Background
Shaquille Charles Oneal Hamilton shot his friend, identified by the court as Darius, in the face and chest after an escalating dispute. Hamilton admitted the shooting but claimed self-defense, testifying that Darius had threatened him, had previously carried guns and committed violent acts, and appeared to reach into his pocket during their confrontation. A jury convicted Hamilton of attempted first-degree intentional homicide with use of a dangerous weapon, and the circuit court imposed ten years of initial confinement followed by ten years of extended supervision.
Before trial, the circuit court allowed Hamilton to present four violent or threatening acts by Darius that Hamilton had personally witnessed. It excluded two incidents Hamilton had only heard about: Darius’s convictions arising from an assault and strangulation of his former girlfriend and his conviction for carrying a concealed weapon. After trial, two eyewitnesses, Paige Osborne and Jadvin Sanders, changed portions of their testimony and claimed that Darius had possessed a gun, that Sanders hid it after the shooting, and that Darius and Sanders had discussed killing Hamilton. A third witness, Robert Robertson, said Darius later admitted having a firearm. The circuit court found the recantations incredible and denied Hamilton’s motion for a new trial.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed. Assuming without deciding that the proposed evidence satisfied the four threshold requirements for newly discovered evidence, the court upheld the circuit court’s findings that Osborne’s and Sanders’s recantations were not credible, were internally and mutually inconsistent, conflicted with other testimony and the timeline, and lacked the required corroboration or other guarantees of trustworthiness. It also concluded that Robertson’s brief hearsay account, for which Hamilton identified no basis for admission at trial, did not create a reasonable probability of a different verdict.
The court also held that excluding the two additional McMorris incidents was a proper exercise of discretion. Although the circuit court’s reference to the test for other-acts evidence was imprecise, it applied the relevant inquiries by considering relevance, unfair prejudice, and cumulative proof. The excluded incidents were insufficiently similar to the confrontation at issue, risked becoming an improper attack on Darius’s character, and added little because the jury already heard about four incidents—including three involving guns—that Hamilton had personally witnessed.
Finally, the court declined to order a new trial in the interest of justice. Hamilton’s argument depended on the same recantation and evidentiary claims the court had rejected, so he did not establish that the real controversy had not been fully tried.
Key Takeaways
- A circuit court may reject recantation evidence as incredible, and an appellate court generally will not disturb that credibility determination unless it is clearly erroneous.
- Newly discovered recantation evidence must be corroborated, whether by other new evidence or by a feasible motive for the original false testimony together with circumstantial guarantees that the recantation is trustworthy.
- Evidence of a victim’s prior violent acts offered to support self-defense remains subject to relevance, unfair-prejudice, and cumulative-evidence limits.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores the difficulty of obtaining a new trial based on witnesses who materially change their accounts after conviction. Even testimony that would directly support self-defense may not justify retrial when the circuit court reasonably finds the new account inconsistent, inadequately corroborated, or motivated by a desire to help the defendant.
The unpublished per curiam opinion also illustrates the substantial discretion Wisconsin circuit courts retain when deciding how much evidence of a victim’s prior violence should reach the jury. Such evidence is not automatically admissible merely because the defendant knew about it and asserted self-defense.