Court Opinion

ID: 9640123
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:57:55.949964+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:26.867073
License: Public Domain

STEELE, Justice,
with whom CHANDLER, Chancellor, joins concurring.
I join in and agree with the majority’s judgment to affirm. I believe that the ma*679jority opinion carefully and persuasively determines that the trial judge’s immediate response to Gerry’s comment about the impending lie detector test by striking the reference and by issuing a clear cautionary instruction to the jury cured any potential prejudice to Capano. Further, I agree that the majority opinion thoughtfully makes the ease that when the trial judge admitted Lyons’ testimony about the circumstances that induced Gerry’s alleged further disclosure that any error by so doing was harmless. I, therefore, concur with the majority’s ultimate conclusion that neither ruling “warrant[s] a reversal of Capano’s conviction and sentence.”
I respectfully would hold, notwithstanding any concurrence in the result, and contrary to Part III B of the majority Opinion, that the trial judge properly admitted Lyons’ testimony. In my view, therefore, the trial judge committed no error whatsoever.
I agree with the majority’s conclusions that:
1. the trial judge’s limiting instructions minimized the impact of Lyons’ testimony about the timing of Gerry’s full disclosure of the alleged facts and of Gerry’s revelation that he believed that he would have to be more forthcoming before he “went and took the he detector test” that, inferentially, might be required by the FBI; and,
2. given the totality of the evidence of planning, that portion of it supplied by Gerry as part of his fuller disclosure “was not an indispensable or critical part of the State’s case.”
However, two important considerations lead me to the conclusion that the trial judge correctly allowed Lyons’ testimony explaining the circumstances surrounding Gerry’s fuller disclosure.
First, trial judges regularly meet the needs of parties to explain (and juries to understand) salient facts in a case where there are legitimate risks of a misunderstanding of the relevance of that evidence, or where the danger exists that, though relevant, the evidence might create unfair prejudice. Evidence is often admitted for a limited purpose, with proper cautionary instructions, and legitimately so. Evidence has only one ultimate purpose — “that the truth may be ascertained and proceedings justly determined.”555 When a trial judge “restricts the evidence to its proper scope and instruct[s] the jury accordingly,”556 he or she does so with ascertainment of the truth uppermost in mind.
Second, regardless of the prosecutor’s recasting of Lyons’ testimony in his closing, Lyons never attempted to comment on the truthfulness of Gerry’s disclosure before or after Gerry’s decision to disclose more fully what he “knew” to federal agents. Lyons, though his attorney, was in no position to support Gerry’s credibility at either point in time. I have no reservation in concluding that the jury clearly understood that very point.
I fully endorse the majority’s view, explained in Section II of the Opinion, on the Delaware Courts’ approach to the admissibility or exclusion of evidence. Entirely consistent with that view, is my belief that it is better to let the jury know the actual, truthful explanation of why at that particular moment Gerry expanded his testimony, with appropriate caution, than to leave them to speculate on a wide range of irrelevant, untruthful possibilities for his apparent epiphany.
The Reference to a Polygraph Test
I agree that any reference to a polygraph test may be potentially mischievous *680and should, therefore, be brought to the trial judge’s attention and carefully screened with enhanced scrutiny to assure that no other appropriate alternative evidence is available to establish the relevant operative fact sought to be admitted and that a restrictive instruction be crafted to instruct the jury on the limited purpose for which the evidence is being admitted.557 I further agree that Whalen may not be read broadly to permit references to a lie detector test to prove a limitless range of operative facts. Nevertheless, a “per se exclusionary rule” would go too far when there may be no other basis for admitting critical evidence, the trial judge conducts an appropriate Rule 403 analysis and then formulates a clear cautionary instruction for the jury.
Here, I see little meaningful difference between admitting polygraph evidence to prove that under all of the circumstances a confession was voluntary (as in Whalen) and admitting evidence that a witness believed he would have to submit to a polygraph — -a belief which caused him to divulge more expansively his knowledge of facts relating to issues in this case. In light of the trial judge’s cautionary instruction, I believe there is no basis to conclude that either (1) the jury would simply blatantly ignore the instruction and blindly find that Gerry both took the test and passed it, or (2) the jury proceeded, contrary to the instruction, to find through speculation about unreliable evidence that Gerry ultimately told the truth.
Lyons’ Testimony and Attorney Vouching
While I agree that if it was error to admit the Lyons testimony that it was harmless error, and therefore concur in the conclusion to affirm on this point, I respectfully depart from the majority’s view that the references were dubious or problematic under the circumstances of this case and would rule that the references were properly admitted.
Lyons’ actual testimony mentions only that he told Gerry that “yes,” he would or might be required to take a polygraph test and that “you can’t hold anything back.” The purpose of this testimony was to explain the circumstances surrounding Gerry’s fuller disclosure of what he, Gerry, believed to have occurred. At no time did Lyons attempt to characterize the testimony in any way to bolster Gerry’s credibility. I recognize the points made by the majority in support of their view that there was “potential that Lyons’ status as an experienced lawyer may have imparted credibility to Gerry’s testimony .... ” I note and accept as reasonable the majority’s view that “... a jury would be likely to infer that Gerry did not disregard Lyons’ emphatic directive to make full disclosure.” (emphases added) I simply do not agree with those inferences in light of the cautionary instruction given to the jury and my own. I hope equally reasonable inference, that a jury does not, in our current culture, accept criminal defense attorneys as the paradigm for “truth, justice and the American way” (if there still be one). Explaining why Gerry offered additional detail at that point would assist the jury’s understanding of relevant events. The trial judge immediately instructed the jury, appropriately limiting the inferences that they could fairly draw from the references to a prospective polygraph test or from Lyons’ status as an attorney. Nothing in Lyons’ actual testimony suggested that suddenly Gerry then started telling the truth and that he may not have been until that denouement. The jury had to understand from the cautionary instruction that they still had to resolve whether Gerry told the truth before and after he concluded that he would more *681fully disclose what he knew. The jury knew that they remained free to conclude that this turncoat brother lied both before and after the fuller disclosure because the cautionary instruction told them as much. If error occurred, no matter how harmless, it occurred when the prosecutor, without objection, embellished the inference in his closing by asserting that Lyons said “you have to tell the complete truth,” when in fact, Lyons made no such statement.558
I, therefore, would conclude that the trial judge did not abuse his discretion when he allowed Lyons to testify and when he permitted the State to elicit testimony that Gerry had disclosed additional information when confronted with the probability that he would face a polygraph test when the trial judge’s instruction appropriately limited the jury’s consideration of the circumstances under which it was admitted and the purpose for which it was admitted.

. D.R.E. 102.

. D.R.E. 105.

. D.R.E. 105.

. Tr. of 1/13/99. at 66-68.