State v. Coleman

543 P.3d 61

STATE of Kansas, Appellee,

v.Darnell D. COLEMAN, Appellant.

No. 124,223

Supreme Court of Kansas.

Oral Argument Held May 15, 2023.

Opinion Filed February 16, 2024.

Appeal from Sedgwick District Court; Tyler J. Roush, judge.

Jacob Nowak, of Kansas Appellate Defender Office, argued the cause and was on the briefs for appellant.

Matt J. Maloney, assistant district attorney, argued the cause, and Marc Bennett, district attorney, and Kris Kobach, attorney general, were on the brief with him for appellee.

The opinion of the court was delivered by Luckert, C.J.:

Darnell D. Coleman appeals his conviction of first-degree premeditated murder. Coleman asserts:

(1) The prosecutor who presented the State’s initial closing argument and a second prosecutor who presented an argument rebutting Coleman’s closing erred by making incorrect statements of law and fact about premeditation.

(2) The district court committed clear error by failing to give a modified jury instruction on premeditation approved by this court in State v. Bernhardt, 304 Kan. 460, 372 P.3d 1161 (2016), and State v. Stanley, 312 Kan. 557, 478 P.3d 324 (2020).

(3) The district court erred by failing to remove his trial counsel after a complete breakdown in communication.

(4) And cumulative error deprived him of a fair trial.

We reject most of Coleman’s claims but hold the prosecutors erred during closing argument. But prosecutorial error alone does not mandate reversal. Instead, we must consider the errors, individually and cumulatively, in the context of all closing arguments, the instructions, and the evidence and analyze whether the prosecutorial errors affected the jury verdict. After doing so, we conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the prosecutorial errors did not affect the verdict, and we affirm Coleman’s conviction.

Facts and Procedural Background

In October 2017, the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office responded to a call reporting a body found near railroad tracks in a remote, rural area. Officials determined Tamsen Kayzer was the victim.

Kayzer and Coleman had been in a long-term on-again-off-again, non-monogamous relationship. Kayzer’s two daughters described the relationship as abusive, toxic, and lacking in trust. One daughter told the jury that Coleman would "put his hands on [her mother] from time to time," although she was not asked to explain what that meant. The other daughter, when asked if she had ever observed Coleman become violent toward her mother, replied, "Yes." She also testified that her mother told her Coleman had been physically violent. One daughter testified that Coleman kept guns in a closet. She also reported seeing Coleman wearing a revolver in his waistband near the time her mother died.

The day before Kayzer’s body was found, Kayzer used Facebook to arrange a sexual encounter with someone other than Coleman. Coleman had access to Kayzer’s social media accounts and monitored her communications with others, which Kayzer knew. Coleman confronted Kayzer in Facebook messages about having sex with someone, which Kayzer denied.

Around 10 p.m. that same night, Kayzer went to the home of one of her daughters. Coleman showed up soon after. According to Kayzer’s daughter, Coleman seemed angry and asked whether Kayzer was "done now, are you finished now." Kayzer replied by asking what he was talking about. Coleman stared at her and left. About 15 minutes later, Coleman returned and asked if Kayzer was coming over to his house. Kayzer’s daughter interjected that Kayzer had agreed to take her granddaughter to Kayzer’s sister’s house, where Kayzer lived, to spend the night. Coleman drove off like he was mad. Kayzer’s daughter suspected her mother texted Coleman. After a while, Kayzer grabbed her cigarettes and phone and stepped outside. Her daughter was "pretty positive" her mother left with Coleman, and she estimated the time to be around 11 p.m. Security footage from a nearby apartment building showed Coleman and Kayzer getting into a Chevrolet Suburban around that time. About an hour and a half later, a passing train captured video of Kayzer’s corpse near the railroad tracks.

Kayzer suffered five bullet wounds, three in or near her chest and two to the face. Stippling on her clothing and body suggested Kayzer was shot at close range. The crime scene investigator believed Kayzer was first shot twice in the face and later in the chest, but the coroner could not determine the order in which the wounds occurred.

Evidence collected from the scene included Kayzer’s phone and a piece of mail addressed to Coleman’s daughter. No bullet casings were found, suggesting someone collected them or the killer used a revolver.

One of Kayzer’s daughters identified Coleman as a potential suspect. Law enforcement went to Coleman’s apartment and observed a blue Suburban with what appeared to be blood splatter. The Suburban was registered to Coleman’s mother. Investigators found envelopes, mail, and other papers throughout the car. Later testing would confirm the blood on the Suburban was Kayzer’s.

A search of Coleman’s apartment uncovered a box of ammunition that could be fired from a revolver. The box was missing six shells.

Law enforcement searched Kayzer’s phone and discovered a locally stored copy of a Facebook confrontation between Kayzer and Coleman the night she died. Someone accessed Kayzer’s Facebook account after she died and deleted this conversation, but the effort failed to delete the copy stored on her phone. An internet protocol address belonging to Coleman logged into Kayzer’s account after her death.

Law enforcement also pulled cell phone location data for Coleman’s and Kayzer’s phones. Around 11:23 p.m., Coleman’s cell phone pinged to a cell phone tower located near the location officers found her body.

At Coleman’s trial, the defense used the testimony of Casheena Hadley to explain the presence of Kayzer’s blood on Coleman’s Suburban. Hadley testified she was dating Coleman around the time of Kayzer’s death. She also told the jury about an incident between her and Kayzer that happened two days before Kayzer’s death. According to Hadley, the confrontation started with a verbal exchange, but it became physical. Hadley hit Kayzer in the nose and mouth. Kayzer then spat her blood towards Hadley, who was up against Coleman’s Suburban. Hadley also claimed Coleman slept at her place the night Kayzer died. This testimony differed from her statement to law enforcement the day after Kayzer’s death. In her out-of-court statement, she told investigators that she slept alone the night of Kayzer’s death.

Coleman testified in his own defense. He recalled the fight between Hadley and Kayzer, and testified he saw blood after Hadley hit Kayzer. Moving to the night of Kayzer’s death, he explained that he hosted a barbecue at his house. Around 10 or 10:30 p.m., Coleman drove his son home. Coleman then testified about a series of interactions he had with Kayzer that night: After picking up drugs for Kayzer, he picked her up and took her to his house for the barbecue. While at his house, he gave her the drugs, and she asked him for a pipe. When he said he did not have one, Kayzer asked him to take her to her sister’s house so she could take a bath and get a pipe. He dropped her off, thinking she would later contact him. She did not call, nor did he.

Coleman conceded that he, and no one else, possessed his phone after he drove Kayzer to her sister’s house. Coleman threw away his cell phone the morning after Kayzer died.

The State called Kayzer’s sister on rebuttal. The sister was home the night Kayzer died. She was expecting Kayzer to come over with her granddaughter and stayed up until around 2 a.m. waiting. Kayzer never came.

The jury convicted Coleman of one count of first-degree premeditated murder. The district court imposed a hard 50 life sentence. Coleman timely appealed. Jurisdiction is proper. See K.S.A. 60-2101(b) (Supreme Court jurisdiction over direct appeals governed by K.S.A. 2022 Supp. 22-3601); K.S.A. 2022 Supp. 22-3601(b)(3) (direct appeals to Supreme Court allowed for life sentence crimes).

Analysis

Coleman presents four arguments. The first two are based on errors arising from attempts to explain the meaning of premeditation to the jury. First, Coleman alleges error arising from the prosecutors’ arguments about premeditation. Second, he complains the trial judge gave the standard pattern instruction on premeditation and did not expand it to include other language this court has approved. He makes this argument even though he did not ask the trial judge to give an expanded explanation. Coleman, in his third claim, contends the judge should have appointed new counsel for him because he could no longer effectively communicate with his trial counsel. Fourth, Coleman argues that if the individual errors do not lead us to reverse his conviction, we must do so because cumulatively they denied him a fair trial.

At the heart of Coleman’s first, second, and, to some extent, his fourth claims, is the concept of premeditation. A brief discussion of premeditation will help frame these claims.

[1, 2] Premeditation is "a factual element that relates to the conditions under which the culpable mental state of intent was formed." Stanley, 312 Kan. at 568, 478 P.3d 324. Those conditions include "both a temporal element (time) and a cognitive element (consideration)." 312 Kan. at 573, 478 P.3d 324. By this we mean that premeditation "requires a period, however brief, of thoughtful, conscious reflection and pondering—done before the final act of killing—that is sufficient to allow the actor to change his or her mind and abandon his or her previous impulsive intentions." 312 Kan. at 574, 478 P.3d 324.

These concepts were reflected in the pattern jury instructions the trial judge gave the jury. One defined premeditation as "to have thought the matter over beforehand, in other words, to have formed the design or intent to kill before the act." PIK...