Court Opinion

ID: 9549285
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:15:42.024681+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:20:04.717160
License: Public Domain

BURNETT, Judge,
specially concurring.
I join the court in affirming the conviction and sentence under review. However, I believe two warning flags should be posted along the road leading to that conclusion.
I
The first flag is marked “pretrial publicity." We have declined to disturb the trial judge’s exercise of discretion, in denying a motion for change of venue, because the extensive pretrial media coverage in this case was not impassioned, and because there was no unusual difficulty in selecting a jury. Our ruling follows a well established line of Supreme Court decisions in Idaho. However, the criteria in those decisions contemplate extreme situations, characterized by inflammatory news reporting and revelations of bias by large numbers of potential jurors. My concern today is not with extremes. Rather it is with a more subtle, modern phenomenon — incessant exposure to packaged news.
Modern media coverage of news events bears little resemblance to news reporting of decades past. Today, competition for public attention between print and electronic media, and between sources within each medium, is heightened. The sheer volume and intensity of information reaching prospective jurors has taken a quantum leap, especially in urban areas of the state where news marketing techniques are most highly developed. At the same time, the dissemination of information necessarily has become selective. Potential news stories are evaluated, in part, for ease of assembly and anticipated audience interest. The selected stories are edited to meet deadlines, to fit available space, or to fill broadcast time slots. They are, in short, packaged for public consumption.
This process does not, of itself, condemn the media. Most reporters and editors follow high professional standards. The problem is structural, not individual. So long as news stories are forged in the crucibles of time constraints and competition, the packaging process will be with us.
Packaging of the news affects the news itself. When the subject is a criminal case, the process may yield a stream of selected, easily digested news stories, drawn primarily from the police blotter .and from other readily available, official sources. Each story typically may carry a summary of previously reported information, to keep the audience oriented on the case. Taken together, such stories are largely repetitive in content but urgent in tone. They reinforce each other and develop a sense of momentum. By the time of trial — when the true test of facts is supposed to begin — prospective jurors already may have absorbed substantial, untested information about the case.
Moreover, a decision by city desk editors or station managers to treat a criminal case as a major, continuing news event may shape the expectations of a reading, watching and listening community. The case becomes a “big story.” This elevated profile may profoundly affect the willingness of jurors to serve, and the strived-for impartiality of those who do serve.
In this environment, the potential for external impact upon jury decision-making is subtle but ominous. The impact often takes the form of latent prejudice against the accused person. However, it is also conceivable that if a jury has been conditioned by pretrial publicity to confront a hardened criminal, but instead they find a *908human being who acts like an ordinary citizen in the courtroom, the pendulum of feeling may veer the other way. In either event, the result is to distract the jury from a search for truth.
Accordingly, I believe the standards governing change of venue no longer should be limited to impassioned content in news stories, nor to the number of prospective jurors challenged and disqualified for overt expressions of bias. These traditional factors should be viewed in the broader context of jurors’ absorption of pretrial information. The fundamental test should be whether the jurors can take a fresh look at the evidence in trial.
I doubt that jurors entirely forget what they have been told before trial, particularly if their exposure to pretrial information has been reinforced by the repetition or intensity found in packaged news. At most, we hope jurors will separate the information absorbed during pretrial publicity from the information presented to them at trial. If a district judge believes that the intrusion of media coverage has been so great that this process of separation is imperiled, sound discretion would indicate a change of venue even if the traditional indicators of potential prejudice are not prominent.
The judge in this case carefully examined the record of pretrial publicity. He did not confine his review to the traditional factors of inflammatory reporting or undue difficulty in selecting a jury. Consequently, although I would have given greater weight to the quantitative impact of publicity in the case — and might have granted a change of venue had I been sitting as the district judge — I do not regard the judge’s ruling as an abuse of his discretion.
II
The second warning flag is marked “the elusive accomplice.” In this case one of the witnesses, Mitch Esquivel, had admitted the truth of allegations in a petition under the Youth Rehabilitation Act, charging him as a participant in the robbery-murder of Enrico Flory. Upon that admission his case was adjudicated under the Act. However, when this individual testified in Rory Brooks’ trial, the district judge refused to deem him an accomplice. The issue of his participation, for the purpose of determining whether he was an accomplice, was submitted to the jury.
It has not been argued that Esquivel’s accomplice status turned upon any factual requirement beyond the allegations admitted in the Youth Rehabilitation Act proceeding. Rather, the contention seems to be that Esquivel’s testimony at trial, possibly hedged by self-interest, created an issue of fact concerning his participation. To me, this plainly connotes that an adjudication under the Youth Rehabilitation Act, upon admission to a petition, was not taken at full face value in the district court.
Most criminal cases and youth rehabilitation proceedings are decided upon pleas of guilty to criminal complaints or upon admissions to juvenile petitions. Such pleas or admissions should be made solemnly and accepted carefully. They are too serious to be treated lightly as mere tools of negotiation, or as postures to be adopted for the convenience of the moment. A plea of guilty, or an admission to a petition, means that the allegations are taken to be true. If it means anything less, the truth-seeking objectives of our criminal justice system are in jeopardy.
I believe the district court erred in failing to rule Esquivel an accomplice as a matter of law, based upon his prior admission. Had Esquivel been treated as an accomplice, his testimony could not have been deemed to corroborate that of any other accomplice. However, because there was independent corroborative evidence, concerning unusual expenditure of money by Brooks and the other boys immediately after the robbery-murder, I would not hold the district court’s error to be reversible.