Jurors in Cheatham retrial won't hear testimony of lead detective
Jurors won’t hear transcribed testimony by the lead detective, who died three years ago, during the retrial of Phillip D. Cheatham Jr., a district court judge ruled this week.
The ruling is the second adverse decision suffered by prosecutors in the Cheatham retrial in the past two months.
On Sept. 24, Shawnee County District Court Judge Richard Anderson ruled jurors wouldn’t hear Cheatham’s rap song during his retrial.
Prosecutors contended the song was a confession to killing the two women in Cheatham’s capital murder case. Cheatham attorneys said it was just music about murder and mayhem and wasn't linked to truth. Anderson questioned the reliability of the lyrics as evidence.
The Cheatham retrial is scheduled to start on Feb. 17, 2015, and is expected to last six weeks.
Prosecutors had sought to have the testimony of Sgt. Lou Randall, the lead detective during Cheatham's first capital murder trial in 2005, read as evidence during Cheatham’s retrial.
Randall died in September 2011 at age 57.
Chief deputy district attorney Jacqie Spradling filed a motion in March asking Anderson to find that Randall wasn’t available to testify and to admit the detective’s testimony from Cheatham's first trial.
John Val Wachtel, a Cheatham defense attorney, opposed admission of Randall’s testimony.
When a witness isn’t available to testify in a trial, his testimony from an earlier trial or hearing can be read to the jury under certain circumstances.
Cheatham attorneys opposed admitting Randall’s testimony, saying it would violate Cheatham’s Sixth Amendment right to confront the witness face to face.
Cheatham defense attorneys said the defendant’s attorney in the earlier trial was denied exculpatory or impeachment evidence required to be disclosed by the prosecution.
“In this respect, Detective Randall committed perjury during a suppression hearing in State vs. Stokes,” Anderson said in a decision issued Tuesday. In that case, the defendant, Raphael Stokes, was charged with robbery.
Quoting a Kansas Court of Appeals decision in State vs. Stokes, Cheatham defense attorneys said Randall committed perjury when he testified during the criminal case of Stokes.
“Because the perjured testimony of Detective Randall from the Stokes case was not provided to or obtained by defense counsel before the first trial, Mr. Cheatham was denied an opportunity to consider how such information could be used for cross-examination of Detective Randall as well as an opportunity to actually use such information during cross-examination of Detective Randall,” Anderson ruled.
Without having Randall available to “confront,” the disclosure of the perjured testimony “is now useless,” Anderson said.
Cheatham didn’t have the opportunity to cross-examine Randall during the first trial about the “recent disclosure of Detective Randall’s perjured testimony in the Stokes case,” Anderson said.
“By permitting the trial testimony of Detective Randall to be used in the upcoming trial, the defendant would be denied his right to confront the witness face to face,” Anderson wrote.
Cheatham is charged with capital murder in the Dec. 13, 2003, shooting deaths of Annette Roberson and Gloria A. Jones; two alternative counts of premeditated first-degree murder of Roberson and Jones; attempted first-degree murder of Annetta D. Thomas; aggravated battery of Thomas; and criminal possession of a firearm.
A new trial was ordered for Cheatham, 41, in 2013 after the Kansas Supreme Court overturned his capital murder conviction and death penalty sentence for the killings of the two women in a home at 2718 S.E. Colorado.
http://m.cjonline.com/news/2014-12-1...0ago#gsc.tab=0
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