Court Opinion

ID: 9796970
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:09:22.750691+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:51:51.957386
License: Public Domain

ROBINSON, Judge (dissenting). {8} I cannot concur with the majority opinion. I dissent because I do not believe Defendant’s conviction for conspiracy to threaten/intimidate a witness can stand under the facts of this case. A person cannot be guilty of intimidating a witness by going into a courtroom and just sitting there. That is not a crime. Even so, the so-called intimidation never took place because Defendant was arrested and jailed before the retrial of Tracy Johnson. {9} Granted, the crime of conspiracy does not require the completion of the crime planned. It just requires the planning with another to do the crime. The problem, as I see it, is that if the act someone is planning is not a crime, one cannot be guilty of conspiracy to commit the non-criminal act. {10} The United States Constitution ensures open and public, not secret, criminal trials. At a public trial, it should not be a crime to just go into a courtroom and sit there as a spectator. If the evidence from the jailhouse telephone calls demonstrated that Defendant was supposed to whisper or utter a threat to the witness, that would be sufficient for intimidation, but the facts of this case do not rise (or sink) to that level. {11} The difference between this case and other cases is that, in other cases, the spectators performed some menacing act to intimidate a witness. In one instance, a large number of people-thirty to forty of them-leaned forward and grinned and grimaced when the witness was sworn. The trial court cleared the courtroom, removing all the intimidators. The appellate court held that the removal of those spectators did not violate the defendant’s right to a public trial under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. United States ex rel. Bruno v. Herold, 408 F.2d 125, 127 (1969); see also State v. Raymond, 447 So.2d 51, 53 (La.Ct.App.1984) (holding that the right to a public trial is subject to the judge’s power to exclude spectators from the courtroom during a witness’ testimony where reasonably necessary to prevent pressures upon the witness, so that he or she may testify to facts material to the case, and found that a spectator’s remark, “That’s all right, you gonna get it[,]” constituted a threatening and disruptive act). {12} In the present case, the convoluted, curse-laden, jailhouse conversations between a murder suspect and the person who was going to go sit in the courtroom at his behest, thereby trying to intimidate a witness against that murder suspect, shows nothing more than a spectator going into a courtroom and simply sitting there. There is no evidence whatsoever that Defendant was going to do anything but sit there. Such action is constitutionally protected by the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is not a crime. It is a legal act. There should be no conspiracy to do a legal act. {13} In People v. Hargrove, 60 A.D.2d 636, 400 N.Y.S.2d 184, 185 (1977), the court, although finding the error harmless under the circumstances, held that the removal of two spectators from the courtroom after the witness complained that they were watching him closely from the front row seats, constituted error infringing upon the defendant’s constitutional right to a public trial. The court reasoned that neither of the spectators had overtly menaced the witness and, therefore, there was no intimidation or threatening of the witness. {14} The majority suggests that Johnson and Defendant agreed that Defendant may do more than just sit there in the courtroom. I am afraid that the majority opinion is simply speculating. But, fortunately, we only prosecute people for conspiracy to do whatever illegal act they planned to do, not what we speculate they may do. {15} For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.