Court Opinion

ID: 9519344
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:14:32.861954+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:18.286266
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE REARDON, dissenting: The intensity of my feeling about the sacredness of a fair trial has caused me to pause and ponder so that I do not overspeak and so that what is to follow can be read as an exercise in purposeful restraint. Providing the right to a trial to one charged with the commission of a criminal offense was a significant milestone in the history of jurisprudence. More importantly was the evolution and expansion of that right by mandating that the trial be fair. The doctrine of the presumption of innocence of the defendant is a corollary to the requirement that proof of guilt be established beyond a reasonable doubt. Fundamental fairness and the high regard for individual dignity and personal liberty were the touchstones and the criteria for determining the fairness of that trial. In the implementation of these basic concepts, rules of court, statutory and decisional law have come into being. These procedures to implement evenness of handling are not requirements unto themselves but are to be viewed in their proper role as supportive of the more fundamental rights implicit in the goal that a trial be fair. The defendant contends that in the process of his conviction errors occurred. The opinion of the majority recognizes and identifies these errors but deem them not to be reversible. With that conclusion I disagree. To permit a police officer, by his testimony, to weaken the constitutional right of a defendant to remain silent tortures the fairness of the judicial process. To conclude that the amount of money in the offensively boastful defendant’s pockets is probative of identification of involvement in the illicit trafficking in drugs is not justified. The majority’s concession that it is not overwhelmingly supportive of their conclusion is an understatement of some magnitude. Permitting a police officer to testify, in response to prosecution questions, that tinfoil packets in defendant’s possession were capable of being and were sometimes used by heroin dealers cannot be defended. My brothers concede it to be error since it may create some unfair innuendo. Evaluating innuendo is, at best, a speculative endeavor but the majority hastens to embrace the opportunity and find no difficulty in ruling and determining the admitted error to be not reversible. Although not objected to in its entirety, the grossness of the prosecution’s self-serving inferences in the State’s final argument consisted, in my judgment, plain error of the most egregious variety. The amazing statement of the prosecutor, in defense of the police testimony, that had the officers been so minded they could have perjured themselves by testifying that the packets contained heroin is nothing more nor less than an invitation to the jury to convict at any cost. Vigorous prosecution is contemplated in our adversary system of justice, but when the prosecution relies on tactics such as demonstrated here I can only judge it to be reversible error of the most insidious kind. Under our system to attain the utopia of a perfect trial is unlikely since only mortals work here. Nevertheless the complete abandonment of the ideal is not to be tolerated. Cumulative error, although difficult to define, and in disrepute in the minds of some legal scholars, is still a viable doctrine in this State. I find it impossible to conclude that it did not occur here and, in my view that combination of error should be corrected by a reversal of the trial court. Therefore, I dissent.