Court Opinion

ID: 9726866
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:11:01.538789+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:31.608748
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
In this case the defendant filed a pre-trial motion in limine requesting the court to order the prosecutor, his deputy, and witnesses for the State to refrain from referring to a drug-related offense occurring in Steuben County, Indiana. The judge granted that motion.
During the trial, the State’s fourth witness, Detective Sergeant Stump, a thirteen-year veteran of the Indiana State Police, under questioning by the prosecutor, testified that he had met the defendant when he was arrested on a drug charge in Steuben County. The answer was in response to a question by the trial prosecutor to describe the circumstances under which he had twice met Mr. Rose.
*962“Q. Do you personally know, are you personally acquainted with the Defendant in this case, Michael Rose?
A. No, sir.
Q. Have you ever meet [sic] him before?
A. Yes. I have.
Q. How many times, approximately?
A. I’ve met him twice that I recall.
Q. Would you just briefly describe the circumstances of the two times that you’ve meet [sic] Mr. Rose?
A. The first time I believe was on December the 6th of last year, 1979. This would’ve been around 1:00 o’clock in the morning when we had our drug raid and picked up the defendants in the case. Uh, I was assigned the team to go up to his residence and serve the warrant at that time. The second time was earlier this year when he was arrested again on another drug charge in Steuben County.
MR. RHETTS: Objection, Your Honor.
MR. CHERRY: Uh, I have no objections—
THE COURT: The objection’s well taken.
MR. CHERRY: Okay. Let’s just drop the second time then that you’ve meet [sic] the Defendant.
MR. RHETTS: I’d ask that the Jury be admonished, Your Honor.
THE COURT: The Jury’s admonished to disregard that comment.
FURTHER EXAMINATION: Questions by Paul R. Cherry.
Q. Okay. Do you, are you, uh, personally acquainted with Officer Jerry Collins?
A. Yes, sir.
MR. RHETTS: Your Honor, I’m going to ask for a mistrial.
THE COURT: The objection’s overruled. You may proceed.”
As pointed out in the majority opinion, the trial prosecutor, in front of the jury, asked each police witness, including chemists, whether he or she knew the accused. This pattern of questioning, of which the foregoing excerpt is an example, was obviously being followed as a conscious and deliberate strategy by the prosecution. Consideration and planning by the prosecutor was behind it. It demonstrates a pattern involving the form of question and the decision to ask it of each witness. To devise a question is to contemplate probable responses and the further development and exploitation of desired responses. Here, Detective Stump gave the desired response when he answered: “I’ve met him twice that I recall.” The trial prosecutor sought to further exploit this response by asking the next question: “Would you just briefly describe the circumstances of the two times that you’ve met Mr. Rose?” When a trained lawyer-prosecutor in a criminal trial asks a police officer who was only a courier of evidentiary material in a chain of custody, to explain such circumstances, it reflects a conscious and deliberate choice to invite and open the door to the witness to ruminate over and to describe wholly irrelevant and grossly prejudicial events such as unrelated criminal investigations, interrogations, arrests, and convictions, both adult and juvenile. In this case it was a deliberate violation of the intent and purpose of the trial court’s order, a violation of the rule set down by this Court in White v. State, (1971) 257 Ind. 64, 272 N.E.2d 312, and demands reversal of this conviction. To affirm this conviction is to condone knowing and intentional conduct which placed this defendant in a position of grave peril to which he should never have been subjected under the rules set down for the trial, and encourages its repetition.