Opinion ID: 1240108
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Lenient Court Decisions Threatening Your Security

Text: LAST WEEK the King County prosecutor felt impelled to go before the Superior Court to recommend leniency for an elderly woman who admittedly had embezzled nearly $40,000 from her employers to hand over to a male friend. The prosecutor's reasoning was this: he found it inconsistent to send an aged woman to prison for stealing, considering that so many who have robbed at the point of a gun have been allowed to go free on probation. His point was well taken. By and large the local bench has developed an amazingly tolerant pattern in the handling of what used to be considered grave crimes. Granting probation for armed robbery, once unheard of, has become commonplace. Within one month before the elderly woman came up for sentencing three robbers had received probation from the courts. AMONG OTHERS who had received probation for robbery before them was a nineteen year old who confessed three filling station robberies in which he took along a fifteen year old helper. Another had held up a restaurant and left three employees bound with tape. Still another held up a food market and then a delicatessen at the point of a rifle. An ex-reformatory inmate from Ohio abducted a housewife in her own automobile and robbed her. All these criminals were granted probation. This is a dangerous pattern which feeds upon itself. Probations for serious crimes create precedent for further probations. Let's look at this curiously soft-hearted record further. Probation has been granted to dozens of death drivers. It was granted to a man who knocked down two women with his fists because he was brooding about an unhappy first marriage. Probation was given to a man who pleaded guilty to wiring a bathtub in which his wife received a near-fatal shock. Leniency was shown also to a man who shot in the back a process server who had served him with divorce papers. A 23-year-old burglar was given probation although he had already served two prison terms and was on parole when he committed his third known crime. In all but one of these cases the prosecutor recommended prison terms. But the courts saw fit to make it probation instead. THE LIST SEEMS endless, and it grows by the week. In one day seven men and a woman were brought before a judge for sentencing for various crimes: robbery, burglary, misappropriation of funds. Not one of the eight went to prison. The record further shows that long criminal records are no bar to probation. One such was up for a narcotics rap. He got probation, and the judge even got down off the bench to shake his hand. Within a year the criminal was back at the rail for participating in $20,000 worth of burglaries. We could go on with the sorry, incredible record, but this gives you an idea. The bench and bar might well contemplate what this crystallizing pattern does to the morale of police officers. They might well consider what it does to encourage others to crime. They might well think of the inherent dangers in this mounting record of probations. The quality of mercy is not strained, the poet said. It droppeth as a gentle rain from Heaven. Maybe so. But the bench of this region is certainly straining itself as to mercy, and probations are no gentle rain. They have become a downpour which threatens torrential damage to the peace and security of Seattle and the county. All three defendants moved for a change of venue or in the alternative for a continuance on the grounds that the jury members, who might have had access to the newspaper in question, would be prejudiced by reading this material. The editorial and cartoon, marked Defendants Exhibit One, were offered to the court solely for purposes of the motion and out of the jury's presence. Through inadvertence, this material went into the jury room with the other exhibits. [4] The prosecuting attorney subsequently stated in an affidavit that he had contacted three members of the jury who stated that they were not influenced in their deliberations by the editorial. Such a hearsay affidavit by counsel cannot be used to impeach a jury verdict. Cox v. Charles Wright Academy, ante p. 173, 422 P.2d 515 (1967). For similar reasons, a verdict cannot be sustained by such an affidavit. State v. Burke, 124 Wash. 632, 215 Pac. 31 (1923). The situation would be no different if the affidavits were those of the jurors themselves. State v. Adamo, 128 Wash. 419, 223 Pac. 9 (1924). [5] The newspaper material clearly should not have gone to the jury room. This court has stated that consideration of any material by a jury not properly admitted as evidence vitiates a verdict when there is a reasonable ground to believe that the defendant may have been prejudiced. State v. Burke, supra . See also State v. Boggs, 33 Wn.2d 921, 207 P.2d 743 (1949), and Marshall v. United States, 360 U.S. 310 (1959). In McCarthy, Fair Trial and Prejudicial Publicity: A Need for Reform, 17 Hasting L.J. 79 (1965), the author comments with approval on the Marshall holding that consideration by jury members of any material, the admission of which at trial would be reversible error, is inherently prejudicial. Here we have a case where not just the character of the defendant was attacked, but rather the alleged leniency of the judicial process in regard to criminals. The material published in the newspaper was clearly intended to influence the readers of it to be concerned about the purported leniency to alleged criminals of Seattle area judges. It was so calculated that it may well have evoked in jury members feelings or convictions of the necessity for being stricter and less careful about observing legal principles and procedure in dealing with defendants accused of crime. We think the material was very likely indeed to prejudice the cause of the defendants in this case. We cannot accept the state's argument that, since the material was marked as a defense exhibit, it would therefore, as a matter of course, be considered in the light most favorable to the defendants. Nor do we agree that defense counsel had a duty to check the exhibits before they went to the jury in view of the existing practice to the contrary. We are convinced that the defendants were unable to meet or cope with the prejudicial effect of the material. The jury had no guidelines or specific instructions regarding it. Under the circumstances, we will not speculate at great risk to the defendants. We feel compelled to assume that the requisite balance of impartiality was upset. We note particularly that this is not a case, such as State v. Adamo, 128 Wash. 419, 223 Pac. 9 (1924), where the jury was instructed not to consider the extraneous newspaper material, and could be presumed not to have done so, since it was a matter outside the evidence. Nor do we have a case, such as State v. Harris, 62 Wn.2d 858, 385 P.2d 18 (1963), where interrogation of the jury by the trial court established that no jury member had read the questionable portion of a newspaper article which was found in the jury room. In the instant case, the jury was in effect instructed to consider the very likely prejudicial material since it was marked as an exhibit and they were specifically instructed to consider all the exhibits. We can only presume that the members of the jury did as they were instructed. The convictions should be reversed and the case remanded for a new trial free from potential taint, by the extraneous material inadvertently before the jury in this case. It is so ordered. WEAVER, ROSELLINI, and HAMILTON, JJ., and BARNETT, J. Pro Tem., concur. May 29, 1967. Petition for rehearing denied.