Court Opinion

ID: 9617423
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:54:59.040074+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:38.085411
License: Public Domain

Judge JONES
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
Defendant contends that the trial court erred in conducting a hearing, outside the presence of the defendant and his attorney, relating to the trial appearance of a material witness. He argues that, under the circumstances, this proceeding constituted a critical stage of the entire criminal proceeding mandating his constitutional right to have counsel present.
I agree that the content of the exchange during the proceeding required that defendant’s counsel be present. I further conclude that, under the circumstances of this case, the error here was not harmless.
The right to counsel exists at every critical stage of a criminal proceeding, which is defined as any point at which there exists more than a minimal risk that the absence of the defendant’s counsel might impair the defendant’s right to a fair trial. Key v. People, 865 P.2d 822 (Colo.1991). See People v. Johnson, 802 P.2d 1105 (Colo.App.1990), rev’d on other grounds, 815 P.2d 427 (Colo.1991).
In Key, the court found that a court’s impromptu ex parte conference with the jury during its deliberations may constitute a critical stage of the proceedings even when the discussions are purportedly confined to scheduling matters because the content of the communications and the context in which they occur may create more than a minimal risk that counsel’s absence would impair the defendant’s right to a fair trial. The court noted that the content of such a proceeding could be affected “because of the ever-present risk that the discussions may take an unexpected turn.” Key v. People, supra, at 825.
Here, as in Key, the proceeding in question was intended to serve a merely administrative function. It was related to a material witness certification procedure undertaken pursuant to § 16-9-203, C.R.S. (1993 Cum. Supp.), which is normally not a critical stage. The witness-informant, who was a resident of New Mexico, had been summoned to Colorado to appear before the trial court, which was to advise her of the time she was to appear in court the next day to testify.
The trial court initiated the proceeding by inquiring whether the defendant was present. After the court was informed that the defendant and his attorney were not present, the prosecutor stated that: “All that I would respectfully request of the court is that in fact for the convenience of [the informant] we determine a time certain for her to appear tomorrow.”
The court then asked the informant if she had a statement that she wanted to make. The informant replied that she had “a big statement to make” and thereafter recited a myriad of objections to having to testify at the trial, including the fact that, because of her ingestion of drugs and alcohol, she could not remember anything at all from the evening when the cocaine transaction had occurred. The informant’s husband and brother-in-law, who were also present at the proceeding, expressed concerns that the informant’s children might need protection, and the brother-in-law additionally indicated that police officers had failed to keep promises made to the informant in the past.
As a result of the trial court’s inquiry of the informant, this purportedly administrative proceeding took “an unexpected turn,” so that the context in which this exchange occurred was in the nature of a hearing. See Key v. People, supra. In addition, the content of the exchange involved statements by the informant that could have been used by the prosecution to determine the admission of evidence during trial, while the defendant and his counsel did not have the benefit of this information. Hence, the content and context of the exchange created more than a minimal risk that counsel’s absence would impair the defendant’s right to a fair trial. See Key v. People, supra. Cf. People v. Johnson, supra.
*1337Consequently, I conclude that, under these circumstances, the manner in which the proceeding was conducted constituted error, depriving the defendant of his constitutional right to counsel at a critical stage of the proceedings.
Although the error here was of a constitutional nature, a harmless error analysis may be applied if the error was not a structural defect affecting the framework within which the trial proceeds, but was instead simply an error in the trial process itself. Harmless error analysis has been applied when “trial error” has deprived the defendant of his right to counsel during a discrete stage of the proceedings, the impact of which can be quantitatively assessed on appellate review. Key v. People, supra.
In cases of trial error involving the right to counsel, reversal is required unless the appellate court can declare that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Under this standard, the prosecution has the burden of demonstrating that the proceeding in error did not contribute to the defendant’s conviction. If there is a reasonable possibility from a review of the entire record that the defendant could have been prejudiced, the error cannot be harmless. Key v. People, supra.
Here, a review of the entire record reveals that, because of her inability to remember any of the incidents that occurred that evening, none of the evidence elicited to support the charges against defendant was adduced through the informant. Rather, all of the evidence introduced at trial was of a circumstantial nature and was introduced through the testimony of police officers who had overheard electronically transmitted conversational exchanges between a man they identified as defendant and the informant. The prosecution became aware that its evidence would have to be presented in this way at the hearing in question, but the defense could not have known of it until the trial was underway.
Knowledge of the informant’s inability to recall any of the events upon which the charges against defendant were based was critical to the defense in preparing for trial. The significance of this information-revealed at the proceeding militates against defendant’s absence being considered harmless because it was available to the prosecution when the proceeding took “an unexpected turn,” but was not made available at that time to the defendant or his counsel.
In addition, some of the statements that were made in the course of the proceeding also suggest that certain promises had been made to the informant by police officers which were not fulfilled and that the informant had cooperated with the police because she was under the influence of drugs and alcohol and in fear for her children. These statements might have alerted the defendant and his counsel to a defense concerning coerced cooperation by the informant that defendant ultimately was not able to raise until filing his amended motion for new trial.
In fact, evidence was elicited at trial that the informant had cooperated with police because she was afraid that, if she did not cooperate, they would take her children away from her and that she “would do anything” to keep her children. Defendant cited this evidence in an amended'motion for new trial as grounds for his allegation that the informant had not lawfully consented to the illegal monitoring and that, therefore, any evidence derived from such monitoring is inadmissible. See People v. Rivera, 792 P.2d 786 (Colo.1990).
Based upon my review of the entire record, I cannot declare that the error here was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Instead, under thé circumstances, I conclude that the defendant was prejudiced by his absence and that of his counsel from the proceeding the day before trial.
It is significant to me that the court failed to notify the defendant and his attorney that, instead of being a run-of-the-mill proceeding concerning timing of the witness’ testimony, it became a hearing during which the prosecution, but not the defense, learned that the prosecution’s key witness had become, in essence, a hostile witness. Thus, the analysis of the majority opinion concerning the material witness proceeding as a normally noncritical stage of the entire proceeding does not take into account the factors that can *1338cause an ordinarily non-critical proceeding to become “critical,” as the court observed in Key.
Accordingly, I would reverse the judgment of conviction and remand to the trial court for a new trial. Upon remand, in light of the defendant’s lack of notice during the pretrial proceeding, if the defendant were to raise the issue of whether the informant chose voluntarily to participate in electronic monitoring, or the related issue of alleged coercion to induce that participation, I would direct the court to conduct a hearing and enter findings on these issues.