Opinion ID: 1737597
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: did the lower court commit reversible error by refusing to order john mack parker to testify as a witness in appellant's defense, thereby depriving appellant of a fundamentally fair and reliable trial in violation of the due process clause of the united states constitution?

Text: As noted earlier, John Mack Parker was one the five people arrested in connection with the McWilliams murders. At Jimbo Stringer's retrial, Parker was called as a witness by Stringer. On the stand, Parker invoked the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, claiming that if he testified, he feared that he would be opening himself up to possible prosecution for perjury. It was conceded by both sides that Parker had already pled guilty to a perjury charge based on prior testimony he had given at Jimbo Stringer's first trial. The trial court allowed Parker to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to testify. In lieu of Parker's live testimony, the trial court allowed both Stringer and the State to read into evidence virtually all of Parker's prior testimony from Stringer's first trial. Stringer now contends on appeal that the trial court erred by not requiring Parker to testify at the retrial. For two reasons, this claim by Stringer is meritless. Both the Mississippi Rules of Evidence and the Mississippi Code Annotated address attempts by a party at trial to use the testimony of one who has been convicted of perjury. Section 13-1-11 of Miss. Code Ann. reads as follows: § 13-1-11. Conviction, except for perjury or subornation of perjury, as no disqualification. A conviction of a person for any offense, except perjury or subornation of perjury, shall not disqualify such person as a witness, but such conviction may be given in evidence to impeach his credibility. A person convicted of perjury or subornation of perjury shall not afterwards be a competent witness in any case, although pardoned or punished for the same. (Emphasis added) Along much the same lines, Rule 601 of the M.R.E. reads as follows: RULE 601. GENERAL RULE OF COMPETENCY Every person is competent to be a witness except as restricted by Mississippi Code Sections 13-1-5 (competency of spouses) and 13-1-11 (persons convicted of perjury or subornation of perjury), or by these rules. (Emphasis added) Thus, the issue of Parker asserting his Fifth Amendment right not to testify is actually irrelevant to the disposition of this assignment of error. Under the clear and unequivocal language of § 13-1-11 and Rule 601, he was prohibited from testifying in the first place. Although Miss. Code Ann. § 13-1-11 and Rule 601 are dispositive of this assignment of error, they were, not surprisingly, barely mentioned in Stringer's brief. The focus of his attack under this assignment is instead the trial court's acquiescence in John Mack Parker's invocation of his Fifth Amendment rights. Unfortunately for Stringer, an examination of case law reveals that the trial court was not in error when it allowed Parker to claim the protection of the Fifth Amendment. From studying the record, Parker's specific concern appeared to be that statements he made at Jimbo Stringer's retrial might be used against him as the basis for new charges of perjury. When Stringer's counsel asked the trial court to force Parker to testify, the following exchange took place: BY MR. BUCKLEY: Our position is, Your Honor, that this Defendant  this witness, I'm sorry, has pled guilty to the offense charged here. He's pled, in fact, to the offense I wanna ask him about, in fact two of them. He's pled guilty to two and he's serving time on them. Also, at a former trial of this cause, as is reflected in the exhibit for identification, the last one, he was called and testified freely and voluntarily and then by those acts, he waived his right to claim the privilege against self-incrimination. BY THE COURT: He has no rights on self-incrimination as far as the offense arising out of the occurrence on June the 21st of 1982 since he has pled guilty to those charges. He does have the right to claim the Fifth Amendment as far as any possible perjury charges and you have not supplied me with the transcript of all of his testimony each time he's testified and if you expect me to rule, then you've got to furnish me with the benefit of those records. I cannot rely on my memory in that regard. In the absence of that, I'll have to rely on Mr. Parker's decision of whether his  any testimony he might give today could possibly result in a perjury charge. (Emphasis added) After further discussion, the trial court issued the following ruling: ... my ruling is that you cannot be forced to testify on anything that might result in a perjury charge ... that is, any testimony on a material point that varies from your previous testimony. The benchmark for analyzing Fifth Amendment issues in the present context is Hoffman v. United States, 341 U.S. 479, 71 S.Ct. 814, 95 L.Ed. 1118 (1951). In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court stated the following concerning the invocation of Fifth Amendment rights: The privilege afforded not only extends to answers that would in themselves support a conviction under a federal criminal statute but likewise embraces those which would furnish a link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute the claimant for a federal crime. ... But this protection must be confined to instances where the witness has reasonable cause to apprehend danger from a direct answer ... The witness is not exonerated from answering merely because he declares that in doing so he would incriminate himself  his say-so does not of itself establish the hazard of incrimination. It is for the court to say whether his silence is justified ... and to require him to answer if it clearly appears to the court that he is mistaken. ... However, if the witness, upon interposing his claim, were required to prove the hazard in the sense in which a claim is usually required to be established in court, he would be compelled to surrender the very protection which the privilege is designed to guarantee. To sustain the privilege, it need only be evident from the implications of the question, in the setting in which it is asked, that a responsive answer to the question or an explanation of why it cannot be answered might be dangerous because injurious disclosure could result. The trial judge in appraising the claim must be governed as much by his personal perception of the peculiarities of the case as by the facts actually in evidence. ... 341 U.S. at 486-87, 71 S.Ct. at 818, 95 L.Ed. at 1124 (citations omitted) (Emphasis added). See also, U.S. v. Whittington, 786 F.2d 644, 645-46 (5th Cir.1986); U.S. v. Goodwin, 625 F.2d 693, 700-01 (5th Cir.1980). This Court has cited Hoffman, supra, on more than one occasion. Both In re Knapp, 536 So.2d 1330, 1334 (Miss. 1988) and particularly Mississippi State Bar v. Attorney L, 511 So.2d 119, 123-24 (Miss. 1987) quote extensively the concepts first expressed in Hoffman. The Fifth Circuit has also addressed the issue of the extent of Fifth Amendment protection, holding that if the witness is still subject to prosecution for other crimes which his testimony might tend to reveal, the privilege remains. In re Bryan, 645 F.2d 331, 333 (5th Cir.1981). Another Fifth Circuit decision relied on heavily by the trial court is almost directly on point. In U.S. v. Wilcox, 450 F.2d 1131, 1141 (5th Cir.1971), the Court wrote the following: And so when a witness is asked a question that could show that he had already committed a crime, i.e., perjury at a prior trial, his refusal to answer is permissible almost by the definition of self-incrimination. He is still criminally accountable for his perjury, but he may not be convicted out of his own mouth over his claim of privilege. Thus the aphorism that one cannot take the Fifth Amendment on the ground that if he testifies he will perjure himself applies only as an excuse for not testifying initially. It does not mean that having once testified, the Fifth Amendment is not available to avoid giving further testimony which might expose the witness to substantial risk of prosecutions growing out of the prior testimony. The above-quoted passage from Wilcox mirrors the situation presented in the case sub judice. Parker apparently feared the effect of his testimony at Stringer's retrial, not because of the likelihood of further charges being brought against him for his role in the McWilliams' murders, but rather for possible perjury charges flowing from his testimony about the murders at Jimbo Stringer's first trial. Thus, under Hoffman and its progeny, the trial judge properly allowed John Mack Parker to exercise his Fifth Amendment rights. One final unique factor about this case bears mentioning at this point. Hoffman notes that when assessing a Fifth Amendment claim, a trial judge must be governed as much by his personal perception of the peculiarities of the case as by the facts actually in evidence. 341 U.S. at 487, 71 S.Ct. at 818. Or, as stated by the Fifth Circuit recently: [W]e are mindful that the trial judge necessarily is accorded broad discretion in determining the merits of a claimed privilege and the measures to be taken as [a] result of a valid fifth amendment claim. The judge must weigh the implications of the question, in the setting in which it is asked. U.S. v. Whittington, 786 F.2d 644, 646 (5th Cir.1986) (footnotes omitted). These statements are especially relevant in this case because the trial judge presiding at Stringer's retrial (Judge Coleman) also presided at the first trial. Although John Mack Parker is not on trial here, references in the record indicate that Judge Coleman presided at his trial as well. In fact, he was also the trial judge when James Stringer, Sr. was convicted of capital murder charges flowing from the same set of facts. Stringer v. State, 454 So.2d 468 (Miss. 1984) Under the circumstances, it is difficult to conceive of a situation in which a trial judge could be more intimately familiar with the circumstances surrounding an assertion of Fifth Amendment rights. This Court is of the opinion that this assignment of error is without merit. Under § 13-1-11 Miss. Code Ann. (1972) and Rule 601 M.R.E., Parker was incompetent to testify at Stringer's retrial due to his prior perjury conviction. Additionally, under the Fifth Amendment challenge presented by Stringer, Parker was properly allowed to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights by the trial court, and therefore, no error was committed.