Opinion ID: 2823789
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Anderson Remains Controlling Precedent

Text: Â¶11Â Â Â Â Â Â Andersonâs holding that a defendant waives his public trial right by not objecting to a known closure has not been abrogated by the United States Supreme Courtâs more recent authority in Waller and Presley. Waller adopted a four-part test that courts must satisfy before closing a courtroom over a defendantâs objection, see 467 U.S. at 48, and Presley explicitly confirmed that the public trial right extends to the jury selection process, see 558 U.S. at 213. Crucially, both cases addressed only closures that elicited contemporaneous objections, and so neither case affected Andersonâs longstanding waiver principle. Â¶12Â Â Â Â Â Â In Waller, the Court considered âthe extent to which a hearing on a motion to suppress evidence may be closed to the public over the objection of the defendant consistently with the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment right to a public trial.â 467 U.S. at 40â41 (emphasis added). The Court held that âunder the Sixth Amendment any closure of a suppression hearing over the objections of the accused must meet the tests set outâ in the Courtâs prior decisions. Id. at 47 (emphasis added). In reaching this conclusion, the Court specifically noted that â[o]ne of the reasons often advanced for closing a trialâavoiding tainting of the jury by pretrial publicityâis largely absent when a defendant makes an informed decision to object to the closing of the proceeding.â Id. at 47 n.6 (citation omitted). Thus, although Waller holds that a defendantâs public trial right is violated if the courtroom is closed over the defendantâsÂ objection and the Waller test is not satisfied, the Court expressly and repeatedly limited its holding to closures that elicited a contemporaneous objection from the defendant. 4 As such, Waller has no bearing on our public trial waiver jurisprudence as established in Anderson. Â¶13Â Â Â Â Â Â Subsequently, in Presley, the Court merely confirmed that the Sixth Amendment public trial right (and therefore Waller) extends to jury selection. Presley, 558 U.S. at 213. In that case, the Court specifically noted that âPresleyâs counsel objected to âthe exclusion of the public from the courtroom,ââ and it further declared that âthe accused does have a right to insist that the voir dire of the jurors be public.â Id. at 210, 213 (emphasis added). While this âinsistâ language may not affirmatively endorse Coloradoâs public trial waiver doctrine, it certainly does not forbid it. Thus, although Presley definitively confirmed that the Supreme Courtâs public trial jurisprudence applies to jury selection, it did not expand Wallerâs mandated test beyond known closures that elicit contemporaneous objections. Â¶14Â Â Â Â Â Â Indeed, the Supreme Court itself has recognized, albeit in dicta, that a defendant waives his right to a public trial by failing to object. See Peretz, 501 U.S. at 936 (citing Levine v. United States, 362 U.S. 610, 619 (1960), for the proposition that âfailure to object to closing of [the] courtroom is waiver of [the] right to public trialâ to support its conclusion that â[t]he most basic rights of criminal defendants are . . . subject to waiverâ). Therefore, because neither Waller nor Presley addressed waiving the public trial right by not objectingâand Peretz actually endorsed such a rule of waiverâ Colorado âmay determineâ whether a defendant who does not object to a known closure âis procedurally barred from seeking relief as a matter of state law.â See Waller, 467 U.S. at 42 n.2. In Anderson, we determined that such non-objecting defendants have affirmatively waived their public trial rights and are thus barred from seeking appellate relief in Colorado. 5 Â¶15Â Â Â Â Â Â Not only does Anderson remain viable in light of the Supreme Courtâs more recent precedent, but the rationale buttressing its waiver policy still stands strong. First, only a select few rights are so important as to require knowing, voluntary, and intelligent waiver to be personally executed by the defendant. See, e.g., People v. Davis, 2015 CO 36, Â¶ 15, __ P.3d __ (recognizing that only knowing, voluntary, and intelligent waiver is sufficient to waive the right to counsel). The right to a public trial is notÂ among these; if it were, then a judge would be unable to close the courtroom over the defendantâs objection despite satisfying the Waller test. See Robinson v. State, 976 A.2d 1072, 1082 n.6 (Md. 2009) (noting that if it were true âthat the right to a public trial cannot be waived by the defendantâs âinactionââ but rather required knowing, voluntary, and intelligent waiver, then a âdefendantâs refusal to make an âintelligent and knowingâ waiver of the right would preclude a trial judge from ever closing a courtroom, no matter the circumstances warranting closureâ). Rather, the right to a public trial âfalls into the class of rights that defense counsel can waive through strategic decisions.â Cf. Hinojos-Mendoza v. People, 169 P.3d 662, 669 (Colo. 2007) (holding the same regarding the right to confrontation). This is so because there are sound strategic reasons to waive the right to a public trial, as is particularly apparent in the context of Stackhouseâs jury selection for his trial on charges of sexual assault on a minor. For example, defense counsel may prefer closure to avoid âtainting of the jury by pretrial publicity,â Waller, 467 U.S. at 47 n.6, or may believe that potentially biased jurors will be more frank and forthcoming regarding their biases if jury selection is closed to the public, see Commonwealth v. Alebord, 4 N.E.3d 248, 255 (Mass. 2014) (noting that the defense attorney âacknowledged that he subscribed to the âtheoryâ that the privacy or secrecy of an individual voir dire is more conducive to obtaining candid answers from potential jurors, particularly in cases with racial or sexual undertonesâ), cert. denied sub nom. Alebord v. Massachusetts, 134 S. Ct. 2830. Moreover, the trial courtâs stated reason for closing a portion of Stackhouseâs jury selectionâto prevent family members and those connected with the trial from intermingling with a large juryÂ pool in a small courtroomâcould have inspired defense counsel here to consent to the closure out of concern that the victimâs family might communicate with the venire and potentially bias jurors against the defendant. See Anderson, 490 P.2d at 48 (closing the courtroom during voir dire to prevent family members from attempting to influence the jury); cf. Robinson, 976 A.2d at 1075 (same to prevent attempted influence of a witness). Therefore, because there are sound strategic reasons for a lawyer to waive a clientâs right to a public trial, the right is among those where â[d]efense counsel stands as captain of the ship.â See Hinojos-Mendoza, 169 P.3d at 669 (alteration in original) (quoting People v. Curtis, 681 P.2d 504, 511 (Colo. 1984)). Â¶16Â Â Â Â Â Â Second, âwe presume that attorneys know the applicable rules of procedure,â and we thus âcan infer from the failure to comply with the procedural requirements that the attorney made a decision not to exercise the right at issue.â Id. at 670. By the same token, it has long been the rule in Colorado that defense counsel must object to a known closure to preserve appellate review on public trial grounds. Anderson, 490 P.2d at 48. Allowing a defense attorney who stands silent during a known closure to then seek invalidation of an adverse verdict on that basis would encourage gamesmanship, and any ânew trial would be a âwindfallâ for the defendant, a result that the Waller Court explicitly tried to prevent.â See State v. Pinno, 2014 WI 74, Â¶ 61, 850 N.W.2d 207, 225; cf. Robinson, 976 A.2d at 1084 (treating the public trial claim as waived âgiven the possibility that Appellantâs lack of objection may have been the product of design, and the fact that the very analysis Appellant complains was not done by the trial court likely would have been done had he brought the matter to the courtâsÂ attentionâ). This concernâthat attorneys could intentionally not object to a closure as a strategic parachute to preserve an avenue of attack on appealâspecifically motivated our decision in Anderson and remains relevant today. See Anderson, 490 P.2d at 48 (âIt is apparent in this case that the defendantâs motion arose as the result of a guilty verdict and not because of the denial of a constitutional right. Only after the defendant was found guilty did hindsight cause defense counsel to decide that the defendant was denied a public trial.â). Therefore, because legitimate strategic considerations might motivate counsel to not object to a closure, and because such strategic decisions should not be permitted to provide an appellate parachute to non-objecting defense counsel if the defendant is convicted, Colorado has long treated defense counsel not objecting to a known closure as an affirmative waiver of the public trial right. We see no reason to deviate from Anderson now. 6