Opinion ID: 179299
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Court's Mention of Prior Convictions During Voir Dire

Text: Mr. Hall complains of the district court's denial of his motion for a mistrial after it disclosed to the jury during voir dire that he had two prior bank-robbery convictions. The disclosure was made as the court read the indictment to the jury. Count 3 of the indictment, the felon-in-possession count, stated that Mr. Hall had been convicted in 1984, of Bank Robbery... and, in 1992, of Armed Bank Robbery and Use and Carry of a Firearm in Connection with a Crime of Violence. R., Vol. 1 at 31. To avoid the prejudice to him from informing the jury of the specific offenses that he had been convicted of, Mr. Hall stipulated with the government that he was a prior convicted felon prohibited under federal law from owning or possessing firearms. See Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172, 117 S.Ct. 644, 136 L.Ed.2d 574 (1997) (defendant charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm may stipulate to the fact of his prior conviction and thereby preclude the government from putting on evidence of the conviction to prove the predicate felony). The court therefore should have informed the jury only of the stipulation. The court, however, read the indictment to the jury verbatim. Defense counsel brought the mistake to the court's attention and moved for a mistrial. He conceded that he had always intended to bring up Mr. Hall's 1992 conviction in voir dire, but he was concerned by the court's reading of the 1984 conviction. The prosecutor did not oppose a mistrial. The court, however, thought a mistrial was unnecessary. It observed that the evidence of the convictions might be admitted, because it had not yet ruled on the government's pending motion under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), to allow evidence of Mr. Hall's prior robberies to prove preparation, common scheme or plan, and identity. Although the prosecutor then informed the court that she was abandoning her Rule 404(b) motion, she said that if Mr. Hall testified, she might seek to elicit the prior convictions to impeach Mr. Hall on cross-examination under Federal Rule of Evidence 609, which permits evidence of conviction of a crime to attack a witness's character for truthfulness. After a recess during which it reviewed the law, the court decided to deny the motion for a mistrial on the assumption that the government's case is overwhelming, Trial Tr., Doc. 149 (Excerpts from Voir Dire) at 6; but it left open the possibility that Mr. Hall could renew his motion. It is not disputed on appeal that the district court erred in disclosing the prior convictions. And declaring a mistrial at that very early stage of the trial would probably have been the advisable course. But that conclusion does not end our analysis. We will not reverse a conviction if the alleged error was harmless. See Fed. R.Crim.P. 52(a). An error is harmless if it did not affect the substantial right of the accused. United States v. Patterson, 561 F.3d 1170, 1172 (10th Cir.2009) (internal quotation marks omitted). A nonconstitutional error affects a substantial right if it has a substantial influence on the trial's outcome or creates a grave doubt as to whether it had such effect. United States v. Rivera, 900 F.2d 1462, 1469 (10th Cir. 1990) (internal quotation marks omitted). Mr. Hall's concern is disclosure of the 1984 conviction. But because, as we shall see, evidence of that conviction was later admitted at trial anyway, the disclosure of that conviction during voir dire did not affect Mr. Hall's substantial rights. The district court's error was therefore harmless, and its failure to grant a mistrial did not prejudice Mr. Hall. Evidence of the 1984 conviction was elicited during Mr. Hall's testimony. Just before he began testifying, defense counsel stated his intention to bring out the 1992 conviction on direct examination (presumably to avoid the evidence having greater impact if first elicited during the government's cross-examination) and asked if the court would be willing to take a break before completion of direct testimony to rule on whether the government could impeach him under Rule 609 with the 1984 conviction. The court agreed, and defense counsel then proceeded to question Mr. Hall about the 1992 conviction for a 1990 bank robbery. In fact, he also asked Mr. Hall about two other bank robberies in August 1990which the government had agreed not to prosecute in exchange for his 1992 guilty plea. Mr. Hall admitted that he committed those robberies and that he had pleaded guilty to using a firearm in connection with one of them. During the anticipated break the parties debated the admissibility of evidence of Mr. Hall's 1984 conviction. In addition to arguing that it was admissible as impeachment under Rule 609, the prosecutor argued that it was admissible to rebut a contention of defense counsel in his opening statement. Defense counsel had said: We indicated in voir dire that Mr. Hall had committed bank robberies before and he'll tell you that. And he will say that he spent a lot of time in prison for that. And he would not in 2006 at this time of his life, rob a bank by using his own car and parking right behind the bank with his own tag, that there's no way on earth he would do that. Trial Tr., Doc. 150 at 23-24. This argument, the prosecutor asserted, opened the door to questioning Mr. Hall about prior bank robberies that shared similarities with the MidAmerican Bank robbery. She noted in particular that in two of the prior bank robberiesthe one in 1984 and one in 1990Mr. Hall had driven his vehicle to the robberies, had used a mask or otherwise concealed his identity, and had used a gun. The court ruled that the 1984 conviction was too old to be admissible for impeachment under Rule 609, but that evidence of prior robberies could be used to rebut the contention by defense counsel in his opening statement. When defense counsel asked for clarification of the ruling, the court stated: The only ones I'm letting in are where he was driving a car that he wasand it would refute [defense counsel's] argument. Id., Doc. 148 (Hall Testimony) at 55. Defense counsel then elected to bring out the 1984 conviction in Mr. Hall's direct testimony. He admitted to having used his mother's car in the 1984 bank robbery, but asserted that at his present stage in life, he would never park [his] own car out back behind a bank and go in and rob it. Id. at 58. Thus, evidence of both the 1984 and 1992 bank robberies was admitted at trial. The district court's mention of these during voir dire told the jury nothing that it did not later learn, so Mr. Hall was not prejudiced. Denial of his mistrial motion was harmless. Perhaps anticipating this response to his argument, Mr. Hall contends that the prior-crime evidence was elicited only because he elected to testify, and that he would not have testified if the court had not mistakenly mentioned his 1984 conviction during voir dire. We are not persuaded. First, Mr. Hall never suggested to the district court that his decision to testify might be affected by whether it would lead to admission of the 1984 conviction. His pretrial notice of alibi stated that he would testify. At that time the district court had not ruled on whether the 1984 conviction would be admissible under either Rule 609 or Rule 404(b). Mr. Hall suggests that if he had known that the government would abandon its motion to introduce evidence of the 1984 conviction under Rule 404(b), he would have chosen not to testify. But that suggestion is not credible. He was certainly aware that if he testified, he would be impeached with evidence of the 1992 conviction (defense counsel never argued against its use for impeachment and even told the court at the time of the mistrial motion that he intended to mention the 1992 conviction during voir dire) and presumably counsel had also been preparing to elicit on direct examination that Mr. Hall had committed two other bank robberies in 1990. Even if Mr. Hall thought that evidence of the 1984 conviction would be harmful and he would prefer to have it excluded, it is impossible to believe that the threat of the admission of that evidence would deter him from testifying when the admission of evidence of his three other bank robberies would not. The additional impeachment could not have been a significant factor in his deciding whether to testify. In any event, were we to assume that Mr. Hall would not have testified if the district court had not mistakenly mentioned the 1984 conviction in voir dire, he is still not entitled to relief. The court's error that allegedly compelled him to testify is ground for reversal only if there is a grave doubt that the outcome of the trial would have been different had he not testified. Patterson, 561 F.3d at 1172 (internal quotation marks omitted). But we are convinced that he would have been convicted anyway. As he stated in his notice of alibi, he was the only witness who would testify to the alibi. And without the alibi defense (probably, even with it), the evidence was so overwhelming that any reasonable juror would have found him guilty. In other words, any error in inducing him to testify was harmless.