Opinion ID: 2372935
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the trial court's failure to recuse at the second trial

Text: If the judge said at the sentencing after the first trial, as is claimed, that he would impose the death penalty on the appellant if he could, but that the law did not allow him to do so, surely this implies bias and the trial judge should have then recused himself from the second trial. Perhaps, the trial judge could make such a statement and not be biased, but at the least it has such a strong appearance of bias that the judge should have recused himself before the second trial. The trial judge's statement that he did not recall making the alleged statement suggests that he was not denying it. We have on the one hand an affidavit that the statement was made, and on the other hand a statement that the trial judge could not see himself making the statement attributed to him. This is too much of an appearance of bias for this Court to tolerate, especially in a case with the checkered history of this one, wherein the decision of the trial court was questioned in a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision ( Crane v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 683, 106 S.Ct. 2142, 90 L.Ed.2d 636 (1986)), and we have been twice appealed and reversed in federal courts: one time for approving the trial court's conduct of the trial, and, after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed us, a second time for declaring the trial court's error harmless. This was a case where the trial judge should have recused himself to avoid the appearance of bias even if he was not consciously aware of bias. COMBS, J., joins this dissent. REYNOLDS, J., joins this dissent as to Issues I and II.