Court Opinion

ID: 9620777
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:47:28.916497+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:54.368326
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice Sharp
dissenting.
Despite defendant’s inadequate and unscientific methods of garnering evidence in support of her motion for a change of venue, the record convinces me that the motion should have been allowed and that the court’s failure to grant it entitles her to a new trial. When rumors have begun to circulate, so damaging to the defendant that her counsel dares not ask a prospective juror if he has heard them, it seems to me that neither counsel’s failure to exhaust his peremptory challenges nor to request that prospective jurors be separately examined on voir dire can constitute a waiver of defendant's right to a change of venue. The separate examination of jurors, which the majority suggests as the solution in such a situation, could be a safeguard only if every juror examined and excused were held incommunicado until the trial jury had been impaneled and committed to the bailiff’s custody. In a case like this such a procedure would seem to be obviously impractical.
Nor should we say that, because the evidence of defendant’s guilt is so overwhelming that any jury anywhere would have returned a verdict of “guilty as charged,” an error of law which otherwise would have been grounds for a new trial is harmless. Such an approach nullifies both the presumption of innocence and the requirements of due process, and it harbors the implication that the trial itself was unnecessary. I therefore respectfully dissent and vote for a new trial.
Justice Exum joins in this dissent.