State v. Everson: A jury convicted Everson of aiding and abetting the murder of his mother. Everson, as well as the two codefendants who testified against him, gave recorded statements to the police. In addition to their trial testimony, the statements of the two codefendants were played for the jury and then the recordings were admitted into evidence as exhibits without objection. The court also permitted the playing of Everson’s recorded statement and it admitted the recorded statement of Everson as an exhibit.
After deliberations commenced, the jury asked to hear the recordings of Everson and the two codefendants. Various ruminations ensued over how to do this after defense counsel objected, arguing that to permit replaying of the recordings would unduly prejudice defendant.
When a jury makes a request such as this, the court “should” consider three factors:
(i) whether the material will aid the jury in proper consideration of the case;
(ii) whether any party will be unduly prejudiced by submission of the material; and
(iii) whether the material may be subjected to improper use by the jury.
State v. Kraushaar, 470 N.W.2d 509, 515 (Minn. 1991); see also Minn. R. Crim. P. 26.03, subd. 19(2) 1 and 2 (setting forth appropriate procedures to address a jury’s request to review evidence and indicating that trial court has discretion to provide the jury with other relevant evidence). The defense objection was that replaying the recordings would cause undue prejudice. The court overruled the objection generally, but without engaging in any analysis of the three factors above listed. The appellate court thus had no findings by the trial court with respect to the three Kraushaar factors. Consequently, the appellate court assumed that it was error to have played the recordings; so, at a minimum, the case does not stand for the proposition that the procedure utilized here was not error. Having glossed over any error analysis, the appellate court simply moved onto an analysis of whether the error was harmless. That analysis doesn’t stake out any new territory.
In Kraushaar the Court had held that the error was harmless, in part, because replaying the tape merely “allowed the jury to rehear what it had already heard,” the videotape was consistent with and corroborated by other evidence in the trial, and it was extremely unlikely that replaying the tape prompted “the jury to convict where it otherwise would not have done so.” Here, Justice Gildea parroted that language in finding that any error was harmless. There were no dissents to this holding.
The additional objection raised on appeal was to the procedure by which the jury got to listen to the recordings again. On this part of the Opinion, there is a 4-3 split (but for different reasons). As mentioned, the court and the parties ruminated over how to do the redo. Here are the rules that the court and the parties eventually came up with:
- Playing of the recordings would take place only in the courtroom.
- If the jury asked to hear any of the three recordings it would be required to listen to it in its entirety. [The Opinion does not state that the jury asked to hear only portions of any of the statements so the propriety of such a request was not before the court.]
- The jury could only re-hear a statement once.
- Playing of the recordings would be part of deliberations, although it would take place in the courtroom. This rule meant: The judge would not be present; the court reporter would not be present; counsel (by agreement) would not be present; the defendant (by agreement, including a personal waiver) would not be present; and the public would not be present.
However, there would be an employee of the county attorney’s office present to operate the laptop on which the recordings would be played; and a court clerk would be present. On appeal, the argument was that this was no different, if not worse than, the judge sticking her head into the jury deliberations room to inquire about evening adjournment plans. State v. Mims, 306 Minn. 159, 235 N.W.2d 381 (1975); Brown v. State, 682 N.W.2d 162, (2004). The majority concluded that this procedure was not a “structural error” that required, without regard to harmless error analysis, a new trial. [Errors that are structural “require automatic reversal because such errors ‘call into question the very accuracy and reliability of the trial process.’ ” State v. Brown, 732 N.W.2d 625, 630 (Minn. 2007),[internal citation omitted].]
Three Justices dissented from this last part of the procedure. Justice Anderson agreed with the majority that this aspect of the procedure was not “structural” and thus requiring automatic reversal for a new trial, but he thought that a remand was required to develop a record of just what occurred while the county attorney employee played the recordings; he thought that the appellate court should not blithely assume that everything was okay. Justices Meyer and Page, on the other hand, concluded that the presence of a county attorney employee and/or a court clerk intruded upon the secrecy of the jury’s deliberations and was thus structural with the automatic reversal flowing from that conclusion. Justices Meyer and Page were also alarmed by the violation of the secrecy requirements of jury deliberations, and by the exclusion of the public. The courtroom should not be converted into a de facto deliberation room.
The Opinion gives no real acknowledgment to the rule, 26.03, S. 19(2), that covers this pretty well. A jury that requests to review evidence shall be conducted to the courtroom, whereupon the court may permit the review. It is now, apparently, at least not plain error to suspend this rule and go off road. Whether it is error to engage is this procedure awaits another day.
No comments:
Post a Comment