Court Opinion

ID: 9646126
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 12:49:50.36413+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:34.481742
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge,
dissenting.
Appellant in his point III argues that it was error for the trial court to allow the jury to play defendant’s taped confession in the jury room when it had not been played in open court. The state had offered the tape during Detective O’Keefe’s testimony, but whatever the reason may have been (no explanation appears in the record), it was simply admitted into evidence without ever being played before or heard by the jury. Not only had the tape not been played in open court, but the trial judge had not listened to it prior to giving it to the jury. The jury thus was allowed to listen to a tape recording which had not been examined for irrelevant material and to hear for the first time, in the confines of the jury room, the defendant’s own voice in a confession. The timing was perfect for the state in obtaining a conviction.
The principal opinion concludes that it was not error to allow the jury to listen to the tape recording because it contained nothing that had not been introduced into evidence. This after the fact ad hoc analysis, in my view, establishes a dangerous precedent unsupported by the cited cases, which concern playing confessions in the jury room which have previously been played in open court. The tape recording evidently assumed great importance in the *796eyes of the jury, because the jury specifically asked for it and beyond question listened to it in the jury room. What happened here is not the proper way to get important evidence before the jury. I respectfully dissent.