Opinion ID: 6109557
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Denial of Additional Questioning of Juror Williams

Text: Next, Mr. McFadden contends, once Judge Goldman recused himself, all his prior questioning of Juror Williams and the other juror should have been disregarded as a nullity. As a result, he says he was denied due process, and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, U.S. Const. Amends. VIII and XIV when Judges Dolan and DePriest relied on Judge Goldman's questioning.  Mr. McFadden fails to explain how the failure to allow additional questioning of a particular witness at a postconviction hearing could be cruel and unusual punishment; it is not punishment at all. The death penalty was imposed in his underlying trial, not during his postconviction proceedings. This argument is rejected. Similarly, to the extent Mr. McFadden argues he had a due process right to a postconviction hearing, Missouri law is well-settled: Individuals convicted of state crimes have 'no federal constitutional right to a state post-conviction proceeding'  in the first instance. Price, 422 S.W.3d at 296 , quoting, Smith v. State, 887 S.W.2d 601 , 602 (Mo. banc 1994). Any such right to a postconviction proceeding exists only by statute or this Court's rules, and the United States Supreme Court has stated we are unwilling to accept [ ] that when a State chooses to offer help to those seeking relief from convictions, the Federal Constitution dictates the exact form such assistance must assume. Pennsylvania v. Finley, 481 U.S. 551 , 559, 107 S.Ct. 1990 , 95 L.Ed.2d 539 (1987) . Mr. McFadden is correct, however, that once a defendant has been granted a postconviction hearing by statute or rule, he has a right to an unbiased judge. Due process concerns permit any litigant to remove a biased judge. Thomas v. State, 808 S.W.2d 364 , 367 (Mo. banc 1991) . But here, Mr. McFadden has failed to show Judge Goldman was biased or was affected by any extrajudicial information. Rule 2-2.11(A) provides, A judge shall recuse himself or herself in any proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned, including situations when the judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party ... or knowledge of facts that are in dispute in the proceeding that would preclude the judge from being fair and impartial. It is presumed that a judge acts with honesty and integrity and will not undertake to preside in a trial in which the judge cannot be impartial. Smulls v. State, 10 S.W.3d 497 , 499 (Mo. banc 2000) (citation omitted). This presumption can be overcome and disqualification is required if a reasonable person would find an appearance of impropriety and doubt the impartiality of the court, but there must be a factual context that gives meaning to the kind of bias that requires disqualification of a judge. Id., citing Haynes v. State, 937 S.W.2d 199 , 203 (Mo. banc 1996). Smulls noted: Specifically, a disqualifying bias or prejudice is one that has an extrajudicial source and results in an opinion on the merits on some basis other than what the judge learned from the judge's participation in a case. In cases requiring recusal, the common thread is either a fact from which prejudgment of some evidentiary issue in the case by the judge may be inferred or facts indicating the judge considered some evidence properly in the case for an illegitimate purpose. Id. (internal citations and quotations omitted). This standard was applied in Martin v. State, 526 S.W.3d 169 , 187 (Mo. App. W.D. 2017) , to hold merely talking with a party ex parte does not provide a basis for recusal. In Martin , the State had an ex parte contact with the judge, but the defendant failed to present any objective facts revealing any extrajudicial information that came to [the judge's] attention or any aspect of [the judge's] ruling on the Rule 29.15 Motion that could be attributed to reliance on extrajudicial information. Id. In contrast is Anderson v. State, 402 S.W.3d 86 , 92 (Mo. banc 2013) , in which a motion court made multiple on-the-record references to the judge's out-of-court conversations with the foreperson of the jury  in Anderson's trial about subjects implicated in Anderson's postconviction motion. The record also revealed the motion court gave counsel a magazine article, which the court procured on its own, implicating the credibility of Anderson's mental health expert. Id. at 93 . This Court held the content of the conversations and the magazine article were clearly extrajudicial, and [b]ased on the motion court's statements throughout the proceedings on the Rule 29.15 motion, a reasonable person would have factual grounds to believe the motion court relied on its conversations with the jury foreperson, the [ ] article or both in deciding the issues in the case. Id. at 94 . This Court, therefore, held the motion court judge should have been disqualified from the case. Id. Similarly, in Smulls , this Court held a motion court judge from St. Louis County abused his discretion in failing to appoint another judge to determine whether he must be disqualified from the case when the judge in the original trial testified he had discussions with every judge on the St. Louis County bench ... regarding the claim of racial bias [in the trial], and  'everybody' that he talked to about the charges of racial bias, based on their knowledge of the [original] opinion of this Court, expressed views that were not in agreement with what the opinion said. 10 S.W.3d at 504 . This Court held, the original trial judge's deposition provides a factual basis for a reasonable person to question the nature and extent of [the motion court judge's] previously expressed opinions on the issue of [ ] alleged racial bias. Id. Here, Judge Goldman did not recuse himself because he believed he had been exposed to extrajudicial information about Mr. McFadden. To the contrary, he denied recalling he received any extrajudicial information about Mr. McFadden. Judge Goldman recused himself simply because he thought that [the prosecutor] may have talked to me about it, even though I really didn't remember anything about him talking to me about it. But he did talk to me about cases occasionally. So I thought in just an abundance of caution, because this was such a serious case, I didn't want that to be a factor in it. Mr. McFadden offered no contrary evidence. The only other witness on this issue, the prosecutor, also did not recall specifically discussing Mr. McFadden's case with Judge Goldman. He simply speculated in his deposition that he often discussed cases with Judge Goldman and so I may very well have discussed any one of those cases with the Judge in terms of telling him what the facts were, or that I had a murder case pending. He stated, I probably very well talked to Judge Goldman about the facts of the case, back in '07 and '08. And then after the trial, what some of the highlights were. But he made clear: I don't have any specific memory of any specific conversations with Judge Goldman about any of [the McFadden] cases. Rather, he stated, I don't have any specific recollection of it, but it is very well possible that I probably did. Furthermore, Mr. McFadden does not suggest Judge Goldman and the prosecutor discussed Juror Williams or anything to do with the jurors or the prior assault trial. This is key, for whether Juror Williams intentionally failed to say he had sat on the earlier jury venire is the only issue Mr. McFadden alleges was affected by Judge Goldman's early involvement in the postconviction process prior to his recusal. Mr. McFadden does not explain how this could have been affected by unremembered facts that might or might not have been stated about his prior trial. Finally, [a]n ex parte contact is not in and of itself sufficient to permit a  reasonable person to infer the existence of disqualifying bias emanating from an extrajudicial source and resulting in an opinion on the merits on some basis other than what a judge learned from participation in the case. Martin, 526 S.W.3d at 187 , citing, Haynes, 937 S.W.2d at 202 . Even if Judge Goldman and the prosecutor discussed Mr. McFadden's case in a now-forgotten conversation not involving Juror Williams, in the absence of any showing that Judge Goldman's examination of Juror Williams or the other juror biased or affected the later independent rulings by two other judges, no basis for a new postconviction hearing on the issue of further jury questioning has been shown. It was not Judge Goldman but Judge DePriest who overruled Mr. McFadden's postconviction motion. The record shows neither he nor Judge Dolan relied on Judge Goldman's evaluation of the credibility of Juror Williams and the other juror. Rather, they independently concluded further juror questioning was not necessary after reviewing the testimony given by the jurors. 4 Judge DePriest found: After review of the testimony of the two (2) jurors, this court finds the inquiry to be sufficient to investigate possible juror bias on the part of [Juror] Williams. Further inquiry of all potential jurors is unnecessary given [Juror] Williams disclosures which indicate an unintentional nondisclosure as a result of a faded memory due to the passage of more than three (3) years. It was within Judge DePriest's discretion to reach this finding based on his independent review of the record, and Mr. McFadden presented no other witnesses or evidence supporting a contrary finding. Indeed, he does not indicate anything Judge Goldman did not ask these jurors that some other judge would or should have asked.