The Kentucky Supreme Court has unanimously reversed a 2019 guilty verdict against Karen Brafman, who was convicted of arson and attempted murder, ruling there was flagrant prosecutorial misconduct by Commonwealth’s Attorney Rick Boling during the one-day trial.
A jury found Brafman guilty of first-degree arson, second-degree arson and six counts of attempted murder and gave her a life sentence. She allegedly set fire to a mobile home on Princeton Road with six people inside, including four children, in May of 2018.
Brafman maintained that she was high on meth and ecstasy when she reportedly set two fires underneath the mobile home. The Supreme Court ruled she “was denied a fair trial when the Commonwealth, aware of Brafman’s intoxication, opposed the intoxicated-defense instructions and implied to the jury Brafman was not intoxicated.”
Brafman’s defense presented a private lunchtime conversation recorded by the courtroom microphones between Boling and KSP Arson Detective Scott Steward as evidence in its appeal.
Boling tells Steward he considered calling him back to the stand after initial testimony to ask if Brafman looked like she was high on the morning of the fire when she was questioned.
Steward reportedly responded, “Well, she was out of her frickin’ mind,” and Boling laughed and said “That’s why I didn’t ask that question.”
During his closing arguments later that day Boling asserted, “It’s not drugs, it’s not high. Not one single witness testified to you that she appeared under the influence, intoxicated, drugged or anything.”
The Supreme Court in its ruling says “We think that considering the closing argument, the prosecutor engaged in misconduct constituting palpable error warranting reversal.”
The court called the misconduct flagrant because “the Commonwealth’s Attorney went a step further by directing the jury away from what he knew was both material to the case and true, asserting emphatically that no one testified to Brafman’s intoxication.”
The Supreme Court concludes saying, “The prosecutorial misconduct was flagrant enough to render the trial fundamentally unfair, simultaneously leading the jury to conclude facts contrary to the known facts of the case while depriving Brafman of an ability to present her defense to the jury.”
Justices also reversed the court’s hate crime designation for the charges, declaring there was no evidence that Brafman started the fires directly as a result of prejudice against the African-American man or biracial children who lived there.
The ruling also indicates the trial court should not have allowed two phone calls and an unauthenticated text message screenshot to be admitted as evidence, but asserts those calls likely didn’t sway the jury’s decision.
Brafman was represented in her appeal by the Department of Public Advocacy and the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office is now representing the Commonwealth.
Click HERE to read entire opinion.