Court Opinion

ID: 9478221
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:43:19.492963+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:18.241251
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring.
' I concur that the one issue discussed in the majority opinion correctly disposes of the case. However, I believe that affirming the district court upon one of the other issues will avoid the errors of the second trial and avoid another grant of the writ.
Excessive pretrial publicity can deny a defendant of his right to be tried by a fair and impartial jury. See, e.g., Coleman v. Kemp, 778 F.2d 1487 (11th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 476 U.S. 1164, 106 S.Ct. 2289, 90 L.Ed.2d 730 (1986). The district court found that there had been a significant possibility of prejudice before Berryhill’s second trial, and that the trial court’s failure to ensure an adequate voir dire examination had deprived Berryhill of his right to be tried by an impartial jury. See Jordan v. Lippman, 763 F.2d 1265, 1276 (11th Cir.1985) (when a significant possibility of prejudice is shown, voir dire must be adequate to unearth potential prejudice). I would affirm the district court on this ground as well.

*640
The Publicity

Widespread publicity attended Berryhill’s first trial. Berryhill’s subsequent appeals and reindictment were reported by the press in Bartow County, where Berryhill was tried, and in Cartersville, where the burglary and murder had taken place. A month before Berryhill’s second trial, the clerk of the court in which Berryhill was tried wrote a column for a newspaper in which he favorably commented on a case in which Judge Roy Bean, after eliciting a guilty plea from a Mexican defendant who did not speak English, had the defendant immediately hung.
A public opinion poll conducted by the University of Georgia School of Journalism showed (with a margin of error of plus or minus 6%) that 80% of those interviewed were very familiar or somewhat familiar with the case. Of those familiar with the case, 99% knew Berryhill had previously been found guilty and 81% knew he had received the death penalty. Furthermore, 78% stated that Berryhill was either definitely guilty or probably guilty, and 94% said most of their friends thought Berryhill was guilty. Finally, 62% thought Berryhill should receive the death penalty.1

The Voir Dire

The trial court denied Berryhill’s motion for a change of venue. It also denied Berryhill’s motion for a sequestered voir dire and allowed the voir dire to be conducted in the presence of all the prospective jurors. The trial court itself questioned some jurors, and refused to allow Berryhill’s counsel to ask certain questions. The district court found:
A substantial possibility of prejudice ... was most clearly revealed at the jury voir dire itself. As in the public opinion poll, approximately 80% of the jury ve-nire indicated upon examination by the defendant that they were either familiar or very familiar with the case. The first prospective juror who indicated familiarity with the case was excused after stating that he could not be sure that he could set aside his opinion that the petitioner was guilty. The second prospective juror who indicated that he knew about the prior trial had been a detective with the Bartow County Sheriff’s Department at the time of the first trial. He stated that he had formed an opinion at that time, but that he could set it aside. The third prospective juror who indicated that he knew about the prior trial was also excused. He was excused after stating that he would believe the petitioner was guilty until the defense proved otherwise and after acknowledging his faith in the jury that first tried the case. The fourth prospective juror who indicated that he had knowledge of the prior trial was not excused, although he seemed to place the burden of proof on the petitioner when he stated that he had an opinion that “could be changed by a witness if it was proved in court.” Trial Transcript at 185. The sixth prospective juror who indicated knowledge of the prior trial mentioned his “acceptance” of the first jury’s verdict, and the seventh juror who indicated knowledge of the prior trial suggested that there was sentiment among his friends that the petitioner’s retrial was because of a technicality.
Evidence of a strong and pervasive community sentiment that the petitioner was guilty continued to surface in the voir dire testimony of subsequent prospective jurors. In light of this evidence of community prejudice, the publicity that surrounded petitioner’s first trial, and the apparent feeling among some that the petitioner’s retrial was a mere formality, the Court finds that there existed a substantial possibility of prejudice at petitioner’s trial.
District Court Order dated June 30, 1986 at 15-17.
A thorough voir dire examination is perhaps the most important device to ensure that a jury is impartial. See generally *641Rosales-Lopez v. United States, 451 U.S. 182, 188, 101 S.Ct. 1629, 1634, 68 L.Ed.2d 22 (1981) (“Voir dire plays a critical function in assuring the criminal defendant that his Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury will be honored. Without an adequate voir dire the trial judge’s responsibility to remove prospective jurors who will not be able impartially to follow the court’s instructions and evaluate the evidence cannot be fulfilled.”); Pointer v. United States, 151 U.S. 396, 408-09, 14 S.Ct. 410, 414-15, 38 L.Ed. 208 (1894) (“Any system for the impanelling of a jury that prevents or embarrasses the full, unrestricted exercise by the accused of [the right to exclude jurors through peremptory challenges] must be condemned; and therefore he cannot be compelled to make a peremptory challenge until he has been brought, face to face in the presence of the court, with each proposed juror, and examination of him as is required for the due administration of justice.”).
Although the proper scope of voir dire is generally left to the sound discretion of the trial court, that discretion is not unfettered. Where there is a significant possibility of prejudice, the trial court must ensure that voir dire is sufficient to unearth potential prejudice in the jury pool. Jordan v. Lippman, 763 F.2d at 1274-1281; United States v. Davis, 583 F.2d 190, 196-98 (5th Cir.1978). Although these principles were first set forth in Davis, which was a direct appeal of a federal conviction, in Jordan, we made it clear that Davis and its progeny were fully applicable in the habeas corpus context because they relied upon “constitutional principles derived from Supreme Court jurisprudence ... enunciated in cases involving direct and habeas review of state court proceedings.” 763 F.2d at 1278 n. 15. Consequently, a defendant is deprived of due process and his right to an impartial jury if the voir dire procedure is so limited that it cannot uncover prejudice. Id. at 1281.
We applied these principles in United States v. Hawkins, 658 F.2d 279 (5th Cir. Unit A Sept. 1981), where the indictment of six defendants for racketeering and marijuana offenses generated a “significant amount of local coverage by the news media.” Id. at 282.2 As a result of the publicity, the defendants filed pretrial motions requesting examination of each prospective juror who had been exposed to the publicity. The district court denied the motions, and simply asked the prospective jurors collectively whether or not they had heard or read anything that had caused them to form an opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the defendants. No member of the panel responded affirmatively, but during voir dire, forty-eight of the fifty-six prospective jurors stated that they had heard or read something about the case. The defendants renewed their requests for individual examination of the prospective jurors, but the district court again denied their motions. Id. We reversed the defendants’ convictions, holding that the district court’s inquiry, given the extent of the pretrial publicity, was inadequate to reveal possible prejudice. Id. at 285; see also Davis, 583 F.2d at 196-98 (voir dire inadequate to unearth bias when trial judge merely asked jury members to raise hands if anyone felt publicity impaired his impartiality).
In this case the district court found that the manner in which the voir dire was conducted was insufficient to unearth the prejudice of the jury members:
The voir dire in this case ... was conducted in the presence of all the prospective jurors. The inhibiting effect of a large audience and the tendency for potential jurors to incorporate other’s voir dire testimony into their own made a careful and probing voir dire all the more important. Moreover the danger that potential jurors would be prejudiced by comments made by other potential jurors during voir dire made questioning a more delicate exercise. The examiner had to walk a fine line between unearthing bias for the purpose of exercising strikes and revealing bias that might infect the rest *642of the prospective jurors. See Transcript of Federal Habeas Corpus Hearing at 21-22 (Jan. 17, 1986).
In this case, the problems inherent in questioning potential jurors in front of other potential jurors were not combat-ted by questions “calculated to elicit the disclosure of the existence of actual prejudice, the degree to which the jurors had been exposed to prejudicial publicity, and how such exposure had affected the jurors’ attitude towards the trial.” Coleman v. Kemp, 778 F.2d 1487, 1542 (11th Cir.1985) (citing Calley v. Callaway, 519 F.2d 184, 208-09 (5th Cir.1975)). Indeed, in many instances questions aimed at these disclosures were foreclosed by the trial court’s interjection of the statutory questions concerning the juror’s ability to be impartial and fair. See, e.g., Trial Transcript at 476-79.
The interjection of the statutory questions by the trial court also created a second and more insidious obstruction to obtaining an impartial jury. As Dr. Craig Haney, a psychologist, testified in the habeas corpus hearing in this Court, the trial judge is an authority figure in the courtroom. Psychological studies show that when people are questioned by authority figures, they become less candid and open. Transcript of Federal Ha-beas Corpus Hearing at 32 (Jan. 17, 1986). The voir dire transcript in this case reveals a pattern of increasingly less candid answers to counsel for the defendant in order to avoid questioning by the judge.
Considering only those jurors that indicated they knew about the prior trial, fewer and fewer admitted, as the voir dire progressed, to having had an opinion about petitioner’s guilt. Of the first ten potential jurors that remembered the pri- or trial, only one stated that he had formed no opinion as to petitioner’s guilt. Of the second ten potential jurors, five indicated that they had formed no opinion. Of the third ten potential jurors, six indicated that they had formed no opinion. Of the fourth ten potential jurors that remembered the prior trial, nine indicated that they had formed no opinion as to petitioner’s guilt. In this last group of ten, at least three potential jurors indicated that, while family or friends had formed opinions, they themselves had formed no opinion based on what they knew about the prior trial.
District Court Order dated June 30, 1986 at 18-20 (footnote omitted).
As a result of the trial court’s rulings, Berryhill’s counsel was faced with a Hob-son’s choice. To ensure a fair jury, he had to question each prospective juror individually about what the juror knew about the case from the media or other exposure. By being forced to ask such pointed questions in front of the entire jury venire, however, Berryhill’s counsel risked contaminating those prospective jurors who had not read or heard about the case with the responses of those who had. See Coppedge v. United States, 272 F.2d 504, 507-08 (D.C.Cir.1959) (had juror admitted before his fellow jurors that he was influenced because of a newspaper article which reported that prosecutor had stated that the defendant was a vicious criminal, that witness was deathly afraid of the defendant, and that district court did not believe that witness could be protected, “the damage to the defendant would have been spread to the listening other jurors”), cert. denied, 368 U.S. 855, 82 S.Ct. 92, 7 L.Ed.2d 52 (1961).
The sequestered individual voir dire of jurors “is not unusual, nor viewed with suspicion.” In re Greensboro News Co., 727 F.2d 1320, 1323 (4th Cir.1984) (holding that newspapers were not entitled to a writ of mandamus challenging district court order providing for in camera voir dire of potential jurors in criminal prosecution since order was made to ensure frank and forthcoming responses and represented a proper balance between First Amendment concerns of news media and Sixth Amendment fair trial rights of the defendants). Indeed, the practice has been endorsed by the Judicial Conference of the United States and the American Bar Association. See Revised Report of the Judicial Conference Committee on the Operation of the Jury System on the “Free Press—Fair Trial” Issue, 87 F.R.D. 519, 532-33 (1980); *643ABA Standards for Criminal Justice, Fair Trial and Free Press, Standard 8-3.5; see also Coleman, 778 F.2d at 1542 (in “light of the significant possibility of prejudice, preferable voir dire procedures would have followed the ABA guidelines”).
No court has held that an individualized segregated voir dire is constitutionally required. Cf. Patton v. Yount, 467 U.S. 1025, 1034 n. 10, 104 S.Ct. 2885, 2890 n. 10, 81 L.Ed.2d 847 (1984) (noting that individual sequestered voir dire, while not controlling, “is not an insubstantial” factor in the presumed prejudice analysis). For example, in Reiger v. Christensen, 789 F.2d 1425 (9th Cir.1986), the Ninth Circuit indicated that individual voir dire outside the presence of the other jurors was not constitutionally required, but recognized that Reiger’s conviction would be reversed if the voir dire procedure used by the trial court involved “ ‘such a probability that prejudice will result that it is deemed inherently lacking in due process.’” Id. (quoting Estes v. Texas, 381 U.S. 532, 542-43, 85 S.Ct. 1628, 1632-33, 14 L.Ed.2d 543 (1965)). Reiger had been convicted in Hawaii of rape, attempted murder, and first degree burglary. After the jury was empaneled, the trial court was informed that the jury had been exposed to adverse pretrial publicity regarding Reiger. Over defense counsel’s objection, the trial court examined each juror individually in open court in the presence of the other jurors. One of the jurors was excused after she stated that she had heard about “Reiger’s possible connection with the underworld.” Id. at 1433. The Ninth Circuit held that the juror’s comments “may have created a significant potential for prejudice,” and remanded the case so that the district court could examine the state court transcripts to determine whether the other jurors’ “assurances of impartiality were adequate to ensure Reiger a fair trial.” Id. at 1434-35.
Affirming the district court on the issue of the inadequacy of the voir dire does not require a holding that an individual segregated voir dire is constitutionally required in cases of pretrial publicity. This case falls well within our caselaw which “requires, at the least, that where there exists a significant possibility of prejudice the jurors must in the first instance be questioned as to whether they were exposed. Further inquiry as to the nature of the exposure is then undertaken, if necessary.” Jordan, 763 F.2d at 1283. In this case, the manner of voir dire was insufficient in light of the significant possibility of prejudice from the pretrial publicity to ensure Berry-hill’s right to an impartial jury and due process.
I conclude our panel should reach and affirm the district court’s order granting the writ on the voir dire issue.

. Berryhill contends that the poll was established to be reliable in its completed authentication and methodology. The state claims that the poll's results are questionable at best because of “unknown factors” and irrelevant questions.

. The television and print media reported the defendants' names and the nature of the drug charges, and repeated the allegation that the defendants had been responsible for importing 170 tons of marijuana. Id. at 284.