Court Opinion

ID: 9770481
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:06:13.770232+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:17.730157
License: Public Domain

Griffin Smith, Chief Justice, dissenting. The material facts are undisputed. Judge Taylor did not enter the jury room, but stood at the door and answered certain questions that every informed person in Arkansas knows to be true. These questions and the responses made by the judge are a composite of constitutional and statutory law: the Governor’s power, upon the one hand, to commute sentences, and the parole system upon the other. Then the judge immediately informed counsel for the defendant regarding the conversation, and there was seeming acquiescence. Certainly a motion for mistrial at this stage of the procedure would have been proper. Instead, the defendant preferred to speculate on what the jury would do. If the verdict proved satisfactory, nothing would be said about the so-called judicial indiscretion; if unsatisfactory, the matter would be urged as error. I do not think that counsel for the defendant had this alternative in mind. They are not the type of lawyers who would conceal such a purpose. It is more than a circumstance that these attorneys do not appear as counsel on appeal. Neither should unethical practice be ascribed to the attorney who now represents the defendant. The record does not show that he participated in the trial. I think the error was waived by conduct and that the judgment should be affirmed.