Yell v. Commonwealth

242 S.W.3d 331, 2007 WL 4462367
CourtKentucky Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 21, 2007
Docket2006-SC-000327-MR
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 242 S.W.3d 331 (Yell v. Commonwealth) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Kentucky Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Yell v. Commonwealth, 242 S.W.3d 331, 2007 WL 4462367 (Ky. 2007).

Opinions

MEMORANDUM OPINION OF THE COURT

Robert Yell

appeals his conviction for First-Degree Arson, Firsb-Degree Assault, Second-Degree Manslaughter, and Second-Degree PFO for intentionally causing the house fire which killed his two-year-old son and severely injured his eleven-month-old daughter. Upon review of Yell’s claims of error, we adjudge there was no error that warranted reversal. Hence, we affirm.

In 2004, Robert Yell was living in a trailer in Russellville with his girlfriend, April Carpenter, their two children, Sara-lynn Yell, eleven months old, and Cameron Yell, two years old, and April’s two children from a prior relationship, Zachary Carpenter and Nicholas Carpenter. On September 11, 2004, Robert, April, Sara-lynn, Cameron, Zachary and Nicholas went to a neighbor’s house for the afternoon. The children played outside with the children of the neighbors, Lindsey Bromm and Donald Powell, while Robert and April proceeded to drink a large amount of alcohol and smoke marijuana. April and Robert became very intoxicated, and at some point, Robert became belligerent with Donald Powell and they began arguing. Robert tried to get April to leave, but April did not want to go home. April and Robert then began arguing. Sometime before 5:00 p.m., Robert, April, and all four children went home to their trailer.

According to April, once they got back to the trailer, she and Robert got into an argument. April testified that she and Robert fought frequently because she recently had an affair with another man when Robert was in jail. The fight escalated and Robert began choking her. April ultimately freed herself and ran back to Lindsey Bromm’s house with Zachary and Nicholas following behind her. April arrived at Bromm’s house at approximately 7:00 p.m. After staying there for twenty to forty minutes, April wanted to go back to her trailer to get the other two children. When April began walking back to the trailer, she noticed smoke and realized the trailer was on fire. She ran into the burning trailer and retrieved Saralynn from the front room and handed her off to Officer [334]*334Ron Mills of the Russellville Police Department. April attempted to go back into the burning trailer to get Cameron, but the smoke and fire were too bad. The police refused to let April go back into the trailer again.

Ultimately, Cameron was pulled from the blazing trailer by firefighters, but, by that time, he had already died of smoke inhalation. Saralynn sustained third-degree burns to 50% of her body and extensive respiratory damage as a result of smoke inhalation. The evidence established that Saralynn suffered permanent, painful injuries as a result of the fire that have necessitated protracted hospitalization and numerous surgeries.

As a result of the events of September 11, 2004, Robert was indicted on October 28, 2004 bn one count each of First-Degree Arson, Capital Murder, Attempted Murder, Fourth-Degree Assault, Resisting Arrest, Menacing, Third-Degree Terroristic Threatening, Public Intoxication, Third-Degree Assault, Second-Degree Disorderly Conduct, and for being a First-Degree Persistent Felony Offender (PFO I). On February 8, 2006, Robert attempted to enter a guilty plea pursuant to a plea bargain with the Commonwealth whereby he agreed to plead guilty to Third-Degree Arson, two counts of First-Degree Assault, one count of Third-Degree Assault, and PFO II in exchange for a recommendation of a twenty-five year sentence. After determining that the plea was actually an Alford plea, the court refused to accept the plea because it did not usually accept Alford pleas. Consequently, a jury trial was held from February 10, 2006 through February 22, 2006. Robert was found guilty of First-Degree Arson, First-Degree Assault, Second-Degree Manslaughter, -and PFO II. Robert was also convicted of two misdemeanors, Fourth-Degree Assault and Disorderly Conduct. Robert was sentenced to: 26 years on the Arson conviction; 20 years (10 years enhanced to 20 years by the PFO II) on the Manslaughter conviction; 26 years (20 years enhanced to 26 years by the PFO II) on the First-Degree Assault; 12 months on the Fourth-Degree Assault; and 90 days on the Disorderly Conduct. The sentences for the Arson and First-Degree Assault convictions were to run consecutively, with the remaining sentences to run concurrently, for a total of 52 years imprisonment. This matter of right appeal followed.

ACCELERANT DETECTION CANINE EVIDENCE

Robert argues that the trial court erred in allowing the Commonwealth to introduce evidence that an accelerant detection dog had alerted to the presence of ignitable liquids at the trailer fire scene. In a pre-trial suppression motion, the defense objected to the admission of this evidence on grounds that there was no scientific support for its admissibility and no legal authority in Kentucky for its admissibility. Although the motion did not cite Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993), or request a Daubert hearing, the trial court held a self-described Daubert hearing prior to trial in this case. The hearing, held on January 3, 2006, elicited the following facts relative to the use of the accelerant detection dog, PJ, in investigating the fire scene in this case.

PJ was assigned to National Certified Fire Investigator Buster Cannon by the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) in 2002. Cannon established that he had twenty-three years of experience as a policeman and firefighter. At the time Cannon received PJ, she had already been trained and imprinted in ac-celerant detection. Early in 2002, Cannon [335]*335and PJ successfully completed a five-week course in canine accelerant-detection training with the ATF. Both Cannon and PJ have completed annual forty-hour re-certification programs for 2003, 2004, and 2005 and are subject to annual testing by the ATF. Since 2002, Cannon and PJ have worked approximately 200 fire scenes together. PJ is trained by Cannon twice a day and reports of her training are submitted monthly to the ATF. PJ detects ignitable liquids and trains with a food/reward system whereby Cannon gives PJ kibbles when she correctly alerts (sits at the site) where ignitable liquids are detected. Cannon trains PJ with an array of flammable liquids at varying levels. During her training sessions, PJ may be exposed to as little as one micro liter (roughly one-half of an eye dropper) to as much as 15 micro liters of a given accelerant. Cannon testified that samples that a dog has alerted to will sometimes test negative in a laboratory for the presence of accelerants because the sample may contain a level of acceler-ant too small for a laboratory to detect. Cannon explained that the accelerant may be consumed in the fire or may evaporate before collection and testing. Cannon testified that PJ’s false alerts may be as high as 5%. Through his experience working with PJ, Cannon has learned that if it is a true alert, PJ will get very excited and he will not be able to pull her off of the site of the alert. If Cannon suspects it is a false alert (by her nonchalant behavior), PJ will surrender the spot without much resistance.

Before going into a fire scene, PJ is calibrated by detecting a drop of acceler-ant that Cannon places away from the fire scene. When PJ properly alerts to the accelerant, she is rewarded and then taken into the fire scene. At the fire scene, controls are used.

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Yell v. Commonwealth
242 S.W.3d 331 (Kentucky Supreme Court, 2007)

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242 S.W.3d 331, 2007 WL 4462367, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/yell-v-commonwealth-ky-2007.