De Béarn v. United States

• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: Thompson, Associate Judge
• Citation: De Béarn v. United States, 237 A.3d 105 (D.C. 2020)
• Decision Date: 10 September 2020
• Docket Number: No. 19-CM-216,19-CM-216
• Parties: Gaston DE BÉARN, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.

237 A.3d 105

Gaston DE BÉARN, Appellant,

v.UNITED STATES, Appellee.

No. 19-CM-216

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Submitted May 5, 2020

Decided September 10, 2020

Jenifer Wicks, Washington, DC, was on the brief for appellant.

Jessie K. Liu, United States Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and Elizabeth Trosman, Suzanne Grealy Curt, Brian Kelly, and Matthew Covert, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief for appellee.

Before Thompson, Easterly, and McLeese, Associate Judges.

Thompson, Associate Judge:

On March 15, 2019, appellant Gaston De Béarn was convicted following a bench trial of one count of destruction of property and two counts of contempt. On appeal he argues that there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction, that he is entitled to reversal of his convictions because his left hand was shackled during trial without an individualized finding by the court that this security measure was needed, and that the stay-away order underlying appellant's contempt-of-court convictions violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act ("RFRA").¹ We disagree and therefore affirm.

I.

The evidence at trial was as follows. On October 31, 2018, at around 5:30 p.m. an evening mass was in progress in the crypt church at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, which is located at 400 Michigan Avenue, N.E. ("the Shrine"). Appellant entered the church "yelling" about the "need[ ] to restore the traditional mass." Bryan Maynard, an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigations who happened to be attending the mass, testified that appellant ran up towards the altar, denouncing the mass as "illegitimate," using "expletives," and telling "everybody to stop." He then proceeded to walk straight up to the altar, knock over three candlesticks one by one, and head towards the officiating priest (at which point Maynard and others "moved forward to apprehend" appellant). As the candlesticks fell in succession, Maynard observed "debris fall," and saw "bits of the brass or bronze, whatever the candlesticks were made of, breaking apart."²

The officiating priest asked appellant to leave, but appellant continued to protest, prompting Maynard to head to the altar, grab appellant, and assist other churchgoers in "forcibly walk[ing] [appellant] from the crypt." After Metropolitan Police Department officers arrived, they arrested appellant for destruction of property and unlawful entry. Appellant was ordered by the court to stay away from the Shrine as a condition of his release, and the head of Shrine security testified that a Shrine security officer issued appellant a barring order. However, Shrine security officers observed appellant return for masses on November 18, 2018, and November 25, 2018.³ Appellant was charged with contempt of court for violating the stay away order on each occasion.

The government introduced photographic evidence of the damage to the candlesticks as well as testimony that the candlesticks had been crafted out of bronze in France in 1929 and were "specifically made for the basilica, custom made." The labor costs for fixing them amounted to $1000.

During his testimony, appellant — an attorney, who represented himself at trial accompanied by his "associate" (apparently, appointed standby counsel) — conceded that he "intentionally ... toppled over" the candlesticks, but contended that he did so "very carefully" in such a way that they were "not harmed or broken at all." With regard to the contempt charges, appellant conceded that he "returned twice to the National Shrine against the plain language of the stay away order" issued by the court on November 6, 2018. However, he argued that the stay-away order imposed against him violated RFRA because it "prevent[ed] a faith[ful] Roman Catholic from practicing his religion according to his sacred concepts."

The trial court acquitted appellant of unlawful entry relating to his refusal to leave the Shrine when asked by the priest on October 31, 2018,⁴ but convicted him of malicious destruction of property and two counts of contempt for violating the court's stay-away order. The court imposed a suspended sentence and probation and required appellant to pay restitution and $150 in fines.

II.

The background of appellant's hand-shackling argument is as follows. On the morning when trial was about to begin, the trial court granted a request by appellant to be unshackled.⁵ However, after a recess, and before opening statements began, the court informed appellant that because there was only one United States Marshal present, his left hand had to be shackled. Appellant replied,

I do have my right hand but I like to use piles. I have lots of things and books. I kind of like both hands as a lawyer. Both hands is nice. It worked well in the first part of the hearing but if you don't want it now, that's fine. Okay.

The trial court told appellant that it was "a matter of the rules [the Marshals] operate under[,]" and had "nothing to do with [appellant]." Citing Deck v. Missouri , 544 U.S. 622, 125 S.Ct. 2007, 161 L.Ed.2d 953 (2005), appellant contends that the trial court's acquiescence in his restraint without individualized justification was reversible error.⁶

We agree that there was trial court error here. Specifically, we conclude that the trial court's unquestioning "defer[ence] to the recommendation of [a United States Marshal] as to the appropriateness of shackling without independently reviewing the facts and circumstances thought to warrant such a security measure and carefully considering the legal ramifications of that decision" United States v. Mayes , 158 F.3d 1215, 1226 (11th Cir. 1998), amounted to an erroneous exercise of discretion.⁷ We also conclude, however, that the error in this case was harmless under any standard of review and that reversal of appellant's convictions therefore is not warranted, even assuming (without deciding) that the shackling of appellant during his bench trial had Due Process implications. Resolving the appeal on that basis, we need not decide, and we decline to decide, whether the holding of Deck should be extended to nonjury trials — an issue on which courts are split.⁸

In this case, the trial court did not base its shackling decision on the case law declining to apply Deck in the context of bench trials. Nor did the court make a discretionary judgment about whether restraints were needed for "the safety of jurors, attorneys, and witnesses in [the] courtroom." United States v. Van Sach , 458 F.3d 694, 699 (7th Cir. 2006). Rather, the court rested its ruling solely on "the rules [the U.S. Marshals] operate under." As noted above, the court had initially granted appellant's request to be unshackled but then reversed its decision after appellant told the court that the Marshal was requiring that his hand be shackled, telling appellant that the decision not to unshackle appellant "ha[d] nothing to do with [appellant]."

We do not disagree with courts that have reasoned that a court "may rely heavily on the U.S. Marshal's advice when deciding whether defendants should be shackled during trial." United States v. Fields , 483 F.3d 313, 357 (5th Cir. 2007) (quoting United States v. Ellender , 947 F.2d 748, 760 (5th Cir. 1991) ). However, courts that have made similar statements have done so in cases where there were demonstrated safety risks and the trial court "offered detailed reasons for its shackling order." United States v. Maes , 961 F.3d 366, 376 (5th Cir. 2020) (upholding district court's shackling order where the court had explicitly based its decision not only upon the fact that the Marshals believed that the defendant presented a security risk and a flight risk, but also upon fact that he was a fugitive until he was arrested, had a history of failing to appear in court, and also faced a significant sentence); see also United States v. Williams , 629 F. App'x 547, 552–53 (4th Cir. 2015) (giving weight to the fact that the trial court had received a shackling recommendation from the U.S. Marshals Service, because the recommendation was "based on, among other things, [the defendant's] extensive criminal record and the seriousness of the current charges"); Fields , 483 F.3d at 357 (5th Cir. 2007) (reasoning that the trial court's "failure to assign reasons for physically restraining a defendant – though erroneous – [wa]s not ‘reversible error’ where those reasons ‘[were] readily apparent to us from the record[,]’ " which showed that the defendant "(1) had a violent criminal history, (2) had been ‘aggressive, volatile, and lewd’ while in custody, and (3) had a ‘history of escape and escape attempts’ ").

This case did not present a situation in which shackling was self-evidently necessary. Although the record shows that appellant was facing trial on a misdemeanor simple assault charge in addition to the charges involved in this case, in this case he was a misdemeanor defendant who had been apprehended for toppling over candlesticks inside a church. Further, even if some type of restraint was warranted, given the Supreme Court's observation that shackles may "tend to confuse and embarrass defendants' mental faculties,"⁹ the trial court had a duty to consider whether the hand shackle might impede appellant's ability to represent himself¹⁰ and, for example, whether it would have been possible to use an ankle shackle instead to allow appellant to better take notes, for "[c]ourts must do the best they can to evaluate the likely effects of a particular procedure, based on reason, principle, and common human experience." Estelle v. Williams , 425 U.S. 501, 504, 96 S.Ct. 1691, 48 L.Ed.2d 126 (1976).

Nevertheless, we are satisfied that the error here does not warrant reversal of appellant's convictions. The Supreme Court reasoned in Deck that shackling a defendant "almost inevitably implies to a jury, as a matter of commonsense, that court authorities consider [him] a danger to the community" and ...