Court Opinion

ID: 9605084
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:29:58.720784+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:07:42.850463
License: Public Domain

Dissenting opinion by
Justice ROACH.
After noting that the evidence against Hayes was “overwhelming” and rejecting all of his claims of error save one relating to voir dire, the majority opinion, in a conclusory fashion, proclaims the voir dire error is not subject to harmless error. Because the majority opinion relies on inapplicable cases and refuses to consider harmless error, I dissent.
I. HAYES’S ALLEGATION OF ERROR
Let us begin with what actually occurred at trial. No prospective juror indicated that he or she would hold the fact that Hayes did not testify against him. Significantly, the majority opinion relies on several cases where prospective jurors indicated that they would likely draw an adverse inference against the defendant for failing to testify. See Humble v. Commonwealth, 887 S.W.2d 567, 569-71 (Ky.App.1994); State v. Scott, 482 S.W.2d 727, 732-33 (Mo.1972); People v. Bludson, 97 N.Y.2d 644, 736 N.Y.S.2d 289, 761 N.E.2d 1016, 1018 (2001); State v. Hightower, 331 N.C. 636, 417 S.E.2d 237, 240 (1992). Here, because no prospective juror ever stated that he or she would hold Hayes’s *597exercise of his right to remain silent against him, these cases are inapplicable.
Additionally, the jury, on more than one occasion, indicated that it would follow the court’s instructions. The trial court gave the jury the following instruction:
A Defendant is not compelled to testify and the fact that the Defendant did not testify in this case cannot be used as an inference of guilt and should not prejudice him in any way.
Although the trial judge could have allowed the voir dire exchange and would have been well advised to do so, I do not believe that this failure amounted to an abuse of discretion. See RCr 9.38 (allowing the parties to engage in voir dire that the trial court “deems proper”).
The majority opinion relies in part on United States v. Blount, 479 F.2d 650, 651 (6th Cir.1973), where the appellate court found the trial court’s limitation on voir dire to be an abuse of discretion. But Blount considered the presumption of innocence, not the right to silence. More importantly, Blount has been discredited across the nation. See United States v. Price, 577 F.2d 1356, 1366 (9th Cir.1978) (rejecting Blount and noting that it had also been rejected by the Second, Third, Fifth, Eighth and Tenth Circuits); United States v. Miller, 758 F.2d 570, 573 (11th Cir.1985) (rejecting Blount and noting that the Second, Third, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Circuits “have uniformly held that it is not a per se abuse of discretion to refuse to ask prospective jurors questions concerning propositions of law involving burden of proof or presumption of innocence” (citations omitted)); United States v. Wooton, 518 F.2d 943, 947 n. 7 (3rd Cir.1975) (“We recognize that a divided Sixth Circuit has held to the contrary. United States v. Blount, 479 F.2d 650 (6th Cir.1973). Believing that the majority opinion there did not address the panoply of considerations marshaled heretofore, which we deem significant and controlling, we decline to follow our sister Circuit.”); United States v. Price 888 F.2d 1206, 1211 n. 6 (7th Cir. 1989) (noting that other courts have refused to follow Blount and then holding that those “cases further weaken the defendant’s attempt to use Blount as support for his suggested general rule that a trial judge commits reversible, constitutional error by not asking a particular question the answer to which might form the basis for a for-cause challenge.”).
The most important indicator of Blount’s limited precedential value, however, is the Sixth Circuit’s narrow reading of the case in United States v. Aloi, 9 F.3d 438 (6th Cir.1993). Aloi clearly supports the conclusion that no error occurred in this case during voir dire. The following exchange occurred at trial in Aloi:
Defense counsel made the following request of the District Court during voir dire of the jury:
MR. FORTADO: I would like the Court to instruct them or inquire of them as to their knowledge of the Defendant’s right not to testify, not to incriminate.
THE COURT: I don’t do that. I do it throughout the trial every chance I get. It’s a very strong instruction at the end.
Id. at 440. The Sixth Circuit then framed the issue in the following manner:
Defendant argues that he was entitled to have this specific question asked during voir dire. He also complains that the court did not remind the jury during the trial that defendant was not required to testify. The following instruction was given by the court to the jury:
The Defendant is presumed by the law to be innocent. The law does not require a Defendant to prove his innocence or produce any evidence at all, and no inference whatever may be *598drawn from the election of the Defendant not to testify. The Government has the burden of proving him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of each and every essential element of the crime charged and if it fails to do so you must acquit him.
Id. at 440-41.
The Sixth Circuit, noting that the defendant was relying on Blount to support his claim of error, specifically refused to extend that case to cover voir dire concerning the privilege against self-incrimination:
The issue here is whether this Court will extend the principle of Blount to the facts of this case, where the requested question dealt not with the presumption of innocence, but with the right of a criminal defendant not to testify against himself. The Supreme Court has held that the failure of a trial court “to limit the jurors’ speculation on the meaning of’ a defendant’s silence when he chooses not to testify, by giving a requested limiting jury instruction, “exacts an impermissible toll of the full and free exercise” of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Carter v. Kentucky, 450 U.S. 288, 305, 101 S.Ct. 1112, 1121, 67 L.Ed.2d 241 (1981). The Court did not suggest that the subject must also be covered in voir dire. The specific question asked here, namely, the jurors’ “knowledge” of a defendant’s right not to testify, would not itself be a ground for a challenge for cause. Only if after being instructed that the defendant’s failure to testify could not be held against him and the refusal or inability to comply with that instruction, could they be challenged for cause. We hold that the failure of the District Court to honor the request did not create the risk of empaneling a biased jury, given the court’s voir dire questions and jury instructions about the presumption of innocence and its instruction that “no inference whatever may be drawn from the election of the defendant not to testify-”
Id. at 441 (emphasis added). The majority implies that the Sixth Circuit’s refusal to extend Blount was due, at least in part, to the fact that the defendant asked to question prospective jurors during voir dire as to their knowledge of his right to remain silent, rather than asking whether they would draw an adverse inference from his exercise of that right. However, it is clear that this subtle distinction was not the reason for the Aloi court’s refusal to extend Blount to the right to remain silent.
I agree with the Sixth Circuit that the Constitution does not require that the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination “must also be covered in voir dire.” Id. Thus I cannot conclude that it was an abuse of discretion for the trial court not to allow Appellant to ask his questions on that subject. And because the trial court ultimately instructed the jury on that privilege, I cannot say that “the trial court’s failure to ask these questions ... renderfed] the defendant’s trial fundamentally unfair” so as to require reversal. Mu’Min v. Virginia, 500 U.S. 415, 425-26, 111 S.Ct. 1899, 1905, 114 L.Ed.2d 493 (1991).
II. HARMLESS ERROR
Equally troubling, however, is the majority opinion’s proclamation that harmless error does not apply to the present situation. The opinion relies on Oswald v. Bertrand, 374 F.3d 475 (7th Cir.2004), to support this conclusion. In Oswald, the trial court sent jury questionnaires to' 156 individuals, “more than 80 percent of whom responded that on the basis of the media coverage1 of the crime they thought that Oswald was guilty.” Id. at 479. It took over four days of voir dire to narrow the *599list to 29. On the last day the following exchange occurred:
Roger Klitzka, in the course of being voir dired, said, “I know I’ve learned more in the last three days here sitting down there in that room about this case than I have since the day that it happened .... [According to what I hear, the young man is guilty of what he is being accused of and things like that and everything and I just think it’s just a waste of time.” The judge asked him whether he meant “it’s a waste to have the trial at all,” and Klitzka confirmed that that was indeed what he meant.
Apparently this was not just Klitzka’s personal opinion (he was not selected for the jury). The implication of what he said was that the entire jury pool had made up its mind that Oswald was guilty.

Id.

In the face of these statements by a prospective juror about the entire jury pool, the trial judge still refused to make the prospective juror respond to defendant’s counsel’s inquiries concerning what he had heard while the jury pool was discussing the case. The Seventh Circuit noted that “[e]ven though the circumstances strongly suggested that the jury had made up its mind that Oswald was guilty, the judge refused either to question Klitzka further or to recall for further questioning any of the prospective jurors who had already been voir dired.” Id. After noting other juror selection irregularities, the court concluded that there was “a high probability that some, maybe all, of the jurors who tried Oswald were biased.” Id. at 480. The divided court then reversed the conviction because the right “to be tried before an impartial tribunal ... is one of the handful of rights of a criminal defendant that is not subject to the doctrine of harmless error.” Id. at 482.
It is clear, however, that Oswald addressed a fundamentally different issue than that presented in this case because it dealt with actual juror bias, namely the belief that the defendant was guilty. Here there is no evidence that any juror held Hayes’s decision not to testify against him — there is no actual evidence of juror bias. Rather, the inquiry in this case is simply whether the trial court’s failure to allow a question at voir dire concerning the privilege against self incrimination is subject to harmless error analysis. This question is distinct from that addressed in Oswald, where the trial judge refused additional voir dire questioning after a juror’s testimony suggested other members of the jury pool were actually biased. Aside from the opinion of the majority, I am unable to find a case in America that would refuse to apply harmless error in these circumstances.
In fact, the United States Supreme Court has strictly limited those cases where harmless error is inapplicable, having
recognized that “most constitutional errors can be harmless.” Fulminante, supra, at 306, 499 U.S. 279, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302. “[I]f the defendant had counsel and was tried by an impartial adjudicator, there is a strong presumption that any other [constitutional] errors that may have occurred are subject to harmless-error analysis.” Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570, 579, 106 S.Ct. 3101, 92 L.Ed.2d 460 (1986). Indeed, we have found an error to be “structural, ” and thus subject to automatic reversal, only in a “very limited class of cases. ” Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 468, 117 S.Ct. 1544, 137 L.Ed.2d 718 (1997) (citing Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963) (complete denial of counsel); Turney v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 47 S.Ct. 437, *60071 L.Ed. 749 (1927) (biased trial judge); Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U.S. 254, 106 S.Ct. 617, 88 L.Ed.2d 598 (1986) (racial discrimination in selection of grand jury); McKaskle v. Wiggins, 465 U.S. 168, 104 S.Ct. 944, 79 L.Ed.2d 122 (1984) (denial of self-representation at trial); Waller v. Georgia, 467 U.S. 39, 104 S.Ct. 2210, 81 L.Ed.2d 31 (1984) (denial of public trial); Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993) (defective reasonable-doubt instruction)).
Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 8, 119 S.Ct. 1827, 1833, 144 L.Ed.2d 35 (1999) (alterations in original, emphasis added). The Supreme Court recently reaffirmed this principle, stating that “[i]t is only for certain structural errors undermining the fairness of a criminal proceeding as a whole that even preserved error requires reversal without regard to the mistake’s effect on the proceeding.” United States v. Dominguez Benitez, 542 U.S. 74, 81, 124 S.Ct. 2333, 2339, 159 L.Ed.2d 157 (2004); see also United States v. Gonzalez-Huerta, 403 F.3d 727, 734 (10th Cir.2005) (“The Court has found structural errors only in a very limited class of cases”); United States v. Padilla, 415 F.3d 211, 219 (1st Cir.2005) (stating that the Supreme Court has “recognized the existence of a tiny class of structural errors” that “includes only the most pervasive and debilitating errors”).
The Supreme Court itself has repeatedly identified only six structural errors. E.g., Neder, 527 U.S. at 8, 119 S.Ct. at 1833 (citing Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 468-69, 117 S.Ct. 1544, 137 L.Ed.2d 718 (1997) and its recognition of structural error in only six circumstances: (1) a total deprivation of the right to counsel; (2) lack of an impartial trial judge; (3) unlawful exclusion of grand jurors on the basis of race; (4) denial of the right to self-representation at trial; (5) denial of the right to a public trial; and (6) an erroneous reasonable doubt instruction to the jury); see also Gonzalez-Huerta, 403 F.3d at 734 n. 5 (noting the six structural errors the Supreme Court has identified); Padilla, 415 F.3d at 219 (same); Lewis v. Pinchak, 348 F.3d 355, 358 (3d Cir.2003) (same); State v. Torres, 208 Ariz. 340, 93 P.3d 1056, 1059-1060 (2004) (same).
Recently, in a unanimous en banc decision, the Eighth Circuit surmised “that the Supreme Court meant for its lists of structural errors in Fulminante and Neder to be exhaustive.” United States v. Allen, 406 F.3d 940, 945 (8th Cir.2005) (en bane). The North Carolina Supreme Court has also declined to extend structural error analysis beyond the “six cases enumerated by the United States Supreme Court.” State v. Garcia, 358 N.C. 382, 597 S.E.2d 724, 745 (2004). This conclusion is further supported by the fact that the Supreme Court has had several opportunities to expand its list of structural errors, but has consistently refused to do so. See, e.g., Johnson; Neder. Even if one were not persuaded that the list of structural errors in Fulminante and Neder is exhaustive, the majority opinion has utterly failed to make its case that the alleged voir dire error — a relatively minor event at most— is within the “tiny class of structural errors” that includes only the “most pervasive and debilitating errors.” Padilla, 415 F.3d at 219. It simply strains reason for the majority to claim that the alleged error at issue was so pervasive and debilitating as to infect “the framework within which the trial proceed[edj,” thus allowing Appellant to evade harmless error review through the application of the structural error doctrine. Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 310, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991).
Moreover, our own Criminal Rules require that we undertake harmless error review:
*601No error in either the admission or the exclusion of evidence and no error or defect in any ruling or order, or in anything done or omitted by the court or by any of the parties, is ground for granting a new trial or for setting aside a verdict or for vacating, modifying or otherwise disturbing a judgment or order unless it appears to the court that the denial of such relief would be inconsistent with substantial justice. The court at every stage of the proceeding must disregard any error or defect in the proceeding that does not affect the substantial rights of the parties.
CR 9.24 (emphasis added). Absent some overriding constitutional mandate, we must determine whether an error is harmless before finding that an error is reversible. Since there is no evidence that a juror who was seated drew an adverse inference against Harrison and since the jury was properly instructed, I cannot discern any error that affected his substantial rights.
III. CONCLUSION
In accordance with the foregoing discussion, I would affirm Hayes’s convictions based on the overwhelming evidence against him.
I agree with the majority’s opinion as to Harrison, though I would affirm his conviction for possession of drug paraphernalia.
GRAVES and WINTERSHEIMER, JJ., join this dissenting opinion.