Opinion ID: 407989
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: provisional nature of the ruling

Text: 13 On the day before trial, petitioner's counsel informed the prosecutor that he might wish to call character witnesses on petitioner's behalf. On the morning the trial commenced, the prosecutor objected to the defendant calling these witnesses because their identities had not previously been disclosed pursuant to the pretrial discovery order. After brief argument by counsel concerning the relevant Missouri discovery rules, the following discussion occurred: 14 THE COURT: Furthermore I am going to take the matter as submitted now. I am going to reserve a ruling on this matter in the event that under some circumstance that isn't foreseen at this point it should be permissible to call these witnesses, but at this point the Court would be inclined to believe that this issue of character witnesses would be one which a defendant in any criminal case, and particularly this case of murder in the first degree is one in which the names of these witnesses should have been known and available and furnished to the prosecutor more than one day in advance of the trial. In any trial preparation-you express now, Mr. Gross, some statement to the effect that this is a tentative decision or not a firm intention on your part even at this time to call these witnesses-which I think would fly in the face of the rule, attempting to apply fairness to both the defendant and to the State in trial preparation. And in that basic fairness it would appear to the Court to be unfair to permit calling of these witnesses at this time. That is my ruling at this time but I want it understood that if there are any unusual circumstances that may come up that may make these witnesses proper you may call that to the attention of the Court and make the request at a later time. I am making the ruling now so you will know how to conduct the voir dire and opening statement so you won't be caught off guard by saying something not in evidence later. 15 MR. GROSS (defense counsel): I am unable to anticipate any unusual circumstance that would change, in fairness to Mr. Seibel (prosecutor) and in this light I think it is best for the defendant's trial strategy to abandon the subject of character witnesses. 16 Later, the court stated that it had ruled, and that it would reserve its further ruling upon any specific request that you (defense counsel) may make later. Defense counsel never made such a request; indeed, the issue of character witnesses never arose again during the trial. 17 On direct appeal, the Missouri Court of Appeals found the following: 18 The trial court conditionally excluded such testimony due to appellant's noncompliance with the Rules of Discovery. The court provided, however, that an exception to the ruling would be made if unusual circumstances occurred during the progress of the trial. Despite the latitude offered by this ruling, appellant's counsel announced his abandonment of this aspect of his trial strategy. 19 State v. Thomas, 579 S.W.2d 145, 148 (Mo.App.1979) (citation omitted). 20 Similarly, in the state post-conviction proceeding, the Missouri state circuit court found as follows: 21 (T)he trial Court's ruling did not prohibit the defendant from calling character witnesses, but rather was provisional only to the effect of protecting voir dire and opening statements and that a definitive ruling was reserved until such time, if ever, the defendant wanted to call character witnesses during the course of the trial; that the trial lasted three days; that Movant was the only witness in his own behalf; and that no attempt was made to call character witnesses, nor was the subject mentioned further during the trial. 22 It is a close question whether the trial court's ruling was provisional or final. Petitioner's argument that in the absence of unusual circumstances, the ruling was final, has merit. Nevertheless, every court that has previously considered this case has regarded the trial court ruling as provisional. The state court findings are presumed to be correct. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). See Sumner v. Mata, 449 U.S. 539, 101 S.Ct. 764, 66 L.Ed.2d 722 (1981). We cannot say that the state court's determination that the ruling was provisional is not fairly supported by the record. Likewise, the record supports the state court conclusion that petitioner abandoned the issue of introducing character witnesses following the trial court's provisional ruling.