Opinion ID: 1515746
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Constitutional, Procedural, and Evidentiary Challenges

Text: The defendant also complains of various constitutional, procedural and evidentiary errors with respect to various rulings of the District and Superior Courts. For the reasons that follow, however, we decline to address the merits of these arguments, because defendant failed to preserve them for our review. The defendant complains, for example, that this private prosecution violated his due process, separation of powers, and equal protection rights under the Rhode Island and United States Constitutions. Whatever merit these contentions may have in some other case, we hold that defendant waived his right to raise these constitutional challenges to this private prosecution. By failing to raise any of these defenses or challenges to the complaint before trial, defendant could not assert them for the first time in a post-trial motion to arrest the judgment. Rule 34 of the Superior Court Rules of Criminal Procedure provides two independent grounds to arrest a judgment: [1] if the indictment, information, or complaint does not charge an offense or [2] if the court was without jurisdiction of the offense charged. Rule 34, however, does not permit a defendant to obtain belated review of any constitutional defenses or challenges that could have and should have been raised earlier. Thus, defendant's untimely assertion of alleged constitutional violations fails under our well-established raise-or-waive rule. See State v. Pineda, 712 A.2d 858, 861 (R.I.1998); see also Super. R.Crim. P. 12(b)(2). [14] To be sure, we previously have recognized an exception to the raise-or-waive rule for issues implicating basic constitutional rights. See In re David G., 741 A.2d 863, 866 (R.I.1999); State v. Mastracchio, 672 A.2d 438, 446 (R.I.1996). But to fall within this exception, the defendant must show: (1) that the error complained of amounts to more than harmless error; (2) that a sufficient record exists to permit a determination of the issue; and (3) that counsel's failure to raise the issue [before trial] must be premised upon a `novel rule of law that counsel could not reasonably have known during the trial.' State v. Donato, 592 A.2d 140, 142 (R.I.1991) (quoting State v. Estrada, 537 A.2d 983, 987 (R.I.1988)). In this case, however, defendant failed to satisfy this third element because the constitutional issues that he argued for the first time in his post-trial arrest-of-judgment motion were far from novel and were present in this case from its inception in both the District and Superior Courts. Further, we can fathom no reason why they could not have been raised in a timely pretrial motion, as Rule 12(b)(2) requires. The mere fact that in Rhode Island private prosecutions have not been squarely challenged previously on constitutional grounds does not render these questions novel for purposes of the exception to the raise-or-waive rule. Cf. In re David G., 741 A.2d at 866 (refusing to apply exception to permit post-trial constitutional challenge to sex-offender-registration statute). Therefore, we are unable to pass upon the merits of these untimely constitutional challenges. The defendant next argues that the withdrawal of his jury-trial waiver in the District Court occurred without his consent and deprived him of his right to be tried in the first instance in District Court pursuant to Rule 23. We are unable to address the merits of this contention, however, because it, too, has not been properly preserved for our review. This Court will not review issues when the appellant fails to preserve his or her objection or to provide us with an adequate record of the proceedings below. See Pineda, 712 A.2d at 860-61. Here, we have not been provided with anyrecord evidence that defendant ever raised a trial objection to the challenged procedure, much less have we been given any transcripts of the proceedings relating to this contention or other documentation that would substantiate defendant's position on this issue. Nor have we been provided with any other record support for the conclusion that defendant now asks us to reach. In addition, the conduct of defendant below simply belies the argument that he now presses before us. On the contrary, he permitted the Superior Court trial to proceed to judgment without once mentioning or raising any objection to the procedure by which the Superior Court acquired jurisdiction of the charges. Indeed, at no time before he was convicted in the Superior Court did defendant ever raise this issue by motion or by other means. Pursuant to Rule 12 and our well established raise-or-waive rule, we deem this issue to be foreclosed on appeal. See State v. Saluter, 715 A.2d 1250, 1258 (R.I.1998) (It is axiomatic that `this [C]ourt will not consider an issue raised for the first time on appeal that was not properly presented before the trial court.') (quoting State v. Gatone, 698 A.2d 230, 242 (R.I.1997)). Third, a portion of the defendant's motion for new trial argues that the private prosecutrix did not comply with the discovery requirements of Rule 16 of the Superior Court Rules of Criminal Procedure. The defendant, however, has also waived this contention. Although he now alludes to certain discovery requests that Mrs. Cronan and the attorneys who prosecuted this case supposedly ignored, the record contains no motion to compel compliance with any of defendant's discovery requests; nor did he otherwise object to the prosecution's alleged nondisclosure of requested information in any way that would have alerted the trial justice to the prosecution's supposed discovery failings. See Super. R.Crim. P. 16(g)(3), (i). Thus, defendant may not press these objections here when they were available for him to raise before or at the trial, yet he neglected to do so. See State v. Anderson, 752 A.2d 946, 948 (R.I.2000) (According to our well-settled `raise or waive' rule, issuesthat present themselves at trial and that are not preserved by a specific objection at trial, `sufficiently focused so as to call the trial justice's attention to the basis for said objection, may not be considered on appeal.') (quoting State v. Morris, 744 A.2d 850, 858-59 (R.I.2000); and State v. Bettencourt, 723 A.2d 1101, 1107 (R.I.1999)). Finally, defendant argues that the trial justice erred in admitting certain propensity evidence at trial in violation of Rule 404(b) of the Rhode Island Rules of Evidence. At trial, however, defendant never lodged an objection to the admission of the evidence about which he now complains. Therefore, under our well-settled and oft-repeated raise-or-waive rule, defendant may not argue this point now. See State v. Rieger, 763 A.2d 997, 1004 (R.I.2001).