Court Opinion

ID: 9522763
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:32:10.596614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:03:53.780659
License: Public Domain

Reiber, C.J.,
¶ 54. concurring in Part I, and dissenting in Part II. This appeal has traveled a long road, from here to the United States Supreme Court and back again, raising novel claims of constitutional significance. The few that now remain, although more conventional in nature, warrant the same care and consideration. I am persuaded, however, that the majority has erred in concluding for a second time that the judgment must be reversed, this time on the ground that the trial court refused to separate the trial of the domestic assault charge from the underlying aggravating element based on the violation of a court-ordered condition-of-release.
¶ 55. I do not disagree with the ' holding in Part I of the majority opinion that the state constitutional-law claim was not preserved for review on appeal. Nor do I dispute the majority’s initial conclusion in Part II of the opinion that bifurcation is not *475necessarily confined to the trial of prior convictions.10 Even assuming that the trial court erred in concluding otherwise, however, it is axiomatic that reversal is not required absent any prejudicial affect on the verdict. The majority recognizes this principle, but fails to apply it. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
¶ 56. “The two most important factors in the harm equation we must employ are the strength of the prosecution’s case without the offending evidence and the strength of the offending evidence.” State v. Lipka, 174 Vt. 377, 385, 817 A.2d 27, 33-34 (2002). The majority here only cursorily considers the second factor — the strength of the offending evidence — and addresses the first — the strength of the State’s case — barely at all. When these two factors are adequately addressed, however, it becomes clear that any possible error resulting from the failure to bifurcate in this case was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
¶ 57. As for the “offending evidence,” it is important to understand that, once the trial court denied the motion to bifurcate, defendant entered into a stipulation with the State precisely for the purpose of minimizing any potential prejudice.11 That stipulation, which the court read to the jury, provided that “[t]he parties hereby stipulate and agree that . . . the condition of release that defendant shall not harass, or cause to be harassed [the victim] was validly imposed by the Court on July 9, 2001, and remained in place as of July 27, 2001.” The stipulation further provided that “the parties agreed that the State need not present any additional evidence to establish the validity of these conditions.” Apart from this statement and several brief references in the State’s opening *476and closing argument, the prior court order received no additional attention during the trial.
¶ 58. While there is no doubt, therefore, that the jury was informed of the existence of the nonharassment order, the issue here is whether this information constituted the sort of prior “bad act” evidence that we have found to be so powerfully prejudicial because of its potential to create “an entirely different . . . calculus of probabilities in deciding whether to convict.” Lipka, 174 Vt. at 388, 817 A.2d at 36 (quotations omitted). Certainly the nonharassment order implied some past conflict between defendant and the victim sufficient to warrant court intervention, but standing alone and bereft of telling detail it did not, I submit, pose the grave danger of prejudice that we have found in other cases where potentially inflammatory evidence of prior offenses by the defendant was erroneously admitted. Cf. Lipka, 174 Vt. at 388, 817 A.2d at 36 (evidence of defendant’s prior sexual misconduct against his own daughter was “particularly explosive and prejudicial”); State v. McCarthy, 156 Vt. 148, 154-55, 589 A.2d 869, 873-74 (1991) (holding that the “admission of extensive details of defendant’s alleged prior misconduct” of sexual assaults constituted plain error).
¶ 59. As for the actual incident that gave rise to the court order, here again the evidence was minimal and far from inflammatory. Indeed, the jury heard reference to the matter on only three brief occasions during the course of a three-day trial. The first occurred during the victim’s testimony, when she recalled an incident in June 2000, a year before the charged offense, when she went outside after an argument with defendant and found her tires slashed. She did not mention it again. The second occurred during the State’s closing argument, when the prosecutor noted that the nonharassment order had been “imposed as a result of another incident involving [the victim] where [defendant] had been charged with slashing her tires.”
¶ 60. The final reference occurred during the State’s rebuttal argument. In response to defense counsel’s observation that defendant had never previously struck the victim, the prosecutor recalled that defendant had “threatened her before; that he slashed her tires; that she’s been scared of him.” Counsel immediately objected on the ground that the State was attempting “to argue that that evidence of the slashing tires means that he hit [the victim].” During the ensuing bench conference, the prosecutor *477denied that this was either the intent or the effect of her argument, prompting the court to propose that the prosecutor “just make it clear that that doesn’t mean that he assaulted her when he slashed her tires.” The prosecutor readily assented, and proceeded with her argument as follows:
[O]ne clarification. The fact that [defendant] slashed the tires before is not evidence upon which you can find the fact that he struck her here, okay? The fact that he had done that before in and of itself is not evidence of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in this case. It’s not evidence at all that he struck her here.
¶ 61. Thus, the jury was specifically informed that it was not to consider the tire incident as evidence that defendant committed the domestic assault. Although it was the prosecutor rather than the court delivering the instruction, it followed a defense objection and a bench conference and thus carried the court’s stamp of approval. Furthermore, the trial court itself cautioned the jury on the same subject, subsequently charging as follows: “Evidence has been introduced in this case concerning allegations of other incidents between the Defendant and [the victim]. You should distinctly understand that the Defendant is not on trial for any actions other than the charged offenses.” Any potential prejudice from the tire incident, therefore, was promptly mitigated by instructions to the jury that the incident was not to be considered in determining defendant’s guilt or innocence on the domestic assault charge. See State v. Mears, 170 Vt. 336, 346, 749 A.2d 600, 607 (2000) (an immediate and unequivocal instruction may cure any potential prejudice).
¶ 62. Balanced against the rather limited likelihood of prejudice was the overwhelmingly one-sided and uniform evidence of defendant’s guilt. Although overlooked by the majority, the evidence was indeed compelling. The victim testified at length concerning the incident that led to the assault, providing substantial detail about the surrounding events, including defendant’s highly intoxicated condition, his angry and confrontational behavior, her decision to leave the trailer with her baby and drive away to safety, and defendant’s response in which he pulled open the driver’s side door and punched her in the face. Multiple additional witnesses provided corroborating detail. The victim’s sister, who was present during the incident, recounted many of the same facts concerning *478the confrontation, saw the victim leave the trailer, heard the car start, watched as defendant ran out after her, and went to the door to see what would happen. She saw the car stop, saw the driver’s door open and defendant lunge inside, and heard the impact of the blow to the victim’s head.
¶ 63. The victim’s neighbor recalled a woman, later identified as the victim’s sister, pounding on her door in an excited condition reporting that “he’s beating up my sister” and asking her to call the police. The neighbor described the victim, who arrived shortly thereafter, as “crying, hysterical, and her mouth was bleeding” and recalled her saying that defendant “had hit her.” The tape of the neighbor’s 911 call to the police contains the victim’s voice stating that defendant had punched her in the face. The investigating officers who arrived at the scene described the victim as emotionally upset, and noted a swelling and bruising on her face and blood coming from the corner of her mouth. She told them that defendant had struck her. Another officer described finding defendant lying down in a woods near the trailer in a highly intoxicated state. The officer recalled that defendant was extremely insulting and abusive, vomited, and ultimately passed out at the station. Defendant called no witnesses, but merely argued that inconsistencies in the victim’s testimony undermined her credibility, and suggested that defendant had acted in self-defense, recalling the victim’s testimony that she had armed herself with a baseball bat during the confrontation in the trailer.
¶ 64. The question in determining harmless error is whether the jury would have reached the same result without the offending evidence. Lipka, 174 Vt. at 384, 817 A.2d at 33-34. The record here, summarized above, leaves no doubt that it would. The evidence of guilt was not close, and there is no reasonable basis to conclude that the tire-slashing incident that led to the nonharassment order tipped the balance against defendant or unfairly predisposed the jury to find guilt where it otherwise would not have. We may confidently conclude, on the basis of the record as a whole, that any error was harmless, and the verdict would have been the same without any reference to the nonharassment order or the alleged prior misconduct.12
¶ 65. Defendant’s remaining claims require no extended discussion. He contends the trial court violated Vermont Rule of *479Evidence 608(b) in ruling that, if defendant testified, the State could cross-examine him as to whether he had lied on the stand in a prior unrelated criminal prosecution. Although defendant objected to the ruling below, he did not raise this specific claim, and therefore has waived it for purposes of appeal. See State v Brink, 2008 VT 33, ¶ 6, 183 Vt. 603, 949 A.2d 1069 (mem.) (“To properly preserve an issue for appeal a party must present the issue with specificity and clarity in a manner which gives the trial court a fair opportunity to rule on it.” (quotation omitted)).
¶ 66. Defendant lastly asserts that the trial court erred in denying a motion to withdraw his waiver of jury trial on the prior convictions underlying the habitual offender enhancement. The record shows that defendant affirmatively requested the waiver while the jury was deliberating the domestic assault charge, and that the court engaged in a full colloquy with defendant to ensure that the waiver was knowing and voluntary. Following the verdict, the court scheduled a trial on the habitual-offender charge. Two days before the scheduled trial, however, defendant moved to withdraw his jury waiver on the ground that a jury trial was compelled by the intervening United States Supreme Court decision in Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004). The court denied the motion, observing that defendant had entered into a valid waiver and that Blakely had “create[d] no additional right or remedy.”
¶ 67. We have held that “in order to withdraw a valid jury trial waiver, a defendant bears the burden of showing that the withdrawal is requested in good faith, and that granting the request would not prejudice the State, unduly delay the trial, impede the administration of justice, or significantly inconvenience the witnesses.” State v. Sweeney, 2005 VT 11, ¶ 10, 178 Vt. 1, 869 A.2d 137. Defendant’s request here failed to meet this burden. The trial court correctly ruled that the basis for the motion was entirely groundless; Blakely merely applied and extended the holding in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 490 (2000), which recognized a defendant’s right to jury trial on any fact “[ojther than the fact of a prior conviction” that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory minimum. Blakely plainly had no bearing on defendant’s earlier waiver. Furthermore, de*480fendant’s motion merely asserted, without more, that withdrawal of the waiver would present “no prejudice to the State.” This was insufficient to satisfy Sweeney’s requirement of an affirmative showing that withdrawal would pose no prejudice or inconvenience to the State, the witnesses, or the administration of justice. Accordingly, there was no error.
¶ 68. For all of the foregoing reasons, I would affirm the judgment. I am authorized to state that Justice Burgess joins in this dissent.

 That said, I would underscore the majority’s recognition that bifurcation is generally not required where the aggravating factor is “factually intertwined with the underlying offense,” including the many crimes where it “is based on characteristics of the crime itself such as the type of harm caused, the identity of the victim, or the use of a weapon.” Ante, ¶ 26. It is the rare case where the aggravating element poses the prejudicial potential akin to a prior conviction, i.e., where it might unfairly suggest a predisposition to commit the crime charged. State v. Moran, 141 Vt. 10, 19, 444 A.2d 879, 883 (1982). Indeed, standing alone, evidence that the defendant violated a court order designed to protect the victim — as charged in this case — would generally not in my view raise concerns sufficient to bifurcate the issue. There may be cases where prudence strongly dictates exclusion of the facts underlying the court order, and where their admission would prove unduly prejudicial, but as discussed below this was not such a case.

 The trial court originally denied defendant’s request to stipulate to the existence of the court order, but subsequently accepted it.

 For similar reasons, the record does not support defendant’s corollary claim that he was unduly prejudiced by the court’s factually accurate instruction that *479conditions of release are imposed for the limited purposes of ensuring the defendant’s appearance and protecting the public or a particular individual.