Tagged: appeal

Case Divides Court on Criminal Defendant’s Right to be Present at All Stages of Trial

POST WRITTEN BY: Prof. Peter Widulski, Assistant Director of the First Year Legal Skills Program and the Coach of International Criminal Moot Court Team at Pace Law School.

On June 10, the New York Court of Appeals issued a divided opinion in People v. Rivera regarding a criminal defendant’s right to be present during any supplemental instructions the trial court may give to even a single member of the jury. Defendant Rivera was charged with murder and illegal possession of a weapon. While the jury was deliberating, the trial judge informed the attorneys that juror number 11 requested to speak with the court, and the attorneys consented to the judge’s meeting with the juror, with no one else present.

The judge then had a colloquy in the robing room with the juror, who it turned out, wanted further guidance on “imminent danger,” relating to the defendant’s argument that he killed in self-defense. After the colloquy, the judge informed the attorneys and defendant about the meeting and told them that a transcript of the colloquy was available for review. Neither counsel requested a reading of the transcript.

The jury acquitted on the murder charge but found the defendant guilty of the weapons charge. On appeal, the Second Department reversed the conviction on the weapons charge because the defendant was not present during the court’s colloquy with juror number 11.

A majority of the Court of Appeals affirmed the Second Department’s decision and agreed that holding this colloquy in the absence of the defendant was – similar to the recent People v. Walston decision– a violation of CPL § 310.30 and a “mode of proceedings error” that did not require an objection in order to be raised on appeal.

Rivera was a 4-3 decision. Judge Abdus-Salaam wrote an extensive and vigorous dissenting opinion, in which Judges Read and Smith joined. The dissenters opined that, given the facts of the case and the purpose of the presence rule,

the trial court committed a de minimis violation of defendant’s right to be present rather than a mode of proceedings error.

The dissenters cautioned that

[u]nder the majority’s holding, a conscientious defense counsel has every reason to encourage a trial court to conduct insignificant proceedings in the defendant’s absence, knowing that the court’s actions will not meaningfully affect the jury’s consideration of the case and will provide a guaranteed reversal of a conviction on appeal.

The Rivera majority took a strong stand on the “absolute right” of a criminal defendant to be present during all instructions a court provides to the jury. On the other hand, the Rivera dissenters raise the concern that strict application of the “mode of proceedings” doctrine may lead to situations in which defense counsel’s advocacy for the client requires counsel not to object to errors where an objection would otherwise be required.

Rivera and Walston indicate that the Court of Appeals is divided on the scope of CPL § 310.30 and the “mode of proceedings” doctrine. It seems likely that the Court will confront these issues again.

References:

N.Y. Court of Appeals Issues Ruling on Disclosure of Jury Notes in Criminal Cases

POST WRITTEN BY: Prof. Peter Widulski, Assistant Director of the First Year Legal Skills Program and the Coach of International Criminal Moot Court Team at Pace Law School.

On June 12, 2014, the New York Court of Appeals issued a memorandum decision on the responsibilities of a trial court when a jury sends a note asking for clarification of the court’s instructions on the elements of the crimes presented for the jury’s deliberations.

The appeal arose from a case in which the prosecution charged the defendant with second-degree murder, pursuant to N.Y. Penal Law § 125.25(1), which requires proof of intent to kill.  At the close of proof in the case, the trial court, in addition to instructing the jury on the elements of this charge, granted the defense counsel’s request to instruct the jury on the lesser included offense of first degree manslaughter, in the event that the jury, pursuant to Penal Law § 125.20(1), found that the defendant’s intent was not to kill the victim but only to cause serious physical injury that unintentionally resulted in the victim’s death.

During its deliberations, the jury sent the judge the following note: “Power Point – Judges directions on Manslaughter/Murder in the Second Degree -(Intent).” The judge did not present the jury’s note to the parties (apparently receiving no request to do so), but simply informed them that the jury was requesting “the Judge’s directions on manslaughter and murder in the second degree.” Of particular importance in this case is that the judge did not inform counsel of the note’s reference to intent. When the judge called the jury to the courtroom to hear his response to the note, the judge said that he understood them to be asking merely for a read-back of the instructions on the elements of charges at issue, and the judge repeated these instructions.

The jury acquitted defendant on the murder charge but found him guilty on the manslaughter charge. In rendering this verdict, the jury had to make a crucial decision about the defendant’s intent. Their verdict implied that they found that the defendant’s intent was not to kill but to cause serious physical injury.

The Defense appealed, arguing that the trial judge erred by not informing counsel of the jury note’s reference to intent. The Court of Appeals agreed. The Court noted that Criminal Procedure Law § 310.30 requires that when the trial court receives a request from the jury “for further instruction or information with respect to the law,” the court must give notice of the content of the request to the People and the defense. The Court stated that under its precedent in People v. O’Rama, 579 N.E.2d 189 (N.Y. 1991), this notice must be “meaningful,” so that the defense is able “to evaluate the inquiry and the proper responses in light of the defendant’s interests.” Id. at 192. The O’Rama court stated that

[a] court can neither serve the goal of maximizing counsel’s participation nor satisfy the CPL 310.30 requirement that meaningful notice be given when counsel is not afforded a verbatim account of a juror’s communication and is thereby deprived of an advance opportunity to suggest a response.

Id. at 193. Following this precedent, the Court held that the trial judge’s conduct with respect to the jury note, omitting specific reference to the intent issue, failed to satisfy this obligation. Moreover, because the Court deemed this a failure of the trial court’s “core responsibilities” relating to the court’s “mode of proceedings,” the Court held that under O’Rama an objection by defense counsel was not required to preserve the issue for appeal.

The Court vacated the defendant’s manslaughter conviction, with leave to the People to resubmit that charge to a grand jury.

Judge Robert Smith concurred in the result, while stating some misgivings that excusing the preservation requirement in such a case may provide defense counsel with a tactical opportunity to avoid seeking full disclosure to counsel of the contents of a juror note in hopes of a future reversal of the conviction. He suggested that a future case might raise and brief the issue of the scope and validity of the “mode of proceedings” doctrine and afford the Court with an opportunity to reconsider and revise of this doctrine.

References:

Judges Quarrel About Counsel’s Silence During Prosecutor’s PowerPoint Summation

Recently, the New York Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction of a defendant accused of killing her husband’s one-year-old daughter, although she had claimed that her counsel was ineffective for failing to object to the prosecution’s questionable PowerPoint presentation during summation. People v. Santiago, NY Slip Op 01261 (2014). At trial, the prosecution claimed that the defendant, Cheryl Santiago, had suffocated her husband’s child after becoming frustrated that the child would not fall asleep. Id. at *5. An expert witness for the prosecution testified that it would have taken the defendant approximately four to six minutes to suffocate the child by using her hand to cover the child’s mouth and nose. Id. at *6.

In summation, the prosecutor presented to the jury  a six minute PowerPoint presentation that consisted of a series of slides using a postmortem photograph of the child. Alluding to the expert’s opinion regarding the amount of time it took for the child to suffocate, the prosecutor suggested to the jury that “if there’s any question in your mind how long six minutes take, take a look at this.” Id. at *7. Without objection from defense counsel, the prosecutor proceeded to play the PowerPoint slides, “with each successive slide progressively fading, until the final slide was entirely white, thus eliminating the image of the [child].” Id.  Notably, some of the slides also contained captions that described the child’s deteriorating medical condition –stating that at one and a half to two minutes- “struggle ends;” four minutes- “brain death occurs;” and four and a half to six minutes –“cardiac death.” Id.

The Court rejected the defendant’s claim that trial counsel was infective for failing to object to the PowerPoint presentation, noting that counsel’s lapse was not a “clear-cut” or “dispositive” omission. Id. at *13. The Court observed that a postmortem photograph itself was properly admitted at trial, and that “[t]he slides depicting an already admitted photograph, with captions accurately tracking prior medical testimony, might reasonably be regarded as relevant and fair, albeit dramatic, commentary on the medical evidence, and not simply an appeal to the jury’s emotions.”Id.

The Court did note that it did not know how the PowerPoint presentation aided the jury in its fact-finding function, or how it was relevant to the cause of the child’s death. Id. Furthermore, the Court also observed that the defendant’s failure to make a timely objection to the PowerPoint’s admission –which would have required the trial court to rule on its admissibility- precluded the Court to extend its inquiry further as to whether the trial court abused its discretion and that such error required a reversal of the judgment of conviction. Id. at *14.  In noting this observation, however, the Court implicitly suggested that its inquiry of the matter was cut short due to counsel’s failure (i.e. ineffective assistance of counsel) –and, by its own admission, an objection would have placed the trial court in an unlikely situation of finding that the PowerPoint evidence had any probative value, and even if so, that its value outweighed its prejudicial impact. Id. at *15 (conceding that the Powerpoint failed to “aid[] the jury in its fact-finding function”).

In dissent, Judge Rivera observed that the PowerPoint presentation had manipulated the evidence and was “designed to inflame the passion of the jury in order to engender prejudice against the defendant.” Id. at 1 (dissent, j. Rivera). She concluded that the Court had erred in not finding that counsel’s failure to object to the PowerPoint presentation had amounted to ineffective assistance of counsel. She noted that counsel’s lapse permitted the prosecution to taint the jury’s deliberative process –which denied the defendant a fair trial. Id. at (“The prosecutor’s use of this Powerpoint imagery was an impermissible attempt to secure a verdict based on emotion and repulsion for the defendant, rather than facts.”).

Judge Rivera was also extremely troubled by the inflammatory nature of the Powerpoint, noting that “[a]ny doubts as to the emotional responses engendered by the presentation are easily dispelled by viewing the slide show, wherein the picture of a 21 month old child, in her pink pajamas, with white froth on her lips, her body prone and lifeless, is projected over and over, fading slightly with each slide, until all that remains is a white background and the memory of her tiny body. One simply cannot be but moved by this depiction.” Id. at 3.

Notably, the ever-changing dynamics of courtroom advocacy due to the technological advances in “trial presentation” software may continue to cause issues for criminal defendants when utilized in an improper fashion by prosecutors. Although such technology can provide each party a better, faster and clearer way of presenting information than conventional trial form, it can also lead the jury away from “the four corners of the evidence” and hinder the truth seeking process. Hopefully, the courts will use caution when allowing evidence to be presented in an unconventional format, and take consideration of the fact that a juror may become more occupied with the entertainment value of the presentation rather than the relevance of the information being conveyed.

Related Readings

  • People v. Caldavado, 78 AD 3d 962 (2nd Dept. 2010) (permitting a “PowerPoint presentation as to the injuries associated with shaken baby syndrome and in allowing an expert witness to shake a doll in order to demonstrate the force necessary to inflict shaken baby syndrome.”).
  • People v. Yates, 290 AD 2d 888 (3rd Dept. 2002) (finding no error in the presentation of  a computer-generated video demonstrating the mechanics of “shaken baby syndrome.”).

NY Court of Appeals Upends Police Tricks Behind Interrogation Doors

False confessions have long been recognized as one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions. Case studies have proven that an individual’s confession to a crime is not always indicative of the confessor’s actual guilt. In fact, a number of external factors may lead an individual to falsely confess to committing a crime. According to studies conducted by the Innocence Project, many false confessions have been prompted by conditions in which the confessor was placed under  duress during police interrogations, or was prodded to give false information as a result of police coercion or subterfuge tactics. Laurie Shanks, clinical professor of law at Albany Law School in Albany, recently explained that “[t]here’s a perception that people don’t confess to crimes they didn’t commit, [b]ut the science is that absolutely they do.”

Yet, the rule of law determining the voluntariness of a confessor’s statement, when such statements are adduced by police subterfuge, has remained a vital and perplexing issue within our criminal justice system. The admissibility of such confessions has been a hotly debated topic among criminal defense practitioners and prosecutors, irrespective of recent case studies proving the fallibility of such confessions. In spite of recent findings, prosecutors have continued to hold the upper hand when arguing that such confessions are voluntary and admissible at trial, relying on the proposition that certain police ruses are essential to conducting meaningful interrogations of suspects, and vital to the police’s ability to expeditiously solve certain crimes.  Under this guise, the Courts have heeded to the government’s “demands” and have consequently become more laxed in uprooting such questionable police tactics –noting that confessions are “essential to society’s compelling interest in finding, convicting, and punishing those who violate the law.” McNeil v. Wisconsin, 501 U.S. 171, 181 (1991). As such, courts around the nation have routinely accepted that “deceit and subterfuge are within the ‘bag of tricks’ that police may use in interrogating suspects.” State v. Schumacher, 37 P.3d 6, 13-14 (Idaho Ct. App. 2001); See also United States v. Bell, 367 F.3d 452, 461 (5th Cir. 2004) (observing that deception is “not alone sufficient to render a confession inadmissible”).  

In New York, however, it appears that the courts are becoming less reluctant to address this significant legal issue , and more inclined than many of their sister state courts to fully determine on a case by case determination whether a confession could be deemed involuntary when police misrepresentations work to overcome a confessor’s will. See N.Y. Criminal Procedure Law § 60.45 [2][b][i]  (treating as “involuntarily made” a statement of a defendant that was  elicited “by means of any promise or statement of fact, which promise or statement creates a substantial risk that the defendant might falsely incriminate himself”).

Notably, the New York Court of Appeals has recently made clear that not all police subterfuge is acceptable during the interrogations of suspects. People v. Thomas, 2014 WL 641516 (N.Y. 2014). In Thomas, the defendant had been prodded by police to take responsibility for injuries suffered by his four-month-old son, who died from intracranial injuries purportedly caused by abusively inflicted head trauma, in order to save his wife from arrest. The Court held that the defendant’s confession,  admitting that he had inflicted traumatic head injuries on the infant, was involuntary as a result of “[t]he various misrepresentations and false assurances used [by] [police] to elicit and shape [the] defendant’s admissions.” Id. The court explained that the police officers false representations to the defendant had manifestly raised a substantial risk of false incrimination. The Court was extremely troubled by police lying to the defendant “that his wife had blamed him for [their] [son’s] injuries and then threatened that, if he did not take responsibility, they would “scoop” Ms. Hicks out from the hospital and bring her in, since one of them must have injured the child.” Id.  The Court also observed that “there [was] not a single inculpatory fact in defendant’s confession that was not suggested to him. He did not know what to say to save his wife and child from the harm he was led to believe his silence would cause.” Id.

The New York Court of Appeals also recently affirmed the Second Department’s decision in People v.  Aveni, 100 A.D.3d 228 (2d Dep’t 2012) where the appellate court  had also found that the defendant’s confession was coerced  as a result of the police repeatedly deceiving the defendant about the status of his girlfriend’s health condition. In Aveni, the defendant had been prompted by police to make incriminating statements about the herion overdose of his girlfriend. During interrogation, the police had falsely told the defendant that his girlfriend was still alive, “and implicitly threaten[ed] him with a homicide charge if he remained silent.” The court explained that the police made the defendant believe that “the consequences of remaining silent would lead to the [girlfriend’s] death, since the physicians would be unable to treat her, which “could be a problem” for him.” Id. In upholding the Second Department’s decision, the NY Court of Appeals observed that “[t]he false prospect of being severely penalized for remaining silent, raised by defendant’s interrogators, was, in the court’s view, incompatible with a finding that defendant’s confession was voluntary beyond a reasonable doubt.” People v. Aveni, 2014 WL 641511 (N.Y. 2014).  It noted that “the Appellate Division used the correct legal standard in its reversal, [and] [i]ts determination that the potential to overwhelm defendant’s free will was realized was plainly one of fact.” Id.

Steven Drizin, clinical professor at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago commented on the recent decisions in New York, noting that “[t]he court did not set any hard and fast rules, but it did issue some clear warnings that these tactics will be scrutinized closely in future.”  He explained that until now “[t]here’s been too much deference given to police officers, and they’re accustomed to having free rein with suspects behind interrogation doors.”

Related Readings

Second Circuit: Admittance of Co-Defendant’s Redacted Confession Violated Confrontation Clause

A recent decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals may provide guidance to criminal defense practitioners seeking to (1) suppress the involuntary confession of a client, and (2) limit the impact of a co-defendants’ redacted confession being admitted at trial. The Second Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed a panel’s decision to vacate the convictions of three defendants found guilty of conspiring to commit a Hobbs Act robbery, among other things, and brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence. The Court had been asked by the government to review a panel decision that had formerly held that the “confession” of one of the defendant’s was involuntary and should not have been admitted against the declarant at trial. The government also sought review of the panel’s determination that the admission of the “confession” was also prejudicial to the declarant’s co-defendants, requiring a new trial. United States v. Taylor, 736 F.3d 661 (2d Cir. 2013).

A panel of the Court had held that the defendant’s Miranda waiver was not knowing and voluntary, given that the defendant was clearly mentally incapacitated during his interview with federal agents. Id. at 669. The panel noted that the defendant had ingested a quantity of Xanax pills immediately before his arrest, and not long before the interrogation by the FBI had begun. The panel pointed out that the defendant was “in and out of consciousness while giving his statement, and in a trance or a stupor most of the time when not actually asleep.” Id. at 670. As such, the panel determined that “the officers’ persistent questioning took undue advantage of [the] [defendants’] diminished mental state, and ultimately overbore his will.” Id. The panel concluded that the admission of the defendant’s involuntary confessions was a critical part of the prosecution’s case, and could not be deemed “harmless error beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. at 672.

Notably, the Second Circuit (en banc) withdrew the panel’s prior decision, and issued a superseding opinion. States v. Taylor, 2014 WL 814861, (2d Cir. 2014). It not only reaffirmed the panel’s prior decision in all respects, but further held that the admission of the defendant’s “confession” at trial violated the Confrontation Clause rights of the other co-defendants. The Court ruled that the redacted confession simply did not comply with Bruton, and made it obvious to jurors that the declarant had implicated his co-defendants in the crime. The Court explained that the redacted version of the defendant’s statement suggested that the original statements contained actual names.

The Court took observance of the fact that the redacted statement had contained both the declarant’s name and the name of the government’s cooperating witness (“Luana Miller”), while referencing the other co-defendants by “two other individuals” or “driver.”  Id. The Court reasoned that the redacted confession allowed jurors to notice that “Miller is the one person involved who was cooperating, and [] infer that the obvious purpose of the meticulously crafted partial redaction was to corroborate Miller’s testimony against the rest of the group, not to shield confederates.” Id. at *11. The Court noted that “[i]f the defendant had been trying to avoid naming his confederates, he would not have identified one of them-Miller-in the very phrase in which the names of the other confederates are omitted.” Id.

The Court explained that “[o]nce it becomes obvious that names have been pruned from the text, the choice of implied identity is narrow. The unnamed persons correspond by number (two) and by role to the pair of co-defendants.” Id. at *12. The Court noted that the “obviously redacted confession … points directly to the defendant[s], and it accuses the defendant[s] in a manner similar to … a testifying codefendant’s accusatory finger.” Id. (quoting Gray, 523 U.S. at 194).  The Court concluded that the “awkward circumlocution used to reference other participants, coupled with the overt naming of Luana Miller (only), is so unnatural, suggestive, and conspicuous as to offend Bruton, Gray, and Jass.” Id.

While the Second Circuit’s decision is applaudable, it may leave many criminal defense practitioners pondering over the slew of similar cases that have come before the Circuit in the past without any success on this  issue. Both the language and form (identifying by name the declarant & cooperator(s), while others as “person/individual”) that the Court identified in Taylor appears to have been customarily approved by the Courts. Indeed, Federal prosecutors have routinely been able to utilize such redacted confessions, although the defense has routinely objected to its admission based upon the obvious nature of the redaction and the likelihood that the jury will infer that their client had been implicated by their cohort.  Nevertheless, the Second Circuit has finally spoken against this once unfettered practice, and provided some much needed guidance on the issue.

Related Readings