Opinion ID: 1853099
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: assignment of error number 1 defendant's being banished from the courtroom throughout the trial [1]

Text: The Confrontation Clause of the sixth amendment of the United States Constitution provides that in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to be confronted with the witnesses against him. The fourteenth amendment makes the guarantee of this clause obligatory upon the states. Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 85 S.Ct. 1065, 13 L.Ed.2d 923 (1965). Perhaps the most basic of the rights guaranteed by the Confrontation Clause is the accused's right to be present in the courtroom at every stage of his trial. Lewis v. United States, 146 U.S. 370, 13 S.Ct. 136, 36 L.Ed. 1011 (1892). In the context of this case this fundamental right would have permitted the defendant to face and observe the state's witnesses who came forth and testified about earlier line-up identifications and identified the defendant at trial as the armed robber. The right of confrontation is not absolute, however, as the Supreme Court of the United States stated in Illinois v. Allen, 397 U.S. 337, 90 S.Ct. 1057, 25 L.Ed.2d 353 (1970). Therein, in its review of a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision which had in effect held that there was an absolute right of the defendant to be present at all stages of the proceedings, 413 F.2d 232 (1969), the United States Supreme Court held that a defendant can lose his right to be present at trial if, after he has been warned by the judge that he will be removed if he continues his disruptive behavior, he nevertheless insists on conducting himself in a manner so disorderly, disruptive, and disrespectful of the court that his trial cannot be carried on with him in the courtroom. [2] It was in reliance upon this expression of the United States Supreme Court that the trial judge in this case had defendant removed from the courtroom during voir dire of the jury and kept out of the courtroom during the entire trial except for two brief returns for the purpose of identification by witnesses. The question posed here is whether or not defendant's conduct was so disorderly, disruptive and disrespectful of the court that the trial could not be carried on with him in the courtroom. The record indicates, and the trial judge in his per curiam to this assignment acknowledges, that the first six pages of the transcript reflect the disruptive conduct of defendant upon which the trial judge relied. We thus incorporate by way of the attached appendix to this opinion those six pages. In our assessment the record in this case does not portray Roland Ranker as a disruptive, contumacious, or stubbornly defiant defendant. On the contrary it appears that Ranker attempted to voice his dissatisfaction with his appointed attorney in a non-disruptive and almost polite, although insistent manner. We do not question the right of the trial judge to conduct the proceedings before him so as to maintain dignity, order and decorum, the hallmarks of all court proceedings in out country. See, Illinois v. Allen, supra . We simply cannot find on the basis of this record that defendant speaking out as he did and relating the substance of his complaint, that his lawyer would not communicate with him, was the type of disorderly, disruptive or disrespectful conduct which was of such dimension as to warrant the denial of defendant's constitutional right to be present in the courtroom at every stage of his trial. For these reasons we find merit in defendant's assignment of error number one.