Opinion ID: 2380238
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Motion for Funds

Text: The defendant claimed at a motion for new trial that the jury may have been improperly influenced by two events. First, at the trial, an inmate of the Somerset County jail testified out of the jury's presence that the defendant admitted shooting his wife. The State withdrew this proffered evidence. The defendant argued at the hearing that one or more of the jurors may have been exposed to any newspaper stories describing the inmate's testimony. [18] Additionally, the defendant stated that on the day before the jury deliberations, a television program dealing with techniques of crime investigation was broadcasted locally. One segment of the show depicted the autopsy of a person who had been shot in the head. The similarity of the circumstances displayed in the program to the physical facts of this case was thought to create the possibility of juror prejudice. Consequently, the defendant requested funds to subsidize an investigation into the possibility. The court rejected the motion. Here, the defendant claims error in this ruling, framing, for the first time in the case, the issue as a denial of equal protection. Relying on State v. Curtis, Me., 399 A.2d 1330 (1979), which found constitutional error in the denial of funds for a transcript of a suppression hearing to be used for impeachment purposes at trial, the instant defendant claims that the denial of funds to permit an investigation into juror prejudice unconstitutionally imposed a hurdle to an effective defense or appeal which would not be present if the defendant could himself afford to undertake such an investigation. We conclude, however, that the court below was not presented with a sufficient basis to conclude that such an investigation would be necessary. The trial judge is charged with making a threshold inquiry into whether potential prejudice exists as a result of publicity generated by the proceedings. State v. Bazinet, Me., 372 A.2d 1036, 1039 (1977). Further, [o]nly where potential prejudice is determined to exist should the presumption of actual prejudice arise and the duty of the court to voir dire attach. Id. It is clear that the mere publication of extraneous information revealed during the course of trial cannot by itself create a presumption of actual prejudice and the resulting need to voir dire. Id. Further, the news report causing concern to the defendant has not been made part of the record on this appeal; it was not offered to the trial court during the motion for a new trial; indeed, defense counsel made no attempt to describe with any particularity its contents. The defendant bears the burden of demonstrating that a new trial is warranted. See Carver v. Lavigne, 160 Me. 414, 421, 205 A.2d 159, 163 (1964); London v. Smart, 127 Me. 377, 379, 143 A. 466, 467 (1928); see also 58 Am.Jur.2d New Trial § 200 (1971). We cannot say that the defendant has presented a basis compelling the court below to find the existence of potential prejudice and thus a need to investigate that possibility. Cf. United States v. Oliver, 626 F.2d 254, 260 (2nd Cir. 1980) and Mason v. Arizona, 504 F.2d 1345, 1352 (9th Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 420 U.S. 936, 95 S.Ct. 1145, 43 L.Ed.2d 412 (1975), examining 18 U.S.C. § 3006A(e). One final point relating to the media report deserves note. The witness, whose testimony was assertedly the subject of the news story, appeared in court on February 13, 1981, five days before the jury began its deliberations. If defense counsel became aware of the news report within that five day period and had informed the court about it, the court could then have taken any measure it deemed necessary to inquire into the existence of actual prejudice and to cure such defects, for example, by substituting the tainted juror with an alternate, if such defects were found to exist. Yet the defendant did not account at the hearing for his failure to raise this matter at trial when remedial measures were available, without the need for the expense and burden of a new trial. He has thus failed to satisfy his burden, see Carver, 160 Me. at 421, 205 A.2d at 163; London, 127 Me. at 379, 143 A. at 467, of presenting a properly postured basis compelling the court to allow inquiry into the need for a new trial. Cf. Brown v. People, 138 Colo. 354, 356, 332 P.2d 996, 998 (1958) (motion for new trial properly denied where allegedly prejudicial incidents, involving communications between the State's witnesses and jurors, were not brought to the court's attention until the motion for new trial was filed). The television program portraying the autopsy is postured somewhat differently in the motion for new trial than the news account, because defense counsel explicitly represented to the court that it had not come to her attention any earlier than the commencement of the jury's deliberation. Further, defense counsel described the contents of the program in greater detail than that of the news report. The court was thereby made susceptible to a more knowledgeable appreciation of the nature of that program and of its effect on the members of the jury, if seen by them. On the basis of the description presented below, however, we find that the court could properly conclude that the program did not create potential prejudice. Medical and other official testimony presented by the State in this case described in occasionally graphic detail both the condition of the victim's body when it was discovered and the autopsy performed on it, including an account of how the bullet fragments were retrieved from the skull and isolated from brain and other cranial matter. Because the court could properly find that the program would not, in this light, create potential prejudice among the jurors, there arose no duty to inquire into the existence of actual prejudice. See Bazinet, 372 A.2d at 1039. Accordingly, the court's ruling that an independent investigation by the defendant into that possibility was unwarranted was also a proper one and cannot form the basis for a claim of constitutional error. Cf. Oliver, 626 F.2d at 260; Mason, 504 F.2d at 1352.