Deal v. Commonwealth

607 S.W.3d 652

Maurice DEAL, Appellant

v.COMMONWEALTH of Kentucky, Appellee

2019-SC-0175-DG

Supreme Court of Kentucky.

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

COUNSEL FOR APPELLANT: Euva D. May, Leo Gerard Smith, Louisville, Department of Public Advocacy.

COUNSEL FOR APPELLEE: Daniel Jay Cameron, Attorney General of Kentucky, Emily Bedelle Lucas, Office of the Attorney General.

OPINION OF THE COURT BY CHIEF JUSTICE MINTON

A circuit court jury convicted Maurice Deal of second-degree manslaughter by complicity for which the jury recommended ten years’ imprisonment. On appeal, the Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment. We accepted discretionary review to address whether the trial court committed reversible error when it allowed the Commonwealth to present at trial a thirty-five-minute video of a police interview with Deal—recorded while he was in jail on the underlying charges some two months post arrest—in which Deal is shown handcuffed and wearing an inmate's orange jumpsuit. We conclude this evidentiary presentation violated Deal's constitutional right to a fair trial. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of conviction and sentence and remand the case to the trial court for a new trial.

I. BACKGROUND

Joseph Keith Otis was shot dead while in a fist fight in a nightclub parking lot, and the man with whom he fought, Maurice Deal, was shot through the hand and fled the scene. While Deal was at the hospital receiving treatment for his wound, two police officers separately questioned him and apparently informed him that Otis, too, had been shot. Two days later, police arrested Deal for murder and jailed him.¹ Deal remained in jail, unable to post bail pending trial.

The video of Deal came about this way. An Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney and the lead homicide detective—one of the two officers who had interviewed Deal at the hospital—met Deal and his attorney at the jail and questioned Deal. They recorded the questioning, which lasted about thirty-five-minutes. Throughout the interview, Deal was handcuffed and wore an orange jumpsuit designed so that the wearer can be readily identified as an inmate. During the interview, Deal admitted that he started the fight with Otis, motivated by revenge for an earlier fight in which Otis bested him. But Deal denied knowing who fired the shots that killed Otis and wounded him.

Sometime before trial, the Commonwealth furnished Deal's attorney an audio version of the interview. But on the night before trial, Deal's attorney learned of the existence of a video version. Before trial started the following morning, he moved the trial court to prohibit the Commonwealth from displaying the video version to the jury. He argued that the video of Deal's statement would unduly prejudice Deal before the jury because the jury would see Deal in custody, handcuffed and dressed as an inmate, two months after his arrest on the charges on trial. In response, the Commonwealth argued that the video would not prejudice Deal because it is to be expected that an individual charged with murder would be in custody pending trial.

Without requiring the Commonwealth to respond as to why the audio version would not suffice, the trial court denied Deal's motion. The trial court agreed with the Commonwealth that because Deal was charged with murder, no one would be surprised that he was in jail. "[T]hat's just routinely done," the trial court stated. "[A]lmost everybody's in custody, eventually, especially after a murder investigation."

The Commonwealth displayed the video for the jury in its entirety during its case-in-chief, during Sergeant Wilder's testimony. Deal's counsel renewed his objection right before the Commonwealth played the video. In denying Deal's objection to the video display, the trial court granted Deal's counsel a standing objection to the playing of the video.

At trial, the Commonwealth offered evidence to prove that on the night Otis was killed, Deal conspired with his brother to confront Otis at the nightclub to exact revenge for the earlier beating. The Commonwealth asserted that Deal's brother shot and killed Otis using a gun supplied by Deal. At the close of evidence, the trial court instructed the jury on murder, second-degree manslaughter, and reckless homicide. The jury found Deal guilty of second-degree manslaughter by complicity and recommended a penalty of ten years’ imprisonment. The trial court accepted the jury's recommended penalty and entered final judgment accordingly.

On appeal to the Court of Appeals, Deal argued that the video presentation compromised his constitutional right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence. He also asserted that the trial court should have, at the very least, acted on its own motion to admonish the jury that Deal's appearance in the video was not evidence of his guilt. The Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment on all issues, concluding that any error in admitting the video was harmless.

II. ANALYSIS

Before this Court, Deal argues that the principles established by the United States Supreme Court in Estelle v. Williams² and Deck v. Missouri³ apply to his case and compel the conclusion that the trial court abused its discretion by overruling his objection to this video display. Similarly, he argues that the Court of Appeals erred by holding that even if the video was erroneously admitted, it was harmless. The Commonwealth responds by citing this Court's decisions in Shegog v. Commonwealth ,⁴ Estep v. Commonwealth ,⁵ and Bryan v. Commonwealth⁶ to support its argument that the Court of Appeals correctly held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by allowing the video into evidence. The Commonwealth also asserts it even if the trial court erred, the Court of Appeals correctly deemed it harmless error.

We hold that the trial court abused its discretion by allowing this video. Showing it to the jury violated Deal's due process rights based on the rules enunciated by the Supreme Court in Estelle v. Williams⁷ and Deck v. Missouri⁸ and by this Court in Shegog ,⁹ Estep ,¹⁰ and Bryan v. Commonwealth .¹¹ And we are not persuaded that the constitutional error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

A. Standard of Review

We review objections to a trial court's evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion.¹² "The test for abuse of discretion is whether the trial judge's decision was arbitrary, unreasonable, unfair, or unsupported by sound legal principles."¹³ Erroneous evidentiary rulings are ordinarily subject to harmless-error review under RCr ¹⁴ 9.24 and therefore may only be used as a basis to reverse or vacate a judgment if we cannot "say with fair assurance that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error."¹⁵ But when the evidentiary ruling is found to be erroneous because it violated a defendant's constitutional rights, the error is still subject to harmless error review but the error may be used as basis to reverse or vacate a judgment if we cannot say the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.¹⁶

Because Deal claims that the trial court violated his constitutional rights to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence, Deal is entitled to a new trial if we find that the trial court abused its discretion in admitting the video and the error cannot be said to be harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

B. The Relevant Law

That a criminal defendant should not be required to appear before the jury in shackles is a time-honored tenet of our jurisprudence.¹⁷ Eventually, the United States Supreme Court recognized that the generally accepted prohibition against shackling among the states was grounded in the right to a fair trial, a fundamental liberty secured by the Fourteenth Amendment, as a practice that "undermines the fairness of the fact-finding process."¹⁸

In Estelle v. Williams , the United States Supreme Court ruled that a trial court that compels a criminal defendant to appear before the jury in prison clothing threatens the defendant's fundamental right to a fair trial.¹⁹ In an effort to protect the presumption of innocence during the course of a criminal trial, a basic component of the right to a fair trial guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court directed trial courts to "be alert to factors that may undermine the fairness of the fact-finding process."²⁰ The Court further directed that, in analyzing the impact of a particular trial event on the judgment of the jury, courts are to apply "close judicial scrutiny" and "must do the best they can to evaluate the likely effects of a particular procedure, based on reason, principle, and common human experience."²¹ The Court reiterated, however, that not all federal constitutional errors require automatic reversal of the challenged conviction.²² For example, the Estelle Court indicated that even in circumstances where a particular practice poses an inherent threat to a defendant's right to a fair trial, the practice may still be constitutional where it serves some "essential state interest."²³

Following Estelle , the Supreme Court in Holbrook v. Flynn relied on the principles in Estelle to determine whether the defendant's right to a fair trial was violated when the trial court, citing security concerns, permitted several uniformed officers to be present during trial.²⁴ The Court explained that certain practices require " ‘close judicial scrutiny[,]’ " because the practice had been found "to pose such a threat to the ‘fairness of the factfinding process,’ "²⁵ but "this close scrutiny of inherently prejudicial practices" is not always fatal:²⁶

Central to the right to a fair trial, guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, is the principle that "one accused of a crime is entitled to have his guilt or innocence determined solely on the basis of the evidence introduced at trial, and not on grounds of official suspicion, indictment, continued custody, or other circumstances not adduced as proof at trial."²⁷ This does not mean, however, that every practice

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