Court Opinion

ID: 9488945
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:00:32.282825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:12.501235
License: Public Domain

*1146HAWKINS, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I join the majority opinion because I agree that the defendant’s absence under the facts of this case does not constitute structural error.
Prudent persons, however, should avoid reading this decision any more expansively than its facts permit. This decision does not broadly sanction the absence of the defendant from the return of a verdict and wise trial judges should be loathe to ever permit a return in the absence of the defendant.
This defendant was present during his trial and for the return of the jury’s verdict on guilt or innocence. Also, the members of the penalty jury were not strangers to the events or the defendant’s participation in them, because, under Washington law, if a penalty phase is required, the same jury hears the evidence and decides the punishment. Mr. Rice therefore confronted the same jurors who had earlier found him guilty; his absence was from the return of the penalty verdict and it alone.
Under these fairly limited and particular facts, the majority has properly determined that the absence of the defendant here was not an error of such magnitude as to impact the very fabric of the defendant’s trial. Cf. Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 309-10, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 1264-65, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991).