Court Opinion

ID: 9534552
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:40:50.115079+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:31:25.764089
License: Public Domain

BARHAM, Justice
(dissenting).
I am of the opinion that Bill of Exceptions No. 5 presents reversible error, and I pretermit a discussion of the other bills.
The majority attempts to distinguish Turner v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 466, 85 S.Ct. 546, 13 L.Ed.2d 424, by finding that in the Turner case “the jury was sequestered”. This distinction has no validity. Physical sequestration of a jury -is only one method for insuring that jurors are not tampered with, do not discuss the case, and are not subjected to outside influence, so that they may reach their verdict, as said in Turner, “upon the evidence developed at the trial”. All courts in this state, before permitting jurors to separate or even to leave the courtroom as a group, admonish them not to discuss the case, form any opinion, or read or listen to anything about the case. The redactors of the Code of Criminal Procedure, according to the comment under Article 791, found it unnecessary in the face of this uniform practice even to include a procedural guide for such instructions. Whether the jurors separate or whether they are physically sequestered, the standard of conduct of others toward them and of the jurors toward others is the same.
In Turner it was the close association between the jurors and two deputy sheriffs who were key prosecution witnesses which was found to be constitutionally impermissible. The United States Supreme Court pointed out that this association during the period of the trial could not but foster the jurors’ confidence in these two men not only as keepers but also as witnesses. Here, just before the case was submitted to the jury, just before argument by counsel and the judge’s charge, Lieutenant Bolton, the principal State’s witness, lunched with a *527j'uror. There is no need to establish what they discussed or whether they discussed the case. Bolton’s association with the juror “could not but foster” that juror’s confidence in him as a witness in the trial. In my opinion the association here was of the same nature as that which the Supreme Court said in Turner “undermined the basic guarantees of trial by jury.” The conviction and sentence should be reversed.
I respectfully dissent.