Opinion ID: 2609747
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: restricted voir dire of prospective jurors in the area of pre-trial publicity

Text: The first issue raised by the appellants is whether the trial judge erred in pre-empting the pre-trial voir dire of prospective jurors. In my view, the issue here is not whether the trial judge erred in pre-empting the voir dire of prospective jurors, but whether the examination he did give adequately dispelled the possibility that certain veniremen could not render impartial verdicts in these cases as a result of their exposure to extensive pre-trial publicity of another robbery trial in which the appellants were defendants. Both the federal [1] and the state [2] constitutions require, as a basic protection of the individual in a criminal case, trial by an impartial jury. Among other things, this requirement means trial by a jury substantially free from the biasing effects of inflammatory pre-trial publicity. Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961); State v. Wakinekona, 53 Haw. 574, 579-580, 499 P.2d 678, 682 (1972). While Rule 24(a) of the Hawaii Rules of Criminal Procedure authorizes the trial judge to conduct all or part of the examination of prospective jurors himself, thereby expediting the process of selecting a jury, that rule does not sanction an examination which is less than adequate constitutionally. Compare United States v. Dellinger, 472 F.2d 340, 370-377 (7th Cir.1972), cert. denied, 410 U.S. 970, 93 S.Ct. 1443, 35 L.Ed.2d 701 (1973) with United States v. Eastwood, 489 F.2d 818 (5th Cir.1973). In particular, the required examination of prospective jurors must be sufficiently detailed to discover whether they hold any prejudice as a result of exposure to pre-trial publicity. The scope of the examination should vary, of course, with the extent, quality, and timing of pre-trial publicity present in each case. In United States v. Tropiano, 418 F.2d 1069, 1079-1080 (2d Cir.1969), for example, the court held that the passage of approximately eight months' time between the last instances of adverse publicity and the date of trial legitimized the exclusive use in voir dire of a generalized inquiry into the impact of pre-trial publicity on prospective jurors. Similarly, this court has indicated that the amount and nature of pre-trial publicity directly determine the lengths to which a trial judge must go on voir dire to assess the possibility of prejudice resulting from that publicity. State v. Wakinekona, supra, 53 Haw. at 579-580, 499 P.2d at 682. In the present cases, the factual showing of adverse pre-trial publicity made by the appellants is substantial. That publicity included dozens of newspaper articles as well as radio and television coverage concerning the trial, conviction and sentencing of Pokini, Moore and others for the so-called Liberty House jewel robbery. Much of the coverage dealt with the testimony for the prosecution of Robert Low, an alleged accomplice of the appellants, whose evidence was also crucial to the prosecution's cases in the trial under review here. It included photographs of the appellants in handcuffs as well as reports of their alleged courtroom outbursts. One article in the Honolulu Advertiser, dated February 16, 1973, purports to cover Pokini's testimony in his own behalf at the Liberty House trial, and states in its lead paragraph: James K. Pokini, 35, an ex-convict who police maintain plotted a number of major robberies and murders-for-hire on Oahu last year, took the witness stand in his own defense Thursday and presented the jury with the picture of a slow-witted oaf with barely enough intelligence to tie his own shoelaces. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin of March 14, 1973, carried a front page story headlined as LH Robbery Leader Gets Life, in which the trial judge in that case, also the trial judge in the present cases, is quoted as labelling Pokini the moving force in the robbery and in which Moore is quoted as stating the judge had decided he [Moore] was guilty the second day of the trial. Publicity concerning the Liberty House case began in early December, 1972 and lasted through mid-March, 1973  only two weeks before the commencement of the present trial. It highlighted many of the same individuals involved in the present trial  Judge Chang, prosecution witness Robert Low, and the appellants, Moore and Pokini  and repeatedly suggested that Pokini was the leader of a gang responsible for several recent robberies and murders on Oahu. Given the quantity, quality, and timing of this pre-trial publicity, it was incumbent on the trial judge to conduct a thorough-going examination of veniremen who indicated they had been exposed to it. Yet without exception the trial judge relied on perfunctory and generalized questions which elicited responses from these jurors solely on their subjective ability to ignore pre-trial publicity and be fair and impartial. [3] He expressly refused to allow inquiry into the extent and nature of the specific matters of publicity to which jurors had been exposed. Where pre-trial publicity is as extensive and as likely prejudicial as it was here, the constitutional right to an impartial jury requires examination into objective as well as subjective indicia of non-prejudice. In Silverthorne v. United States, 400 F.2d 627, 638 (9th Cir.1968), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 1022, 91 S.Ct. 585, 27 L.Ed.2d 633 (1971), for example, the court held that extensive pre-trial publicity of the case compelled the trial judge on voir dire of prospective jurors to ascertain  what information the jurors had accumulated. (Emphasis in original). Abbreviated inquiry into the jurors' subjective ability to be fair and impartial was inadequate, the court held. [W]hether a juror can render a verdict based solely on evidence adduced in the courtroom should not be adjudged on that juror's own assessment of self-righteousness without something more. Id. at 639 (emphasis in original); see Note, Voir Dire in Federal Criminal Trials: Protecting the Defendant's Right to an Impartial Jury, 48 Ind.L.J. 269, 274-75 (1973). The United States Supreme Court suggested the policy reasons behind the requirement of a more detailed inquiry into the possibility of prejudice from pre-trial publicity when it stated, in Irvin v. Dowd, supra, 366 U.S. at 728, 81 S.Ct. at 1645: No doubt each juror was sincere when he said that he would be fair and impartial to petitioner, but the psychological impact requiring such a declaration before one's fellows is often its father. There is an essential difference between subjective and objective evidence of juror impartiality. The federal and state constitutions require the trial judge to attempt to adduce both where pre-trial publicity is as extensive as that preceding the trial of these appellants. Silverthorne v. United States, supra . The trial judge's express refusal to do so was reversible error because it foreclosed from his consideration crucial evidence of possible juror bias, thereby rendering fatally uninformed the exercise of his discretion not to excuse jurors for cause.