Court Opinion

ID: 9851188
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:08:37.712143+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:50.884446
License: Public Domain

BRETT, Judge,
specially concurring.
I concur in this decision. The opinion makes it clear that exceptions to the stat*210ute may develop, but I choose to emphasize that point. Notwithstanding the fact that the statute states, “in no event”, certain exceptions may develop that would authorize the restraint of a defendant, but a defendant must demonstrate that he will not cooperate in the trial proceedings before he may be restrained. Initially the trial judge has no discretion concerning whether or not a defendant should be restrained. However, once a defendant demonstrates that he intends to disrupt the trial, judicial discretion comes into play. As set forth by the United States Supreme Court, in Illinois v. Allen, 397 U.S. 337, 90 S.Ct. 1057, 25 L.Ed.2d 353 (1970), when the defendant disrupts the trial, the trial judge may take necessary steps to control the decorum of his courtroom even to the removal of the defendant from the courtroom.
In the instant ease no. such disruption occurred. The record reflects that the Sheriff considered the defendant to be a security risk and said prior to taking the defendant to the courtroom, “Shackle the son of a bitch.” The Sheriff does not control the courtroom. That is the responsibility of the trial judge. The trial judge is bound to proceed in accordance with the terms of 22 O.S. 1981, § 15 until some reason develops to proceed otherwise. Further, when restraint becomes necessary, the record should be made completely clear why restraint is being applied.
I agree with that part of Judge Bussey’s dissent that sets forth that the evidence of appellant’s guilt is overwhelming. It is. But that does not solve the problem confronting this Court. While there are exceptions to the “in no event” provision, it is the defendant’s own behavior that strips him of the right to be shackle-free, not the quantum of evidence of guilt produced by the State.
James D. French, in French v. State, 377 P.2d 501 (Okl.Cr.1982), was tried three times before his trial was affirmed for the death penalty. French, like Davis, was shackled at trial. The only difference between French’s trial and appellant’s trial lies in the fact that the first two days of French's trial he was led into the courtroom shackled in the presence of the jury, or jurors. In appellant’s case, it is not clear who might have observed him shackled. I am of the opinion this Court’s unanimous statement in the French case is worth repeating:
Until 1953, the Statute read: (Title 22 O.S.A. § 15-1951.)
‘The defendant is not to be subjected to any more restraint than is necessary for his arrest and detention.’
This left the court with a broad discretion to determine what was necessary, but in 1953, the Statute was amended by the addition of the following language:
‘4 * * and in no event shall he be tried before a jury while in chains and shackles.’
This removed any and all discretion that the trial court had. It was predicated upon the theory that a man brought before the court in chains and shackles was prejudiced in the minds of the jury. They would ultimately draw the conclusion that defendant was a dangerous criminal who had to be chained and shackled to prevent his escape or prohibit him from doing harm to others or any act of violence.
Even in absence of a statute and where the court had discretion, the Fla. Court said: {Shultz v. State, 131 Fla. 757, 179 So. 764-765)
‘Every person is presumed to be innocent of the commission of crime and that presumption follows them through every stage of the trial until they shall have been convicted. It is, therefore, highly improper to bring a person who has not been convicted of crime, clothed as a convict and bound in chains, into the presence of a venire or jury by whom he is tried for any criminal offense and, when such condition is shown by the record to have *211obtained, in many cases it might be sufficient grounds for a reversal.’
Bear in mind this ruling was made without a statute that, ‘In no event can a defendant be tried before a jury in chains and shackles’. Our Statute permits no discretion nor ramifications. It simply says it shall not be done.
Significance can be attached to the above decision as it presents the irrevocable damage that is done to defendant to bring him in such condition before a venire or jury.
In the case of Blair v. Commonwealth, supra, the court said (188 S.W. [390] page 393):
‘We, however, regard it our duty to say that the manacling of a person when upon trial for a criminal offense, whether bringing him into court, while in the presence of the court or jury or at any stage of the trial, under such circumstances as appear to have attended the handcuffing of appellant, cannot be too strongly condemned.’
We share this expression of the Kentucky Court. Though biologically speaking, man may be an animal, it was never intended that he be treated as such in the realm of criminal jurisprudence. If we permitted the subjection of man to such treatment before the courts of our land, we have paved the way for him to be tried while tied to a log or in a steel cage, as well as chains and shackles. Barbarism has been abandoned and must never be permitted to creep back through the crevices created by lenient rules of law. Our Statute in no uncertain language, says ‘It shall not be done’, and we see no reason for relaxing the rule.
Id. at 503-04.
Therefore, I concur in granting appellant a new trial.