Opinion ID: 1387737
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: sequestering the jury

Text: The refusal of the district judge to sequester the jury leaves no doubt in my mind that the defendant was denied a fair trial. On September 30, 1982 defendant's attorney moved that the jury in the forthcoming trial be sequestered. The district court summarily denied the motion at that time, but told defense counsel that after the jury was chosen he could renew the motion. This was a hollow promise. That opportunity never came. The court cut it off in a manner which precluded the defense from even making the motion. This arbitrary action took place in this manner, the court addressing the entire jury panel: In fact, this is probably as good a time as any to explain that this a type of case in which the Defense can request that the jury be sequestered. That means that all during the trial whoever is chosen to be on the jury would have to be under the control of the bailiff at all times. That means you'd be placed in a motel and whatever you saw or heard would be censored. You'd be away from your families, you wouldn't have evenings to deal with any business matters you might have. It is, in other words, an enormous inconvenience. That's not going to happen in this case. The jury is not going to be sequestered. I am no longer required by law to do that. And so I generally don't do it. Each time I have not sequestered a jury it has worked out just fine because I find that jurors are very dedicated people and do what they're supposed to and it probably was a waste of time to be sequestering all these jurors these years. In this particular case, because I do expect it will get some publicity, I'm going to make some special requests of anyone who serves on this jury who's a prospective juror now. It is much simpler to not be sequestered and give up reading newspapers and listening to television news broadcasts than it is to be sequestered and have access to censored newspapers and news broadcasts. Because I am so certain that this case will get publicity and because I am concerned that the publicity may contain assertions about the case over which none of us have control and which may be completely erroneous or untrue, I feel the best thing to do is to require of the jurors  prospective jurors and those who ultimately may be chosen, that while this case proceeds  it will take about a week and a half to two weeks to finish it, while this case proceeds that you just not read any news papers from this area. By this area I mean published or distributed in Lewiston, Moscow, Spokane. If you receive the Wall Street Journal, for example, I don't suspect this matter will show up in that kind of a paper. But any local newspapers that might be covering this matter I'm going to rely on your intelligence, don't read them during this period because I'm so certain there will be publicity. The same I think you'll find will be true about television news broadcast that again eminate either from Spokane or Lewiston. I think that you can expect that there will be some publicity, don't know how extensive it will be. I would appreciate it and I will require that during the time of this trial while you are still involved in it, because many of you may be excused today, for example, if you are not chosen but while you are involved in this trial, I would again require that you not listen to any television broadcasts. That way I can avoid sequestering and yet running virtually no risk of having to do this trial over again and I would ask your cooperation in this matter. R., Vol. 1, pp. 7-9. Clearly, after these remarks to the jury it not only would have been futile for defendant's attorney to renew his motion to sequester the jury, but he would have alienated every one of those jurors. Properly the court, in an exercise of due process, would have heard from counsel before ruling, and in ruling would have stated his reasons. The fashion in which the court acted precludes any meaningful review. Moreover, the district judge could not have been deluded regarding the widespread nature of publicity and information about this case. Venue had already been changed from Clearwater County to Latah County  the two counties being adjacent, and their county seats being but about 60 miles apart. The prospective jurors' answer to their knowledge of the case was an excellent measure of the amount of information already disseminated in Latah County: Have any of you heard of this case before? (All jurors in the jury box except juror No. 8 and 9 and many hands in the audience were raised.) R., Vol. 1, p. 13. Any doubts about the lack of need to sequester the jury should have been eliminated after this scenario. For the district judge to assume that none of the jurors would read newspapers, or would ignore questions by family or friends, or hear news accounts on the television or the radio is an absurd refusal to acknowledge what is known to be just plain human nature. The tragic result which must be presumed is the denial of a fair trial to a defendant charged with the most serious crime under the laws of Idaho. The trial court was simply unrealistic. Better the court should have requested the local newspapers and radio and television stations to refrain from printing and broadcasting. That route would have been as equally ineffective as against sequestering the jury. Nonetheless, the majority today blithely states that There is no indication that any juror was exposed to prejudicial publicity during the course of the trial. Although this glib statement at first glance appears to be sound, a careful analysis of the majority's ruling demonstrates exactly how empty this proposition really is. What the majority intentionally obfuscates by this statement is the difficulty, if not impossibility of proving prejudice to the jury which would require a new trial. I.R.C.P. 59(a)(2) addresses the issue of jury misconduct: 2. Misconduct of the jury; and when any one or more of the jurors have been induced to assent to any general or special verdict, or to a finding on any question submitted to them by the court, by a resort to the determination of chance, such misconduct may be proved by the affidavit of any one of the jurors. This rule provides only one ground for jury misconduct  if a jury determination was made by chance. Hence, any other form of prejudicial influence cannot be used as a ground for challenging the verdict and the aggrieved party is completely foreclosed from inquiring into the existence of prejudice. See, G. Bell, Handbook of Evidence for the Idaho Lawyer 7-9 (1972). There is no method for an aggrieved party to determine if any juror was exposed to prejudicial publicity during the course of the trial, so clearly there can be no indication of such in the record. The majority's circuitous reasoning that there was no abuse of discretion by the trial court in failing to sequester the jury will leave even the most sophisticated legal mind completely bedazzled. The majority contentedly declares that such matters are in the discretion of trial judges. I am persuaded, however, to the better views of a unanimous Court of Appeals in Sheets v. Agro-West, Inc., 104 Idaho 880, 887, 664 P.2d 787 (1983), wherein it was said: Discretion has been defined as a power or privilege to act unhampered by legal rule. Black's Law Dictionary at 553 (rev. 4th ed. 1968). However, judicial discretion is a more restrained concept. Lord Coke is said to have defined judicial discretion as an inquiry into what would be just according to the laws in the premises. Id. Judicial discretion requires an actual exercise of judgment and a consideration of the facts and circumstances which are necessary to make a sound, fair, and just determination, and a knowledge of the facts upon which the discretion may properly operate. 27 C.J.S. Discretion at 289 (1959). Discretion which violates these restraints is discretion abused. Therefore, to determine whether discretion has been abused, an appellate court must ascertain whether the trial judge has correctly perceived the law in the premises and has demonstrated due consideration of the facts and circumstances. In Lisher v. Krasselt, 96 Idaho 854, 857, 538 P.2d 783, 786 (1975), our Supreme Court said: We decline to ascribe a definitive meaning to the amorphous phrase `abuse of discretion' solely for the purposes of this case, but it will suffice to say, that where the trial court has exercised such discretion after a careful consideration of the relevant factual circumstances and principles of law, and without arbitrary disregard for those facts and principles of justice, we will not disturb that action. The clear import of Lisher is that an appellate court should not substitute its discretion for that of a trial court. This may seem a statement of the obvious, but it carries a profound implication. Appellate review of judicial discretion should not be result-oriented. An appellate court should not focus primarily upon the outcome of a discretionary decision below, but upon the process by which the trial judge reached his decision. In order for the appellate court to perform this function properly, it must be informed of the reasons for the trial court's decision. Unless those reasons are obvious from the record itself, they must be stated by the trial judge. Where the reasons are neither obvious nor stated, the appellate court is left to speculate about the trial court's perception of the law and knowledge of the facts. As a practical matter, the appellate court finds itself locked into a result-oriented review. ... . ... The trial judge is in a better position than are we to evaluate the peculiar circumstances of each case, and to select among the available legal alternatives. A statement of reasons for the trial judge's decision  unless otherwise obvious  is necessary to justify such appellate deference. Sheets, supra, at 887-88, 664 P.2d at 794-95. Here, the reasons for changing venue away from Orofino in Clearwater County are obvious. A strong showing presumably was made of excessive publicity. But, as to not sequestering the jury, we are given no inkling of any legal reasoning which guided the trial court. The court mentioned a waste of time, but that makes no sense. Perhaps the court meant to say a waste of time and money. That would be some justification, but very slight. Attendant to any criminal trial it is inescapable that public moneys are going to be spent  sometimes a small fortune. But that is the price to be paid for maintaining our criminal justice system. Absent any legal reasoning for not sequestering the jury, and where undue publicity by the Lewiston newspaper necessitated the change in venue from Orofino, presumptively it was error to try the case, whether the trial remained in Orofino or whether it was removed to Moscow in adjacent Latah County, without keeping that continuing publicity from the jury. The court's failure to conduct a hearing or to set out any reasons, plus the manner in which the decision was predetermined and announced to the jury, makes the decision highly suspect. Moreover, the publicity which preceded the trial and mandated the change of trial, then continued through the trial. And, unless I miss it from the record, the court made no request of the media that it not play up the trial. So, the trial proceeds with all of the publicity which had gone on before, some of which as concerns only the Lewiston Tribune [1] counsel for defendant has documented in his brief, which is appended hereto as Appendix A. With that publicity and the trial involving other conduct of defendant and his wives and girl friends, going back as far as 13 years before the homicide, a goodly crowd was surely on hand. And, the trial judge by his non-sequestering ruling was made to appear as the best of persons.