Court Opinion

ID: 9605270
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:32:47.173047+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:26.981825
License: Public Domain

BRETT, Presiding Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur in this opinion. At the same time I do not subscribe to the establishment of a set of criteria by which the issue of potential prejudice to a handcuffed defendant is to be judged. The cases cited provide sufficient guidelines for this Court. The dictum in French v. State, supra, to which I must subscribe states:
Though biologically speaking, man may be an animal, it was never intended that he be treated as such in the realm of criminal jurisprudence. If we permitted the subjection of man to such treatment *660before the courts of our land, we have paved the way for him to be tried while tied to a log or in a steel cage, as well as chains and shackles. Barbarism has been abandoned and must never be permitted to creep back through the crevices created by lenient rules of law. Our statute in no uncertain language, says “It shall not be done,” and we see no reason for relaxing the rule. (Emphasis in original.)