State v. Taylor, II, Minn.S.Ct., 8/26/2015. A jury convicted Mr. Taylor, II of first degree murder and two counts of attempted first degree murder. Mr. Taylor, II drove his crew, alleged members of a gang, around looking for a rival gang member. In what turned out to be a mistaken belief that the guys had found this rival, two of the guys got out of the car and started shooting. One teenager died, one was wounded. Neither was the rival gang member being sought.
Two of the three who were riding around with Mr. Taylor, II reached plea deals with the state and testified against Mr. Taylor at trial. Three jail informants also testified against him. Two jail phone calls by Mr. Taylor II were admitted into evidence: one in which he expressed regret for not bailing out and taking off; the other in which he seemingly discussed an alibi defense with his girlfriend. Mr. Taylor, II also testified in his own defense. He denied having anything to do with the shootings and he denied any gang affiliation. In response, the state put up a gang expert who had examined two photographs already admitted into evidence without objection. In one photo, Mr. Taylor, II appeared to be displaying a symbol associated with the gang that the state said he belonged to. In the other he was displaying a sign that was disrespectful of the rival gang whose member they had been searching for on the night of the shooting
The jury convicted Mr. Taylor, II of all counts. On appeal, he presented eight errors:
(1) it excluded from the courtroom members of the public that did not have photographic identification; (2) it excluded evidence supporting an alternative motive of the eyewitnesses; (3) it admitted testimony from a gang expert identifying Taylor as a gang member; (4) it gave jury instructions on aiding and abetting liability that did not include certain elements; (5) it did not sua sponte instruct the jury that appellant’s prior convictions could only be used for impeachment purposes; (6) it violated his right to a speedy trial; (7) it admitted a note protected by attorney-client privilege; and (8) it admitted prison phone call recordings.
The trial court established a set of rules for spectators at trial, one of which was to show photographic identification before being allowed entry into the courtroom. Mr. Taylor, II did not object to this rule and there was nothing in the record by which to determine whether this identification rule was enforced and, if so, whether anyone who sought to enter the courtroom without a photo ID could not do so. This was enough for Justice Lillehaug, with only Justice Page dissenting, to say, "No harm, no foul."
The court treated this photo ID requirement as a partial closure of the courtroom even though there was no proof that any closure actually occurred. In past opinions, the court has disapproved the exclusion of a defendant's brother and cousin from the courtroom, State v. Mahkuk, 736 N.W.2d 675 (Minn. 2007; and disapproved the exclusion of all spectators during the testimony of two minor victims of sexual assault, State v. Fageroos, 531 N.W.2d 199 (Minn. 1995). In each of those cases the court had determined that the trial court had failed to make adequate findings to support the closure decision. In two other instances, however, the court approved what it characterized as "partial closures" of the courtroom during a trial. In State v. Brown, 815 N.W.2d 609 (Minn. 2012), the trial court had locked the doors during closing arguments but without clearing the place of spectators already there. And, in State v. Lindsey, 632 N.W.2d 652 (Minn. 2001), the trial court had excluded underage spectators. In those cases, the supreme court had concluded that these sorts of partial closures were "too trivial" to amount to a violation of the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a public trial.
Justice Lillehaug ducks the question whether the rule, itself, is a violation of a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a public trial. The Justice, instead, reframes the issue to ask whether anyone got excluded from the courtroom by operation of the rule. This put the Justice in the rather awkward, if not unseemly, position of condoning the practice of requiring a photo ID in order to enter a public courtroom. After all if the rule, itself, violates the Sixth Amendment then there's no reason to start counting heads to see who got in and got sent home.
The Justice's reasoning gets even more fuzzy. The justice finds no evidence that the photo ID rule had either been enforced or had resulted in anyone's exclusion, yet he, nonetheless, still looks to "partial closure" opinions to decide the reframed question. The court concludes that although the record says that not one person got excluded the situation was more like Brown and Lindsey than the other cases. That is, there was a "closure" but it was "trivial." The Justice did chastise the trial courts that they should not require a photo ID as a condition of entry to the courtroom "unless there is good cause and no reasonable alternative ..." Again, this implicitly condones the practice of carding people in order to get into a public courtroom.
This all got Justice Page to dissent, warning that the court was on a "march" to limit public access to the courts. Justice Page pointedly observed that since permitting the the courtroom closure in Brown there have been nine petitions for review that have challenged a trial court's decision to close or lock the courtroom doors despite cautioning the trial court to take such action "carefully and sparingly."
Mr. Taylor, II wanted to ask his two co-defendants who testified against him whether they had a motive for the shootings that did not involve him. The trial court denied this request. Justice Lillehaug assumed without decided that this was an error but concluded that it was harmless. Mr. Taylor, II also complained about the admission of testimony from the gang expert. Again, the court assumed that admitting this evidence was error and then concluded that it was harmless.
Next, Mr. Taylor, II complained about the instruction on accomplice liability even though he hadn't objected to it at trial. He said on appeal that the trial court should have instructed the jury that his presence at the shooting "did aid the commission of the crime." This language was added to the pattern jury instructions after Mr. Taylor's trial, in apparent response to State v. Mahkuk, which identified two factors for determining whether a defendant's presence "intentionally aids" another in committing a crime: that the defendant knew that the alleged accomplices were going to commit a crime, and the defendant intended his presence or actions to further the commission of that crime. Justice Lillehaug says that the court has never required such language and then goes on to make it abundantly clear that the criminal jury trial instructions committee needs to go back to the drawing board and remove this "did aid" language.
The trial court also instructed on "expansive" liability for the crimes of another - other foreseeable crimes - but failed to say that other crimes committed had to be reasonably foreseeable by Mr. Taylor. Justice Lillehaug said that this omission does not require automatic reversal, especially on a plain error standard of review. The court also rejected Mr. Taylor's assertion that the instructions should have specified the original intended crime.
Justice Lillehaug upholds the trial court's failure to give the jury a limiting instruction following admission of Mr. Taylor's prior convictions for impeachment purposes. The problem was, Mr. Taylor hadn't request this instruction. The court rejected Mr. Taylor's pro se claim that he had been denied his right to a speedy trial. His trial had not commenced until over 100 days after the demand so there is a presumption that a violation had occurred. Only one of the delays in starting trial was attributable to the state. On whether Mr. Taylor, II suffered prejudice from the delay the only possibility here was impairment of his defense. The court rejected Mr. Taylor's argument that he was prejudiced because the delay gave the state the opportunity to secure plea agreements with his co-defendants.
Finally, the court rejects Mr. Taylor's pro se claim that introduction of a note seized from his jail cell which described one of the guys who was in the car with him as a "lying snitch ass" violated attorney-client privilege, accepting the trial court's finding that the note did not communicate anything to defense counsel regarding his case. The court also upheld the admission of the two jail phone calls, and his "cumulative error" claim.
No comments:
Post a Comment