Self v. State

2022 Ark. App. 479

655 S.W.3d 567

John Brandon SELF, Appellant

v.STATE of Arkansas, Appellee

No. CR-22-72

Court of Appeals of Arkansas, DIVISION IV.

Opinion Delivered November 30, 2022

James Law Firm, by: William O. "Bill" James, Jr., Little Rock, and Ashley N. Dyer, for appellant.

Leslie Rutledge, Att'y Gen., by: Pamela Rumpz, Sr. Ass't Att'y Gen., for appellee.

BART F. VIRDEN, Judge

John Brandon Self appeals a Saline County Circuit Court jury's conviction of kidnapping (Class Y felony.) On appeal, he argues that there was insufficient evidence to convict him, and the circuit court erred in denying his motion to suppress the photographic-lineup identification and certain testimony. We affirm.

As a preliminary matter, we take this opportunity to strongly caution appellant counsel regarding the requirements of Arkansas Supreme Court Rule 4-2(a)(6). According to In re Acceptance of Records on Appeal in Elec. Format , 2020 Ark. 421, 2020 WL 7415119 (per curiam), appellants are required, as of June 1, 2021, to file briefs electronically. Additionally, all briefs

shall contain a concise statement of the case and the facts without argument. The statement shall identify and discuss all material factual and procedural information contained in the record on appeal. Information in the appellate record is material if the information is essential to understand the case and decide the issues on appeal. All material information must be supported by citations to the pages of the appellate record where the information can be found.

See Ark. S. Ct. Rule 4-2(a)(6).

Self's statement of the case is limited to a sparse procedural timeline setting forth his arrest pursuant to a warrant for kidnapping, aggravated assault, first-degree battery, and felon in possession of a firearm. Self minimally recounts his first appearance, arraignment, and the court's decision to grant multiple continuances. He includes the bare mention of the court's decision to deny his motion to suppress the photographic identification, his conviction of kidnapping, and sentence of nine hundred months’ imprisonment in the Arkansas Department of Correction.

The language used by the supreme court in Rule 4-2 is mandatory, and going forward, we cannot overlook counsel's failure to comply with the rule requiring inclusion of "all material factual and procedural information contained in the record on appeal." Id. The requirement that a statement of case be included is not only for the benefit of this court to understand the case and facts, but the failure to include necessary facts can also limit an appellant's requested review of any opinion handed down by this court. Rule 2-3(h) of the Arkansas Rules of the Supreme Court states that "[i]n no case will a rehearing petition be granted when it is based upon any fact thought to have been overlooked by the Court, unless reference has been clearly made to it in the statement of the case and the facts prescribed by Rule 4-2."

I. Relevant Facts

On January 23, 2020, an arrest warrant for Self issued stating that reasonable grounds existed for believing that Self committed kidnapping (Class Y felony, Ark. Code Ann. § 5-11-102 (Repl. 2013)); first-degree battery (Class B felony, Ark. Code Ann. § 5-13-201 (Supp. 2021)); aggravated assault (Class D felony, Ark. Code Ann. § 5-13-204 (Supp. 2021)); and possession of firearms by certain persons (Class D felony, Ark. Code Ann. § 5-73-103 (Supp. 2021)). Self was arrested on January 24. On March 17, Self was charged with kidnapping (Class Y felony, Ark. Code Ann. § 5-11-102 ), as a habitual offender ( Ark. Code Ann. § 5-4-501 (Supp. 2021)).

On August 16, 2021, Self filed a motion to suppress the photographic identification and any in-court future identification. Self claimed that the photo lineup was of "six men, all of vastly different appearances."

The other men in the lineup had dark hair and facial hair except for the defendant, who has reddish-blond hair; thus, he argued, the lineup was unduly suggestive and likely to cause misidentification. Self also filed motions to exclude evidence regarding cell-phone records. After an omnibus hearing on August 20, the motions were denied.

Self's trial was held from August 24 to August 26, 2021. Kylie Goddard, who was twenty-two years old at the time of the trial, testified that she lived with her family in Benton and was employed at Boyd Metals, which is located near the airport in Little Rock, from September 2019 to January 2020.¹ Goddard worked Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 or 5:30 p.m. in the administrative office. On January 22, 2021, when her shift ended, she drove her regular route home. It was raining and getting dark, and as she was driving home, she noticed an older, dark-colored Chevrolet truck following "real close" behind her. The truck pulled up beside her while she was driving on I-30 and then slowed down and drove behind her again. She took the Alcoa Road exit, and for a short time, she could not see the truck; however, when she turned onto Helmich Road, she noticed that the same truck was behind her with a car in between them. Goddard turned onto Hart Road and was entering her driveway when the truck collided with her. As she was reaching for her phone to call her father, a man opened the driver's door, put a gun to her head, and told her to "get the fuck out of the car." The man grabbed Goddard by her left arm and pulled her from the car onto the ground, hitting her head against the door frame. Her attacker was wearing a black hoodie, dark jeans, and dirty boots. He dragged her on her back by her hair toward the truck, which she now noticed had four doors and was a "dark, grayish-black color." Goddard, who is five feet four and has martial-arts training, screamed and fought. As they grappled, Goddard pulled up her attacker's mask and saw his "gross ... not well taken care of teeth" and his beard, which was "very scraggly and not well cut or groomed, a lighter color." Goddard noted that he smelled of cigarettes and musty old clothes, was about six feet or six feet one, and had a "very thin, lankier" build. He punched Goddard in the face, hit her in the head with his gun, and grabbed her and forced her to the ground. Goddard escaped his grasp and sprinted up the driveway to the back door of her home. Her sister let her in the door, and she ran to the front of the house and collapsed. Goddard's father opened the front door as the truck was pulling out of the driveway. Goddard's face and mouth were bleeding and swollen, her chest and throat hurt, and she had sustained shoulder, neck, and head injuries.

Melissa Brewer testified that on the evening of January 22, she was driving home on Hart Road when saw "a man beating a girl on the ground while she was kicking and screaming" in Goddard's driveway. Brewer called 911 and followed the truck, keeping the operator apprised of their location. She described the truck as a "pewter gold colored" Chevrolet with damage to driver's-side back door. Brewer chased the truck in her car back and forth throughout the area near where the attack occurred. Brewer testified that she thought that the driver was white and had a beard, but she had not seen his face clearly. Later in the trial, a phone-records custodian for T-Mobile testified that cell-phone records showed that on January 22, 2020, from 4:58 to 5:52 p.m., Self's cell phone was communicating with the cell towers in and around the route from Boyd Metals to Goddard's home and the surrounding area.

Detective Jacob Dane of the Saline County Sheriff's Office arrived at Goddard's home around 6:00 p.m. and interviewed her. Detective Dane took photos of Goddard's injuries, and a crime-scene technician swabbed under her nails and took her clothes as evidence. Goddard, whose hair was dyed purple, gave a hair sample.² Goddard's father found a black knitted hat beside Goddard's car in the driveway and alerted the police, who collected the hat as evidence. The next day, Detective Dane showed Goddard six photos, one at a time, and then placed them as a group on the table. Goddard told Detective Dane that the man in photograph number five (Self) had the same light skin and lighter colored beard, though her attacker's beard was longer. Goddard stated that the man in photograph five looked like someone who worked in the warehouse at Boyd Metals, though she was used to seeing him with glasses, which the man in the photo was not wearing. She did not positively identify Self as her attacker, and she stated that the beard of the man in photograph number six was close in color but still not exactly the same. Detective Dane contacted the shop foreman at Boyd Metals who identified John Self as matching the description of Goddard's attacker. The foreman also stated that Self drove a truck matching the one Detective Dane described. Self was taken into custody at his home and was allowed to put on a hoodie before they left. At the police station, Detective Dane noticed purple hair on Self's hoodie. The jacket was folded and put into an evidence bag. The police took hair samples, fingernail swabs, and buccal swabs from Self, and his cell phone was seized. Photographs were taken of Self's four-door Chevrolet Silverado extended-cab truck, which had damage to the driver's-side back door and to the hood and front bumper.

Stan Landrum, a supervisor at Boyd Metals, testified that he noticed on January 22 that Self took a longer lunch than usual, about an hour and a half to an hour and forty-five minutes. Landrum recalled that Self's lunch began at 4:45 p.m. that day. Ricky Lenz, the foreman at Boyd Metals, testified that Goddard left work around 5:00 p.m. that day. Around 5:45 or 6:00, Lenz realized that Self was late coming back from lunch, so he texted Self to see where he was, and Self replied that he had hydroplaned into a ditch and had to get unstuck. Approximately fifteen minutes or so after he noticed Self's prolonged absence, around 6:15, Self arrived...