Opinion ID: 613588
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Adequacy of the Appellate Division's Finding

Text: The record pertaining to the state trial judge's request that Clarke leave the courtroom is, to say the least, poorly developed. To begin with, there is no clear contemporaneous record that the trial judge in fact ordered Clarke's exclusion from the courtroom. After Downs was convicted and sentenced, Downs's counsel and his mother submitted affidavits to the Appellate Division alleging that the trial judge ordered Clarke to leave the courtroom because of his age. Even assuming, as we do, that Clarke was excluded by order of the trial court, the record is ambiguous as to whether Downs raised an objection, acquiesced in the exclusion, or merely took issue with the judge's prediction that Clarke would disturb the proceedings. His counsel note[d] for the record that there was a young man who ... had been asked by the Court to leave because of his age, and note[d], for the record, that ... the young man is a suitable age and that he would not have been an obstruction to the proceedings. But counsel also explained he had informed the family of that and [was] sure they [would] comply, then turned immediately to other matters. By making the comment, counsel arguably acquiesced in the order excluding Clarke, and thereby necessarily failed to register the protest required by Section 470.05(2). It is equally unclear whether counsel's statement was directed to the court's failure to make the findings required by Waller or instead reflected a factual disagreement with the judge's off-the-record prediction that Clarke would disturb the trial. If, as we believe, the latter seems more likely since counsel never referred to the judge's lack of findings that might justify the exclusion, then counsel failed to preserve the specific claim Downs advanced on appeal. See Whitley, 642 F.3d at 286 (to preserve a question of law for appeal, the defendant must `specifically focus on the alleged error' (quoting Garvey, 485 F.3d at 714)). In any event, counsel failed to solicit comment from the prosecutor or judge during his statement. Cf. People v. Pollock, 50 N.Y.2d 547, 429 N.Y.S.2d 628, 407 N.E.2d 472, 474 (1980) (argument not preserved by vague objection without disputing prosecution's assertion or requesting a hearing). The dissent relies principally on three decisions to assert that the Appellate Division does not require a specific form of objection in order to find a Sixth Amendment public trial claim preserved for appeal. In two cases, however, defense counsel used either the term objection, People v. Martinez, 568 N.Y.S.2d at 941, or the phrase I object, Brief of Defendant-Appellant, 2002 WL 34359549, at , People v. Richardson, 744 N.Y.S.2d at 407 (quoting trial transcript in which counsel states I object to the court not allowing them to stay in the courtroom). In the third case, the prosecutor and the trial court immediately understood defense counsel's statement to constitute an objection, and the court observed, So you have an objection to that. People v. Spence, 239 A.D.2d 218, 657 N.Y.S.2d 645, 646 (1st Dep't 1997). [3] Downs argues, and the dissent asserts, that he nevertheless complied with the requirements of Section 470.05(02) by twice employing the phrase on the record. He claims that the phrase is a shorthand form of implied objection contemplated by the rule. Were we sitting as judges of the Appellate Division, we may well have found Downs's claim preserved. But it is not the province of a federal habeas court to reexamine state-court determinations on state-law questions. Estelle, 502 U.S. at 67-68, 112 S.Ct. 475. Without a clear indication that New York courts have consistently construed statements for the record as forms of objection, we are hard pressed to say that the Appellate Division's ruling reflected or imposed an extreme, novel, or unforeseeable requirement `without fair or substantial support in prior state law.' Walker, 131 S.Ct. at 1130 (quoting 16B Charles A. Wright, et al., Federal Practice and Procedure § 4026 (2d ed.1996)); see also Garcia, 188 F.3d at 82 ([A]s we can discern `no pretence that the [state] Court adopted its view in order to evade a constitutional issue, and the case has been decided upon grounds that have no relation to any federal question, [we will] accept[] the [state court] decision whether right or wrong.') (quoting Wolfe v. North Carolina, 364 U.S. 177, 195, 80 S.Ct. 1482, 4 L.Ed.2d 1650 (1960)) (alteration in original). Given the ambiguity of counsel's comments and the limited state-court record, the Appellate Division had a legitimate basis to conclude that Downs's Sixth Argument claim on appeal was not preserved. In addition to its basis in the record, the Appellate Division's finding that Downs's public trial claim was not preserved for appeal was grounded in legitimate state interests. In general, New York's contemporaneous objection rule seeks to ensure that `parties draw the trial court's attention to any potential error while there is still an opportunity to address it,' and to prevent those who fail to do so from `sandbagging' the opposing party and the trial court on appeal. Whitley, 642 F.3d at 288 (citations omitted) (quoting Cotto, 331 F.3d at 245, and Garcia, 188 F.3d at 82). If the court acknowledges an objection to a ruling but persists in the ruling, the objection is likely preserved. Under the circumstances, we may regard the Appellate Division's decision not to review Downs's public trial claim as reinforcing New York's interest in motivating parties to prompt judges to justify a courtroom exclusion and, more generally, to create a fully developed trial record. In People v. Martinez , for example, the Appellate Division found a public trial objection preserved for appeal when the trial court specifically responded to defense counsel's sarcastic question, [W]ould you declare a mistrial if I had an objection? by saying, I'm going to do what I'm going to do anyway.... 568 N.Y.S.2d at 941. Here, by contrast, the trial court offered no response at all to counsel's statement about Clarke. We cannot say that the Appellate Division's ruling that Downs failed to preserve his claim, like the state court ruling in Lee, serve[d] no perceivable state interest in this case, 534 U.S. at 378, 122 S.Ct. 877 (internal quotation marks omitted), or represented an unyielding application of the general rule regarding objections. Cotto, 331 F.3d at 246. Far from representing an exorbitant application of New York law, the Appellate Division's ruling reflects important state interests in demanding more of counsel than arguable acquiescence. Our conclusion by no means forecloses the possibility that, in a different context, a state court's rejection of a federal Sixth Amendment claim may rest on an exorbitant application of a state procedural bar. As an example of such a result, we need look no further than Lee, where the Supreme Court held that the Missouri state court's application of a rule requiring written motions for a continuance to deny the defendant's federal due process claim was exorbitant. 534 U.S. at 366, 122 S.Ct. 877. This appeal, however, differs from Lee in three important respects. [4] First, in contrast to the state court ruling in Lee, which demanded formally perfect compliance with the state's procedural rule without regard to its underlying objectives, the Appellate Division's ruling here advanced New York's legitimate interest in prompting counsel to call the court's attention to [the error] and permit [the court] to correct what counsel believes is an erroneous ruling. Narayan, 444 N.Y.S.2d 604, 429 N.E.2d at 126. Without more, we cannot describe the Appellate Division's holding as requiring perfect compliance with the contemporaneous objection rule. Second, while in Lee, no published Missouri decision demand[ed] unmodified application of the Rules in the urgent situation Lee's case presented, 534 U.S. at 387, 122 S.Ct. 877, New York courts regularly deny claimed violations of the Sixth Amendment public trial right based on insufficient objections. [5] Third, we cannot confidently say, as the Supreme Court did in Lee, that the defendant substantially complied with the state's key [r]ule. Id. at 382, 122 S.Ct. 877. Doing so would ignore the real possibility that Downs acquiesced in the trial judge's order or that his statement addressed the trial court's assumption that Clarke would disturb proceedings rather than its failure to make the Waller findings. Indeed, the dissent acknowledges that perhaps counsel acquiesced in the order excluding Clarke, but explains that it is much more likely, in my view, that defense counsel was objecting. Even if we agreed with the dissent that its characterization of counsel's statement was more likely, the existence of a plausible contrary view leads us to conclude that the application of the rule is not exorbitant. Because the finding of non-preservation fell within the boundaries of the normal application of New York's contemporaneous objection rule, and the finding serves legitimate state interests and is reasonable in light of the limited record evidence, it precludes federal review of Downs's Sixth Amendment claim. Unlike the Missouri court's decision in Lee, the Appellate Division's application of New York law in this case fails to rise to the level of exorbitance. See Lee, 534 U.S. at 376, 383, 122 S.Ct.877 (describing application of Missouri's written application rule as bizarre in light of the extraordinary circumstances presented by that case). Finally, relying on the Supreme Court's per curiam decision in Presley v. Georgia, ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 721, 175 L.Ed.2d 675 (2010), Downs argues that the contemporaneous objection rule cannot be used to bar review of his Sixth Amendment claim because the trial court was independently required to justify and consider alternatives to the courtroom closure, even without an objection from Downs. Whatever tension exists between a court's independent duty to justify courtroom closure and the contemporaneous objection rule, Presley and its predecessors do not resolve it in Downs's favor. In Presley, the Court held that trial courts are required to consider alternatives to closure even when [the alternatives] are not offered by the parties, but specifically noted that the trial court in that case erred when it closed the courtroom over the defendant's objection. Id. at 724 (discussing Waller, 467 U.S. at 45, 48, 104 S.Ct. 2210; Press-Enter. Co. v. Super. Court of Cal., Riverside Cnty., 464 U.S. 501, 511, 104 S.Ct. 819, 78 L.Ed.2d 629 (1984)). Similarly, in Waller, the Court held that under the Sixth Amendment any closure of a suppression hearing over the objections of the accused must meet the tests set out in Press-Enterprise and its predecessors. 467 U.S. at 47, 104 S.Ct. 2210 (emphasis added); see also Press-Enter., 464 U.S. at 503, 104 S.Ct. 819 (objection by newspaper to courtroom closure under First Amendment). As both Presley and Waller involved a trial court's response to a registered objection, neither decision requires courts to justify or consider alternatives to closure when, as the Appellate Division reasonably found here, no objection is made.