she planned to spend a couple of days. When Mr. Wyles returned to Benton to pick up Trisha, he was accompanied by Ms. Carpenter, not his wife. Trisha asked her dad to come back for her at .another time, but without Ms. Carpenter. Mr. Wyles agreed to return, and told Trisha that he had dropped her mother off at Wal-Mart in Conway so she could meet Mr. Crow.

About two months later, in January, 2002, Mr. Matthews lodged a missing person’s report with the Dover Police Department. An officer with the Arkansas State Police Criminal Investigation Division began working on the missing person report, and the investigation eventually developed Mr. Wyles as a suspect. In March, 2002, following the issuance and execution of a search warrant at Mr. Wyles’s home in Dover, law enforcement officers found a body buried in the backyard beneath a large barrel. The body was released to the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory, where Dr. Charles Paul Kokes performed an autopsy. Because the body had undergone some decomposition, the medical examiner’s ability to detect or rule out certain types of abnormalities was limited; that is, the decomposition process obscured or covered up certain findings that the medical examiner might otherwise have been able to see, or not see, had the body been better preserved. Through an odontilogical exam, the victim was identified as Lisa Wyles. Dr. Kokes determined that Lisa suffered from blunt force trauma to the torso area and explained that he could not rule out strangulation as a contributing cause of death. Dr. Kokes also explained that the blunt force trauma was consistent with a struggle between two people, in which one has the other in a headlock, and then they fall, striking a hard, secondary object. He added that the injury was consistent with a person using more force than he intended to use.

On March 12, 2002, the State filed a criminal information charging Robert Wyles with first-degree murder. At trial, the appellant’s oldest son, Scott Wyles, was called as a witness for the State to testify about a conversation he had with his father after the body was discovered. Scott asked his father why he killed Lisa. According to Scott, Mr. Wyles told him that he and his wife were arguing and fighting, and when Lisa began to hit him and threaten to kill him “he grabbed her by the neck and got her in the choke hold.” On cross-examination by defense counsel, Scott confirmed that his father said he put his arms around Lisa’s neck and just did not let go.

I. Lesser-included Jury Instructions

At the close of all the evidence, the circuit court and counsel conferred about jury instructions. Mr. Wyles sought instructions on second-degree murder and manslaughter. The circuit court did not completely deny Mr. Wyles’s entire request for lesser-included instructions; instead, the court gave lesser-included instructions on second-degree murder and manslaughter, but refused to instruct the jury on alternative grounds for those lesser-included offenses.

No right has been more zealously protected by this court than the right of an accused to have the jury instructed on lesser-included offenses. Brown v. State, 347 Ark. 44, 60 S.W.3d 422 (2001). We have often stated that it is reversible error to refuse to give an instruction on a lesser-included offense when the instruction is supported by even the slightest evidence. Harshaw v. State, 344 Ark. 129, 39 S.W.3d 753 (2001). Thus, we will affirm a trial court’s decision to exclude an instruction on a lesser-included offense only if there is no rational basis for giving the instruction. Id.

The State argues that because the jury was instructed on one theory of second-degree murder and one theory of manslaughter, the test for reversible error in the rejection of additional instructions on those offenses is not the slightest-evidence standard, but rather whether the omission infected the entire trial such that the resulting conviction violates due process. Branstetter v. State, 346 Ark. 62, 57 S.W.3d 105 (2001) (holding no rational basis for requested instructions). In accord with Branstetter, we have held that it is reversible error to refuse to give an instruction on a lesser-included offense when the instruction is supported by even the slightest evidence. McCoy v. State, 347 Ark. 913, 69S.W.3d 430 (2002). Thus, we do not agree that a different standard for instructing the jury on lesser-included offenses is applicable in this case.

Second-degree Murder Instruction

Mr. Wyles was charged by a criminal information alleging that “[k]nowingly, wilfully and unlawfully, with the purpose of causing the death of another person, he caused the death of another person.” According to the information, Mr. Wyles was charged with first-degree murder pursuant to Ark. Code Ann. § 5-10-102. In Arkansas, a person commits murder in the first-degree if “[w]ith a purpose of causing the death of another person, he causes the death of another person . . . .” Ark. Code Ann. § 5-10-102(a)(2) (Repl. 1997). At trial, the court instructed the jury consistent with first-degree murder under section 5-10-102(a)(2).

Mr. Wyles requested that the jury also be instructed on second-degree murder. The Arkansas Criminal Code states:

(a) A person commits murder in the second-degree if:
(1) He knowingly causes the death of another person under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life; or
(2) With the purpose of causing serious physical injury to another person, he causes the death of any person.

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Bluebook (online)
182 S.W.3d 142, 357 Ark. 530, 2004 Ark. LEXIS 349, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/wyles-v-state-ark-2004.