Washington high court vacates teenage girl's murder conviction over faulty evidence

(CN) — The Washington Supreme Court on Thursday vacated the murder conviction of a teenage girl because she didn’t understand the rights she waived before interrogation, and because the trial judge inconsistently included evidence from social media posts.

Chief Justice Debra Stephens wrote in the court’s decision that the case involved the application of centuries-old legal doctrines, including the waiver of constitutional rights and foundation requirements for evidence, in a contemporary context that involved two things the law hasn’t always adequately understood: young people and social media.

Lola Luna was sentenced to 14 years in prison after a jury found her guilty of second-degree murder for the 2021 killing of Syanna Puryear-Tucker outside Luna’s house in Bremerton, Washington. Both girls were 16 years old at the time and only knew of each other through social media.

Luna had gotten into a fight with a younger friend of Puryear-Tucker, identified as H.D. in the court’s opinion, in a mall five months earlier. H.D. texted Luna that she wanted to fight her on Jan. 30, 2021, and when Luna gave her address, she passed it on to Puryear-Tucker, who showed up at Luna’s door with some friends as well as her infant daughter.

The two girls got into a verbal altercation that turned physical when Puryear-Tucker started punching Luna in the head, and Luna stabbed Puryear-Tucker with her pocketknife. The fight lasted about one minute and was filmed by both Luna’s boyfriend and one of Puryear-Tucker’s friends on their phones.

In total, Puryear-Tucker punched Luna around 38 times and Luna slashed or stabbed Puryear-Tucker around 27 times, which proved fatal.

Luna was arrested soon after. At the police station, a detective read her a Miranda warning against self-incrimination, which she said she understood, before interrogating her.

It was only after being in the interrogation room for about five hours that Luna asked to speak to her mother and learned from her that Puryear-Tucker had died. At that point, she asked to speak to a lawyer.

Before the Washington Supreme Court, Luna argued that she didn’t sufficiently understand her rights at the time that she waived them.

At her trial, the prosecution had relied heavily on the evidence of the interrogation to prove intent. In its closing argument, the prosecution described Luna’s demeanor as “flippant” and “carefree,” and emphasized her seemingly inconsistent stories during the interrogation.

“It is fair to say the interrogation was the key piece of evidence supporting the state’s narrative that Luna was a calculated killer who had been waiting for the opportunity to stab someone, showed no remorse or shock after having done so, and deliberately constructed her story to fit a claim of self-defense,” Stephens wrote.

However, there’s a distinction between a defendant appearing to understand their rights and actually understanding their rights, the judge highlighted.

“Here, a number of objective facts weigh against finding that Luna actually understood her rights,” Stephens said. “She had recently turned 16 years old and had never been questioned or interrogated by police as a suspect before, let alone in a custodial setting. There was also no evidence Luna had ever been given a Miranda** warning or exercised her right to silence or counsel before the day of the interrogation.”

In addition, the judge noted, Luna had just been in a fight in which she sustained dozens of blows to her head. She testified that her head hurt and that she felt dizzy and light-headed at the time. Moreover, she claimed that she didn’t know how to request an attorney and that she thought she had to do what the detective told her.

The trial judge had allowed her interrogation to be introduced as evidence because Luna had been read a verbal Miranda warning, said that she understood it and was briefly checked by medical personnel who said she did not need further attention. But the Supreme Court opinion’s said that those facts reveal little more than the detective’s compliance with the minimum requirements of Miranda and the duty to provide medical attention to a person in police custody.

“Considering Luna’s testimony that she thought she had to do whatever the detective said, it can be inferred from these same facts that she did not feel comfortable voicing her confusion or asking questions of him, an older man in a position of authority and control over her,” Stephens said.

“While we give deference to the trial court’s assessment of testimony and credibility, we must also meaningfully review the record and hold the state to its heavy burden of proving that a defendant knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily waived their constitutional rights,” she added.

The court also took issue with the trial judge’s rulings that denied Luna’s bid to introduce evidence of a social media post that she received before the fight that showed that a “green light” had been put on her — street gang jargon for someone being targeted for assassination. This evidence would have boosted Luna’s claim that she had a knife on her because she was scared and acted in self-defense.

On the other hand, the judge allowed the prosecution to show the jury a TikTok video of Luna fighting with H.D. at the mall five months earlier and another TikTok video Luna posted around Halloween 2020 that referenced the movie “The Purge,” showing her stabbing a large knife toward the camera.

“The state relied heavily on this evidence, especially the Purge video, which it described as the most shocking of the character evidence it introduced,” Stephens wrote. “No other evidence gave the jury any indication that Luna fixated on specifically stabbing as a mode of inflicting violence. Without this evidence, the jury could have been more likely to believe Luna’s testimony that she routinely carries her pocketknife for protection.”

“The jury could still have rejected Luna’s self-defense argument and found that her repeated use of the knife was an unreasonable use of force, or that it was criminal negligence, supporting the lesser included charge of manslaughter in the second degree,” the judge said. “But, there would be significantly less evidence going toward Luna’s intent to kill, giving rise to a reasonable probability that the jury could have acquitted Luna of the second degree intentional murder charge.”

The court’s opinion also cited briefings by amici that, Stephens said, highlight the ways that youth, gender and race intersect to compound the prejudicial effects of the trial judge’s erroneous rulings. For example, she said, research shows that young girls are punished more harshly in the criminal justice system when they act inconsistent with societal expectations based on gender and race.

“Luna’s participation in a TikTok trend and joking comment on Instagram were offered and could be taken as serious evidence of her plan to murder someone; whereas for a young person of a different demographic they are more likely viewed as lighthearted jokes,” Stevens said. “The shock value of the evidence as counter to common narratives about girls could also have made the jury reluctant to believe Luna’s testimony that she carried her pocketknife on her for self-protection any time she left her house.”

Kitsap County Prosecutor Chad Enright had no immediate comment on the ruling. Attorneys for Luna didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The court recognized we must stop adultifying children, especially children of color,” said Sara Zier, director of legal services with TeamChild, a legal aid organization for young people that had filed an amicus brief on behalf of Luna. “Children are different. Our systems hold that tenuously. We need to reimagine and rebuild systems that respond differently at a core level.”

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