Opinion ID: 1202216
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Britton Issue

Text: Menzies claims that he is prejudiced by the numerous transcript errors in portions of the record relating to the admission of the preliminary hearing testimony of Walter Britton. Britton was imprisoned in the Salt Lake County jail at the same time as Menzies. At Menzies' preliminary hearing, Britton testified that Menzies had confessed to the murder. However, Britton refused to testify at trial on the ground that he feared reprisals from other inmates. The trial court ruled that Britton was unavailable under Utah Rule of Evidence 804, and his preliminary hearing testimony was read to the jury. In his docketing statement, Menzies asserts that he was denied his right of confrontation due to the fact that he was not able to cross-examine Britton on information learned subsequent to the preliminary hearing and the fact that a subpoena served on the State's counsel was quashed. Menzies also claims that the trial court erred in ruling that Britton was unavailable. The factual basis for these claims is provided through the testimony of Mr. Savage, Britton's attorney. Savage testified at a pretrial hearing and during trial. His testimony concerned Britton's competence and a rule 35 hearing in federal court. In the rule 35 hearing, it was argued that because Britton cooperated in the State's case against Menzies, his federal sentence should be reviewed. One of the prosecuting attorneys testified briefly in this hearing. During the trial, Menzies subpoenaed the prosecutor to testify regarding his participation in the federal hearing. The only other relevant testimony is the reading of the preliminary hearing transcript and Britton's pretrial hearing testimony concerning why he would not testify at trial. Menzies cites more than sixty errors relating to this portion of the transcript. Virtually all of them relate to insignificant grammatical or spelling problems or to mistranscriptions where the actual sense of the testimony is obvious. None of the cited errors prejudice Menzies' ability to pursue his claims on appeal. Nor is there any error significant enough to interfere with an independent review of the trial court's decision.
In the relevant testimony, there are instances of discrepancies between the court reporter's notes and the original transcript [48] and instances of inarticulate statements. [49] However, these errors are reconcilable when read in context and/or have no relevance to appellate issues. Nevertheless, Menzies points to this portion of the transcript to illustrate his claim that the transcript prejudices his ability to appeal. Specifically, he claims that confusion in the transcript concerning whether Savage first discussed a rule 35 hearing with prosecutors before or after Menzies' preliminary hearing prejudices his ability to raise issues regarding Britton's motive for testifying in the preliminary hearing. [50] It is true that conflicting dates are given concerning this conversation. In a proffer of proof made to the court, a prosecutor claimed that if Savage testified, he would state that the first time he had contact with the prosecuting attorneys was on May 26, after the preliminary hearing. Savage, in fact, testified that he first had contact with the prosecutors on May 2, prior to the preliminary hearing. Read in context, this conflict is clearly not the result of a transcription error but rather the result of the attorney's confusion as to what evidence Savage would provide. Indeed, confusion as to whether the first discussion occurred before or after the preliminary hearing was one of the reasons the trial judge allowed Savage to testify at the hearing. Therefore, it is clear not only that there is no prejudicial error in the transcript, but also that the transcript supports Menzies' claim that Britton had a motive to testify falsely.
The vast majority of the errors which Menzies cites do not deal with testimony but rather with arguments held outside the presence of the jury. In fact, of the sixty cited errors, more than fifty deal with argument. It appears that the reporter had more difficulty transcribing argument, where the discussions were more heated. [51] Errors in transcribing arguments made outside the presence of the jury are of less significance than errors in other portions of the transcript. This is because these arguments are relevant to appeals only in reviewing trial court rulings, reviewing proffers of evidence, and determining what issues were raised in the trial court. In the instant case, Menzies does not cite any errors in the trial court's rulings, and there is no indication that the court's rulings were incorrectly transcribed. Likewise, there are no references to the record or other indications, other than the one instance discussed above, that an error occurred in the transcription of a proffer of evidence. All of the cited errors relate only to whether a particular argument concerning the admission of testimony was not raised at trial and therefore should be reviewed under a plain error standard. [52] The errors that occurred in the arguments are similar to the errors that occurred throughout the transcript. There are discrepancies between the original transcript and the court reporter's notes, [53] instances where the attorney's arguments are inarticulate, [54] and instances where there is confusion concerning who is speaking. [55] However, because it is only necessary to determine what issues were being raised, problems with one or two words or statements are more readily reconcilable than errors occurring in other portions of the transcript. This is particularly true in the instant case, where there were three separate arguments concerning the admission of the preliminary hearing testimony. In each hearing, many of the same issues were raised. Given the rather extensive argument, there is no difficulty in determining what issues were presented to the trial court. Menzies, however, points to a specific error in this portion of the transcript as illustrative of how the transcript prejudices his case on appeal. In a hearing held before trial, there was some confusion concerning what rule of evidence the attorneys were arguing. It appears from the context of the hearing that the attorneys were discussing rule 804(a). However, regardless of what rule was being argued, Menzies is not prejudiced by this confusion. The purpose of the hearing was to establish if Britton must be brought into court to determine if he would not testify. The court ruled in favor of Menzies. Therefore, any error in the transcription of this hearing does not impact Menzies' appeal. None of the errors relating to the admission of Britton's preliminary hearing testimony are prejudicial.