The nation’s highest court will hear oral argument Wednesday as it reviews a 2008 Kansas Supreme Court ruling announcing that the testimony of a jailhouse informant was not admissible at trial “for any reason.”
A decision to uphold the Kansas ruling would effectively bar the introduction at trial of incriminating statements made by a criminally charged defendant to an informant, including statements recorded on audio or video tape.
The California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation has filed a “friend of the court” brief in Kansas v. Ventris, arguing that the Kansas decision misinterprets Supreme Court precedent to exclude evidence that should be permitted.
The case involves the robbery and murder of a Montgomery County, Kansas man. In January 2004, Donnie Ray Ventris and his live-in girlfriend, Rhonda Theel, devised a plan to rob Ernest Hicks, an acquaintance Theel claimed always carried a lot of cash.
The pair were driven to Hicks’ home by a witness who testified that Ventris put on a ski mask while Theel went and knocked on the door. After one or both of them shot and killed Hicks, Ventris and Theel left the scene with Hicks’ wallet, approximately $300, his cell phone and his pickup truck. At trial, both Ventris and Theel accused the other of killing Hicks.
In rebuttal to Ventris’ testimony, his cellmate, Johnnie Doser testified that Ventris told him that he “and his girlfriend, Rhonda, had went to rob somebody and that it went sour. He’d shot this man in the head and chest. That he took his keys, his wallet, about $350, and took a vehicle.” Doser admitted that the police placed him in Hicks’ cell and told him to keep his ears open. The defense unsuccessfully objected to the testimony as unconstitutional.
After an instruction from the judge warning it to consider the testimony of both Theel and Doser with caution, the jury found Ventris not guilty of the murder, but convicted him of aggravated robbery and burglary. Ventris was later sentenced to 23.4 years. In 2008, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that Doser’s testimony was unconstitutional because he had been planted in the cell by police after Ventris was charged, which the Court concluded violated his Sixth Amendment right to an attorney. When the U. S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the state’s appeal, the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation joined the case. The Foundation is seeking a decision to overturn the Kansas court’s ruling, arguing that it establishes a blanket prohibition against incriminating statements to an informant by a defendant, after he has been charged with a crime. The Foundation argues that this prohibition goes beyond Supreme Court precedent which allows the testimony of a person who overhears a defendant’s uncoerced, voluntary confession.
“There are cases where the testimony of a jailhouse informant provides the jury with important corroborating testimony,” said attorney Lauren Altdoerffer, who authored the CJLF brief. “A reliable confession recorded by an informant wearing a wire would be excluded by the Kansas decision just because the attorney was not present,” she added.
