Appeals court: Kinder correct in Reynolds 20-year sentence

Now-retired Senior Judge Byron Kinder didn't make a mistake in December 2012 when he allowed the prosecutor to use screenshots of a cell phone's call logs during Terrill Reynolds' trial, a state appeals court ruled Tuesday.

A Cole County jury convicted Reynolds of first-degree robbery, armed criminal action and unlawful possession of a firearm, and Kinder ordered a 20-year sentence on each charge - all to be served at the same time.

Prosecutors filed the charges - and a grand jury later indicted Reynolds - after witnesses identified him as the man who stole $495 from a cab driver in the 800 block of East Elm Street in Jefferson City, after the cab had picked up Reynolds and two women at a McDonald's parking lot at about 3 a.m. on Nov. 20, 2011.

At the beginning of the police investigation, the cab company provided the phone number of the caller requesting the ride from McDonalds. An officer called the number, but no one answered.

During the 2012 jury trial, a Jefferson City police officer testified a cellphone Reynolds had at the time of his arrest - a few hours after the robbery - had the same number as the one used to call for the taxi prior to the robbery.

The appeals court's opinion Tuesday noted: "The officer also testified that he examined the cellphone's contents by scrolling through its menus and then took screenshots while reviewing the call log in front of a video camera."

Reynolds' public defender trial attorney objected to the screenshots being used as evidence, telling Kinder, "...they are hearsay. They are not business records that can be certified."

But Kinder allowed the evidence, and an officer later testified the call log showed the phone received a call from the police department on the date of the robbery.

Reynolds' appeals attorney, Sam Buffaloe of the public defender system's appeals unit in Columbia, argued Kinder abused his discretion as a judge by allowing the screenshots as evidence.

But, citing a 1999 appeals court ruling on a similar issue, Appelate Judge Lisa White Hardwick wrote Tuesday: "The call logs obtained from Reynolds' cellphone are not hearsay because they were not statements made by a human declarant.

"The call logs were generated by the phone itself as a result of incoming and outgoing calls."

Hardwick's eight-page opinion also cited the testimony that the call logs "showed the phone had a missed call from the police department on the date of the robbery ... consistent with testimony that an officer had called the phone number provided by the taxi company prior to Reynolds' arrest. The officer's testimony helped to establish the reliability of the logs by confirming that the data was created by the computerized operation of the phone and not by human entries."

Additionally, she wrote for the three-judge panel: "Even without the call logs, the evidence was more than sufficient to support the jury's finding that Reynolds was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."