Opinion ID: 2285207
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: pretrial publicitydue process

Text: After the jury had been selected but before they were sworn Haskins requested that the jurors be examined on the voir dire with respect to claimed prejudicial articles which appeared in two newspapers. One story, which related an alleged brawl at the Bridgeport jail involving Haskins and Alston, quoted a prison guard as saying that Haskins and Alston had committed a vicious, unprovoked assault on a guard there. The other story reported on the elaborate security measures being taken at the courthouse because of the violent history of the [Black Liberation Army]. The court, referring to its earlier explicit precautionary instructions to the jurors, denied the motion. After being chosen, each juror was clearly and specifically instructed by the court not to discuss the case with anyone and not to read anything about it in the newspapers. Haskins claims that the court's refusal to conduct an inquiry with the jurors respecting the newspaper stories denied him due process of law. A claim of constitutional violation is frequently easier to make than to substantiate. What we said in State v. Siberon, 166 Conn. 455, 458-59, 352 A.2d 285 (1974), in a different context applies with equal force here: In his brief, the defendant claims that this ruling [denial of motion for mistrial] constituted a denial of his `right to an impartial trial.' Significantly, no claim is made by the defendant that any juror did, in disregard of the court's instructions, read any newspaper article concerning the case, or that the defendant was in fact in any way prejudiced. His claim is based entirely upon the assertion that jurors absent from the deliberation room `are bound to come in contact with such written and/or spoken material' and `[t]his could result in some form of influence upon one or more individual jurors' judgment, and if this happens, the possibility of an impartial jury disappears in that particular case.' As Mr. Justice Holmes observed over sixty years ago in Holt v. United States, 218 U.S. 245, 251, 31 S. Ct. 2, 54 L. Ed. 1021 [1910]: `If the mere opportunity for prejudice or corruption is to raise a presumption that they exist, it will be hard to maintain jury trial under the conditions of the present day.' Haskins does not claim nor is there anything about the stories to suggest that had they come to the attention of one or more of the jurors the court could not have diluted their impact with a curative instruction without offending due process. The trial court's refusal to make inquiry of the jurors respecting the stories in question raises no issue of constitutional dimension. To raise the duty of inquiry by the trial judge to a constitutional level it is not enough for the defendant to show that the information contained in the newspaper article is inadmissible or even that it is arguably prejudicial. A constitutional duty to conduct an inquiry will arise if the character of the information contained in the newspaper article is such that it would so taint the proceeding that no curative instruction could effectively avert the prejudicial effect. See State v. Hawthorne, 176 Conn. 367, 372-73, 407 A.2d 1001 (1978); State v. Santello, 120 Conn. 486, 490, 181 A. 335 (1935). Prejudicial material that is inflammatory or that is closely related to the case on trial could qualify. The articles here, though arguably prejudicial, did not meet the requisite standard and therefore did not trigger a constitutional duty to conduct the requested inquiry.