Court Opinion

ID: 9747623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 15:24:19.453076+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:24.651510
License: Public Domain

WAGNER, Chief Judge,
dissenting in part:
In my view, the trial court erred in denying appellant Brown’s request to be present during voir dire of individual jurors, and the error was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. While Brown’s assertion of his right to be present came after some of the venire panel had been questioned at the bench out of his pres*1028ence, nine persons who ultimately sat on the jury had not been questioned by the time that he requested to be present. This delay alone is not sufficient to attribute to a defendant a waiver of his constitutionally protected rights or to deny them.1 There was still time for Brown to hear and observe the responses of forty members of the venire panel in order to enable him to participate meaningfully in the jury selection process. Requests to be present after voir dire has begun have not been rejected automatically as untimely. See, e.g., Gary v. United States, 499 A.2d 815, 834-85 (D.C.1985) (en banc), cert. denied, 477 U.S. 906, 106 S.Ct. 3279, 91 L.Ed.2d 568 (1986) (noting that request came “[a]fter the jury selection process began”); United States v. Washington, 227 U.S.App. D.C. 184, 705 F.2d 489, 496-98 (1983) (noting that request came “after six jurors of the thirteen jurors [answering the question affirmatively] had been interrogated”).
We have said that once a defendant asserts his right to be present during this process, as Brown did here, “the trial court must weigh ‘the comfort and security of persons who perform a public service’ and the efficient administration of justice against ‘the principle that the presence of the defendant is essential to the legitimacy of our criminal justice system.’ ” Briggs v. United States, 525 A.2d 583, 589 (D.C.1987) (citing Boone v. United States, 483 A.2d 1135, 1141 (D.C.1984) (en banc)). Significantly, in Briggs, we recognized that in the usual case, this balance weighs in favor of the defendant’s right to be present to hear responses at the bench. See id. (quoting United States v. Washington, 227 U.S.App. D.C. 184, 192, 705 F.2d 489, 497 (1983) (per curiam)).2 Unlike Briggs, the record in this case discloses nothing unusual about the defendant which weighed in favor of denying him his right to observe and hear the responses of the remaining prospective jurors. Moreover, the required balancing process did not take place. The only reason given for the denial of the right here was that appellant had not requested it earlier. As far as we know, it was only the inconvenience of recessing the court long enough to set up the hearing in the jury room that guided the court’s determination to deny appellant Brown his right to be present for the responses of the remaining potential jurors. Such a modest inconvenience is insufficient to support a complete denial of the accused’s constitutionally protected right to be present. For these reasons, I cannot agree that the trial court did not err in its ruling.
Reversal can be avoided only if the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. In determining whether the denial of a criminal defendant’s request to be present at bench conferences to hear and observe voir dire questioning of prospective jurors was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, this court has considered various factors, *1029“including (1) the extent of appellant’s exclusion from the jury selection process, (2) the number of prospective jurors questioned by voir dire who ultimately served on the jury panel, and (3) whether the defendant had exhausted all of his peremptory strikes.” Kleinbart v. United States, 553 A.2d 1236, 1243 (D.C.1989) (Gallagher, J., dissenting) (citing Gary, supra, 499 A.2d at 835; Young v. United States, 478 A.2d 287, 290-91 (D.C.1984)). Examining the circumstances of this case against these factors, it does not appear that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
First, none of the jurors responded to voir dire questions in appellant’s presence in open court. The procedure utilized in this case required the jurors to note on a card the number of any question to which he or she had a response. Thereafter, they were called to the bench to respond to the questions they had noted. Thus, they never responded to any questions in open court. We have held that where “the entire voir dire was conducted at the bench, outside appellant’s presence,” the error is not harmless. Kleinbart, supra, 553 A.2d at 1240 n. 6.3 See also Beard, supra note 1, 535 A.2d at 1376 (refusing to find harmless error where “virtually all of the voir dire was conducted at the bench,” “appellant had practically no opportunity to hear any juror speak in open court,” and was prevented from hearing forty-five transcript pages of discussion with the jury); Robinson, supra note 3, 448 A.2d at 856 (error not harmless where defendant prevented from hearing forty transcript pages of discussion). In this case, appellant Brown was prevented from hearing responses from some forty jurors after he made his request, in proceedings covering some 100 transcript pages. Under the cited precedents, the length of appellant’s exclusion weighs against a finding of harmless error.
The second factor, which considers the number of prospective jurors questioned by voir dire who ultimately served on the panel, also weighs against a harmless error finding. In this case, nine of the jurors who actually served were questioned at the bench after appellant’s request to be present was denied.4 The error of excluding the defendant from the voir dire has been found not to be harmless where six potential jurors who actually served on the panel were questioned after the denial of a Superior Court Criminal Rule 43 request. See Beard, supra note 1, 535 A.2d at 1376.
Whether the defendant had exhausted all of his peremptory strikes is a third factor considered in the harmless error analysis. Specifically, it has been held harmless error where the defendant could have used remaining peremptory challenges to remove a challenged juror, and thereby cure the error. See Gary, supra, 499 A.2d at 835; Young, supra, 478 A.2d *1030at 289-90 & n. 6. Whether appellant had exhausted all of his peremptory strike is not entirely clear from the record.5 However, with only six strikes available, appellant would not have been able to eliminate all seven of those jurors who responded to questions outside of his presence.
Finally, I am not persuaded that our harmless error determination can be guided by our view of the significance of the jurors’ responses to the questions at the bench, ie., whether aggravated or not. “A juror being examined at the bench may give answers concerning persons, places, or events that would mean nothing to counsel, but would alert defendant to the existence of a ground for challenge for cause.” Boone, supra, 488 A.2d at 1143 (Belson, J., concurring). It is a defendant’s exclusion from the process that frustrates its purpose, which is to enable the accused to help counsel exercise peremptory challenges and challenges for cause. See id. at 1138, 1143. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent from the opinion of the court insofar as it finds no reversible error on Brown’s challenge to exclusion from the jury selection process. Otherwise, I concur in the court’s opinion.

. Super. Ct.Crim. R. 43(a), which sets forth a defendant’s right to be present at all stages of the trial, including the impaneling of the jury, " 'incorporates the protections afforded by the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause, the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause, and the common law right of presence Beard v. United States, 535 A.2d 1373, 1375 (D.C.1988) (quoting Welch v. United States, 466 A.2d 829, 838 (D.C.1983)).

. Briggs was one of those unusual cases in which this court determined that the defendant’s request to be present was untimely. 525 A.2d at 590. There, prolonged competency proceedings had preceded the trial, and counsel was on notice that special arrangements would have to be made to accommodate Briggs’ condition. Id. Therefore, this court concluded that there was no error in denying the defendant’s untimely request in light "of the interruptive and special precautions that would have been required_" Id.

. The panel in Kleinbart noted:
Moreover, the entire voir dire was conducted at the bench, outside appellant’s presence. The case is thus distinguished from those cited in the dissent, in each of which only a portion of voir dire was conducted at the bench, and only two jurors so questioned were impaneled. By contrast, this case presents a more egregious violation than that in Robinson v. United States, 448 A.2d 853, 856 (D.C.1982), where only “the bulk of voir dire” was conducted at the bench.
Kleinbart, supra, 553 A.2d at 1240 n. 6 (citing Gary, supra, 499 A.2d at 835; Young, supra, 478 A.2d at 290-91; and Washington, supra, 227 U.S.App. D.C. at 193, 705 F.2d at 498).

. Neither the transcript of the proceedings nor the jury list and report on which the strikes were recorded reveal who exercised the peremptory challenges, i.e., the government, Brown or Lay. Counsel presented their strikes in writing, and the numbers were read out without attribution to any particular party-

. Two of the nine selected as jurors were alternates, and therefore, excused before deliberations commenced.