Court Opinion

ID: 9775026
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:41:07.456883+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:19.083570
License: Public Domain

ADKINS, J.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I see no abuse of discretion by the trial court in denying Petitioner’s request for a mistrial. I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals, which, in turn, affirmed the Circuit Court for Charles County because the casual and isolated communication by two jurors commending a witness’s testimony could not have prejudiced Petitioner.
As the majority seems to acknowledge, under Jenkins, juror misconduct must be “excessive or egregious” before prejudice to the defendant may be presumed. See Jenkins v. State, 375 Md. 284, 315, 825 A.2d 1008, 1026 (2003). Indeed, “not all incidental contacts between jurors and witnesses are inherently prejudicial.” Id. at 321, 825 A.2d at 1030. The majority reverses, not because the juror misconduct was excessive or egregious, but on the grounds that the trial court failed to conduct a voir dire examination of the jurors “to determine the intent of their comments and whether they had discussed the issue of Dillard’s guilt or innocence[.]” Majority Op. at *467457, 3 A.3d at 410. While the majority may not presume prejudice, it certainly requires that the court conduct a voir dire of the jury when even the most incidental contact between a juror and a witness transpires. In my view, this is an improper resolution of the case, for several reasons.
First, Petitioner never asked the trial court to conduct a voir dire of the jurors. Examination of the transcript below reveals that when the police officers could not describe or identify the jurors without the jurors present, defense counsel asked “that the jurors be brought in, observed, and then taken away so that the officers then can—tell the court.” The court complied with this request, bringing the jurors in, and had them identify themselves by their juror numbers. With that information, Detective Smith was able to identify Jurors 194 and 177 as the ones who complimented his testimony. The trial court twice asked whether counsel had any further requests of the court. Defense counsel responded the second time by asking to question Detective Smith about which juror spoke to him first. Smith responded, “[t]he elderly gentleman said it to me first. The other juror wasn’t in view when he said it. The other juror was around the comer. It was in passing. Everybody was walking by.” Neither counsel asked for voir dire of the jurors. Rather, after she questioned the detectives, Petitioner’s counsel simply repeated her request for a mistrial, and alternatively, to “unseat [juror 194] and replace [him] with an alternate.”
Under these circumstances, there was no reason for the trial judge to administer a voir dire of the two jurors before ruling on the mistrial, and we should not reverse the court’s exercise of its discretion for failing to do something it was not asked to do. As the Court of Special Appeals said in the case below:
Considerations of fairness and judicial efficiency generally require that all challenges that a party wishes to make to a trial court’s ruling, action, or conduct “be presented in the first instance to the trial court so that (1) a proper record can be made with respect to the challenge, and (2) the other parties and the trial judge are given an opportunity to *468consider and respond to the challenge.” Chaney v. State, 397 Md. 460, 468 [918 A.2d 506] (2007).... On this basis, appellant’s complaint as to the court’s failure to take curative action is unavailing.
Dillard v. State, No. 1578, slip op. at 18 (Md.Ct.Spec.App. Feb. 11, 2009). Although there may be some instances in which a trial court must initiate the voir dire of the jury on its own, 2 without request from counsel, in my view, this isolated and innocuous occurrence does not justify such a ruling. The reasons for my conclusion will be evident from my discussion of the Circuit Court’s denial of the motion for mistrial, which follows.
In my view, the trial court did not commit error by its refusal to grant a mistrial, which was the remedy requested by Dillard. To explain my view of this issue, I quote liberally from the Court of Special Appeals’s opinion. It said:
[T]he conduct of a criminal trial is committed to the sound discretion of the trial court, and the exercise of that discretion will not be disturbed on appeal absent a clear showing of abuse. We will not disturb the trial court’s ruling on a motion for mistrial absent an abuse of discretion.
Whether a mistrial is warranted hinges upon the question of prejudice to the defendant.... A mistrial is ... an extreme sanction that sometimes must be resorted to when such overwhelming prejudice has occurred that no other remedy will suffice to cure the prejudice. Noting that the purpose of a mistrial is remedial, not “prophylactic,” ... the Burks Court added: “[T]he decision as to whether a mistrial is called for is contingent upon the impact of an error and not upon the motivation behind the error.”
Dillard, slip op. at 18-19 (quotation marks and citations omitted). Applying the appropriate standard of review of the trial court’s exercise of discretion, the intermediate appellate court concluded:
Notably, jurors 177 and 194 did not engage in any “misconduct,” because they did not violate the court’s instructions by talking to Smith. Moreover, their conduct did not *469demonstrate that they had decided Dillard’s guilt before hearing all the evidence and prior to deliberations. In the context of this case, we agree with the State, which posits: “Where an individual juror’s conduct at trial is neither nefarious nor prejudicial, a trial court’s discretionary decision not to question the juror or declare a mistrial will be upheld.”
Dillard, slip op. at 20. I agree with the Court of Special Appeals that jurors 177 and 194 engaged in no “misconduct.” They were not instructed that they could not say anything to the witnesses. Significantly, they did not go out of their way to contact this witness—the jurors were walking by the witness in the course of going to lunch, and made the brief complimentary comment and gesture about his testimony.1
Unquestionably, the witness did not communicate with the jurors in any way outside his testimony. So, there is no possibility that the jurors were influenced by some ex parte contact, or that their verdict was tainted by some inappropriate outside information or opinion. This fact isolates the instant case from Jenkins and the other cases cited by the majority.
The majority’s decision to reverse and order a new trial, then, must rest on the shaky premise that jurors must not evaluate testimony as they hear it, and if they do so, their verdict is tainted and must be vacated. Indeed, the majority, citing an Arizona case, concludes that a trial court must grant a mistrial if it determines the jurors had “engaged in premature deliberation about the question of Dillard’s guilt or innocence, or Detective Smith’s credibility, prior to the completion of testimony.” Majority Op. at 458, 8 A.3d at 410. I respectfully disagree, and submit that we would be naive to suppose that jurors suspend all judgment about the witnesses *470and other evidence presented to them until the time of formal deliberations. Studies of juries and their decision-making processes bear this out.
Numerous studies of juror cognition and behavior indicate that jurors are continually evaluating the information that they receive during a trial, beginning with opening arguments and proceeding up to and through jury deliberations. See Robert K. Bothwell, Social Cognition in the Courtroom: Juror Information Processing and Story Construction, in A Handbook of Jury Research 17-1 through -18 (Walter F. Abbott & John Batt eds., 1999). Indeed, some research suggests that the presentation of the opening argument itself makes a substantial impact on how jurors view the remainder of a trial. Id. at 17-8 through -10; see also Jansen Voss, The Science of Persuasion: An Exploration of Advocacy and the Science Behind the Art of Persuasion in the Courtroom, 29 Law & Psychol. Rev. 301, 311-12 (2005) (Opinions formed as a result of the first argument presented at trial “have been found to bias the interpretation of subsequent evidence.”).
The leading theory on juror decision-making states that jurors “impose a narrative story organization on trial information.” Nancy Pennington & Reid Hastie, A Cognitive Theory of Juror Decision Making: The Story Model, 13 Cardozo L.Rev. 519, 521 (2006) (discussing the “Story Model” of juror decision-making). The process of constructing such a narrative engages jurors in an “active, constructive, comprehension process in which evidence is organized, elaborated, and interpreted by them during the course of the trial.” Id. at 523 (emphasis added).
Indeed, studies suggest that jurors change their positions during the course of a trial as new evidence is presented to them. See Shari Seidman Diamond, Beyond Fantasy and Nightmare: A Portrait of the Jury, 54 Buffalo L.Rev. 717, 743-46 (2006) (discussing studies in which mock jurors provided differing “interim verdicts” during the course of trial proceedings). One psychologist has stated that the process of
*471[A]ecount[ing] for the facts by inferring causal and intentional links among particular facts ... begins during the trial. Clearly, the law’s assumptions and injunctions—that jurors suspend judgment, hear all the evidence, and then weigh the evidence and decide-—is at odds with what jurors actually do----The law’s fictional assumption is akin to a stricture ordering readers of detective fiction not to think about whodunnit until they reach the last chapter. It cannot be done, except, perhaps, by the most incurious of minds, or by a mind so compartmentalized that a psychiatric diagnosis is in order.
Norman J. Finkel, Commonsense Justice: Jurors’ Notions of the Law 74-75, 350 n. 69 (1995) (emphasis in original).
Although in a theoretical model of a perfect trial, jurors might suspend all judgment until the introduction of all evidence and closing arguments are heard, we cannot ignore the reality that jurors are undertaking a continual evaluation of the information they receive during trial. I see no reason and no benefit in deciding cases based on the fanciful notion that the real people who sit on juries conform to a purist model of what we (and our predecessors) deem to be ideal for fair adjudication.
The trial court wisely recognized the futility of attempting to enforce this fictional model of juror conduct, commenting,
It is customary when we send jurors out of the room to go to lunch or go home or something, to say look don’t discuss the case among yourself—selves—don’t allow other people to discuss it with you. I know ... they seldom abide by the first part, but my sense is that for the most part they abide by the second part, allowing other people to discuss it with them.
The trial judge is the one who has experience dealing with juries, and based on that experience, he made an assessment—that the jurors in question acted within the range of usual juror conduct. They evaluated the case as they went along, and maybe made a comment to each other about *472whether a witness was credible or effective. The trial court believed this was not juror misconduct, and not a big deal:
It occurs to me though that it [is] really a situation where we happen to have at this juncture a little more information about something you know—going on in the mind of two jurors than we otherwise would have. I can’t imagine for a moment that commentary—about a witness performance— positive or negative—doesn’t get uttered behind that door— with some regularity before the jury retires to deliberate. I would think when they take a [bathroom] break that ... it would be ... contrary to human experience for remarks like that not to be made occasionally, or remarks not to be made ... I don’t find from this that it’s necessary to conclude that the ... juror was doing ... anything other than saying nice police work. And it doesn’t necessarily amount to any kind of commentary on the relationship of that police work to this defendant.
The assessment of this conduct was the trial judge’s call, not ours to make. The judge obviously gave serious consideration as to whether any misconduct had occurred or any harm had been done, and decided no, in both respects.
As I mentioned before, this case bears little resemblance to Jenkins v. State, the case relied on heavily by Petitioner. The Court of Special Appeals explained the facts of Jenkins:
In Jenkins, a detective who had testified at a murder trial informed the prosecutor, five days after the verdict, that she had contact with a juror during the course of the trial. The defendant moved for a new trial, alleging “an improper contact between a juror and a detective witness for ... the State,” which “caus[ed] prejudice to [Jenkins] and precluded] his right to a fair trial.” At a motion hearing, the detective and the juror testified about what the Court characterized as “the extensive contact they had” during a weekend religious retreat, held while the trial was in progress. The juror testified that he recognized the detective and tried to avoid her, but then approached the detective and told her he could not talk to her. The juror thought the *473detective was under the impression that the juror had served on a completed case, because the detective asked if the jury had found the defendant guilty. The juror advised that the case was still in progress. According to the juror, the two did not discuss the case further, but they sat together at a seminar; had lunch together; and the detective drove the juror to his car at the end of the retreat. The detective provided similar testimony.
Dillard, slip op. at 21 (citations omitted).
The Court of Special Appeals went on to explain that the burden initially falls on the defense to show the impropriety, and shifts to the State with regard to “some such juror contacts with third parties and/or misconduct.” Jenkins, 375 Md. at 301, 825 A.2d at 1018 (emphasis added). Interpreting our decision in Jenkins it also explained:
[The Court of Appeals] clarified that instances of presumptively prejudicial contact arise when there is excessive or egregious jury misconduct or improper contact by a third party occurs. The Court added that prejudice is presumed where “egregious juror and witness misconduct occurs,” such as when both the juror and the witness ignore the court’s orders and choose to interact, including “when a witness and a juror go to lunch together during the middle of a trial when both have been admonished, in one way or another, to avoid each other.” Further, the Court explained that when the record is silent with respect to whether intentional and inappropriate juror contact was prejudicial, prejudice may be presumed if the nature of such contact “raise[s] fundamental concerns on whether the jury would reach [its] verdict based solely upon the evidence presented at trial or whether it would be improperly influenced by the inappropriate contacts.” In these circumstances, the burden falls on the State to rebut the presumption of improper influence.
The Jenkins Court concluded that prejudice would be presumed based on the egregious circumstances presented in *474that case—a juror lunching with a police detective who had recently testified in a murder trial, while that case was still being tried to that juror. Similarly, prejudice has been presumed in other egregious circumstances. See Turner v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 466, 471-74 [85 S.Ct. 546, 13 L.Ed.2d 424] (1965) (concluding that extensive daily contact between a sequestered jury and two deputy sheriffs who testified at trial was presumptively prejudicial)----
Dillard, slip op. at 22-23 (citations omitted).
The Court of Special Appeals went on to conclude that the presumption of prejudice that we applied in Jenkins was not applicable here:
[T]he contact here was minimal, consisting of a few complimentary words (“good job”); uttered by two jurors independently, and a common-place gesture of a pat. Clearly, there was no “prolonged contact,” id. at 289 [825 A.2d 1008], between the jurors and Smith. Nor was there misconduct by “juror and witness.” Id. at 319 [825 A.2d 1008] (emphasis in original). In this regard, it is noteworthy that the jurors did not violate any cautionary instructions from the court, as none were given. Nor did Smith, the witness, respond to the comments.
Moreover, the compliment, “good job,” and the accompanying pat on Detective Smith’s back, could have referred to the investigation or to the detective’s testimony. Of import, neither the comment nor the gesture said anything about the jurors’ view[s] as to Dillard’s culpability. Indeed, the jurors’ actions were so minimal that they could not be said to establish a lack of impartiality or demonstrate that the jurors had already reached guilty verdicts.
Dillard, slip op. at 26. I agree with the Court of Special Appeals that neither Jenkins nor any other case cited by Dillard supports the conclusion that prejudice should be presumed, or that the conduct of the jurors mandated a mistrial, or even that the trial court was required to question the jurors.
*475The majority opinion, as I read it, does not exactly presume prejudice, but it comes close. It holds that the trial court missed the opportunity to verify, by questioning the jurors, that the incident would have no influence on the jurors’ decisions, and that this was an abuse of discretion, notwithstanding the defendant’s failure to request that the trial court do so. I respectfully dissent because I cannot see how this incident could possibly influence the jurors in their thinking about the case. The jurors heard the testimony, and made a contemporaneous evaluation. As the trial court indicated, this brief communication by the two jurors was simply giving the court and counsel “a little more information about something ... going on in the mind of two jurors than we otherwise would have.”
For these reasons, I would affirm.

. The prosecutor reported the incident to the court, saying that the police officers reported to her that "when we broke for lunch that—two jurors walked by—as the jurors were walking by two of them—patted— Detective Smith on the back and said, 'Good job[.]’ In response Detective Smith did nothing____He kept walking his direction, they’re walking opposite directions.”