Court Opinion

ID: 9454709
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:55:51.26364+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:15.568187
License: Public Domain

HASTINGS, Senior Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
With deference to the distinguished majority, I feel compelled to dissent from its holding in this case. The majority opinion correctly recites the factual situation concerning petitioner Allen’s gross misconduct during his trial in the Criminal Court of Cook County, Illinois. I read the constitutional mandates applicable thereto in a light different from my brethren.
The Sixth Amendment provides that “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” Defendant was given that right in this case, but made his own free choice to voluntarily reject his enjoyment of it.
The majority mildly characterizes the trial judge’s admonition to the defendant as “either to behave or be expelled from the courtroom.” Later it recognizes the extremes to which the judge went to preserve some semblance of order in the court. My reading of the undisputed facts indicates to me that defendant was brazenly determined to make a shambles of the criminal judicial process, unless he was permitted to dictate the rules of the game. Witness his threat, after much preliminary blatant misconduct, including a warning to the trial judge that at lunchtime the judge *236was “going to be a corpse here”, when he said:
“There’s not going to be no trial, either. I’m going to sit here and you’re going to talk and you can bring your shackles out and straight jacket and put them on me and tape my mouth, but it will do no good because there’s not going to be no trial.”
Later, at his request, defendant was permitted to be present in court again, and made a similar threat to the judge that he would prevent the trial from proceeding.
The majority states that a “defendant in a criminal proceeding has the unqualified right to be personally present at all stages of the trial,” and concludes as a matter of law that “No conditions may be imposed on the unqualified right of a criminal defendant to be present at all stages of the proceedings.” I cannot accept the thesis that such an unconditional unqualified right in all criminal cases flows from the constitutional mandate of the Sixth Amendment.
The majority then proposes this unusual remedy for such an intolerable situation, — “The proper course for the trial judge was to have restrained the defendant by whatever means necessary, even if those means included his being shackled and gagged.” We all recognize that shackling and gagging a defendant has been judicially approved in certain circumstances. However, I respectfully suggest that such an after the fact holding on appeal is a far cry from the holding here that the failure of the trial judge to take such steps constituted such an interference with the defendant’s constitutional rights as to invalidate his conviction.
I further suggest that if the majority holding becomes a prevailing constitutional precedent, then imagine the result that may occur in a criminal trial of multiple defendants who determined “to raise hell” and disrupt the trial to the point of no return. Shackles, chains, gags and a courtroom full of deputy marshals engaged in trying to keep the defendants off the floor may prove to be the climax in following “the proper course.” I cannot believe the Federal Constitution requires that any such farce take place.
Neither can I believe that the Sixth Amendment’s grant to an accused that he “shall enjoy the right” carries with it an unqualified right to have it on his own terms and that no conditions may be imposed thereon. Thus, the majority in effect says that a defendant has a right to be present at his trial and at the same time rules that the bedevilled trial judge must enforce this right upon the defendant by violent physical means, if necessary.
The majority puts forward a footnote alternative that an additional technique available to the trial judge for controlling the defendant’s behavior is the use of the court’s contempt power. I fail to see how the threat of punishment for contempt would restrain those determined to destroy the trial proceeding in progress. Defendant and his kind could care less.
The majority opinion properly recognizes those cases holding that a defendant who voluntarily absents himself from a trial effects a waiver of his right to be present. I find myself in agreement with the Supreme Court of Illinois, in upholding defendant’s conviction, when it equates a voluntary absence from the trial with circumstances leading to this defendant’s involuntary absence. People v. Allen, 37 Ill.2d 167, 226 N.E.2d 1 (1968). In either situation, a defendant by his own action brings about his absence from the trial.
Under the facts of this case, I would hold that the state trial judge did not err in his conduct of defendant’s trial and that the district court properly dismissed defendant’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus. I would affirm.