Court Opinion

ID: 9543390
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:45:04.722699+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:10:15.903942
License: Public Domain

QUINN, Chief Justice,
dissenting:
Because I cannot accept this court’s holding that the prosecutor’s improper comments during closing argument did not constitute reversible error, I dissent.
The right of a criminally accused to a jury trial by an impartial jury is a fundamental right, expressly guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article II, sections 16 and 23 of the Colorado Constitution. See Groppi v. Wisconsin, 400 U.S. 505, 91 S.Ct. 490, 27 L.Ed.2d 571 (1971); Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961); Oaks v. People, 150 Colo. 64, 371 P.2d 443 (1962). This court observed in Oaks that “[a]mong the rights guaranteed to the people of this state, none is more sacred than that of trial by jury,” and that this right “does not depend upon the degree of culpability disclosed by the evidence.” 150 Colo, at 68, 69, 371 P.2d at 447.
As with the case of prosecutorial comment on a defendant’s refusal to testify on his own behalf during the trial, Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609, 85 S.Ct. 1229, 14 L.Ed.2d 106 (1965), adverse prosecutorial comment on a defendant’s exercise of the right to a jury trial is a penalty exacted for doing nothing other than that which the United States and Colorado Constitutions guarantee. I recognize that in Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17
*986L.Ed.2d 705 (1967), the United States Supreme Court concluded that “there may be some constitutional errors which in the setting of a particular case are so unimportant and insignificant that they may, consistent with the Federal Constitution, be deemed harmless, not requiring the automatic reversal of the conviction.” Id. at 22, 87 S.Ct. at 827. The Court has also recognized, however, both in Chapman and more recently in Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570,—, 106 S.Ct. 3101, 3106, 92 L.Ed.2d 460 (1986), that there also “are some constitutional rights so basic to a fair trial that their infraction can never be treated as harmless error.” Chapman, 386 U.S. at 23, 87 S.Ct. at 827; see, e.g., Price v. Georgia, 398 U.S. 323, 90 S.Ct. 1757, 26 L.Ed.2d 300 (1970) (violation of double jeopardy by retrial of defendant for crime for which he was impliedly acquitted in first trial not subject to harmless error analysis even though second trial resulted in conviction for same lesser included offense as in first trial and no greater punishment than that imposed in first trial); Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963) (denying indigent defendant’s request for court-appointed counsel in felony prosecution not subject to harmless error rule); Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U.S. 560, 78 S.Ct. 844, 2 L.Ed.2d 975 (1958) (admission of coerced confession into evidence requires reversal without regard to strength of state’s evidence); Turney v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 47 S.Ct. 437, 71 L.Ed. 749 (1927) (adjudication by biased judge requires reversal regardless of state of evidence).
The constitutional right at stake here— the right to choose to be tried by an impartial jury in a criminal case — is a right so integral to the integrity and continued viability of our constitutional system of adjudication that any direct assault on that right requires reversal and a new trial untainted by the initial unfairness. The prosecutor’s uninvited and unprovoked comments in this case were purposely calculated to persuade the jury to return a guilty verdict solely because the defendant exercised his right to a jury trial. Such prose-cutorial imputation of guilt clashes head-on with the presumption of innocence and undermines the very foundations on which our system of criminal justice is built. The difference between the complete denial of the right to a trial by jury and, as here, imputing guilt to the defendant for exercising that right is at best a difference in degree only, not a difference in kind.
Remarks such as these have no place in our system of justice and represent the very antithesis of the constitutionally prescribed manner in which the state and its officers are required to treat an accused. The employment of a harmless error analysis under these circumstances results in trivializing the error and in depreciating the value of the right so egregiously violated. In my view, reversal is required here without regard to the strength of the state’s case against the defendant.
I would affirm the judgment of the court of appeals and remand the case for a new trial.
I am authorized to say that Justice KIRSHBAUM and Justice MULLARKEY join me in this dissent.