Com. v. Brown
| Citation | 364 Mass. 471,305 N.E.2d 830 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. Roger BROWN. |
| Decision Date | 28 December 1973 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts |
John B. Greene, Roslindale, for defendant.
George G. Burke, Dist. Atty., and John P. Connor, Jr., Asst. Dist. Atty., for the Commonwealth, submitted a brief.
Before TAURO, C.J., and REARDON, BRAUCHER, HENNESSEY and KAPLAN, JJ.
Roger Brown and John H. Tarrant, inmates of the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Walpole, were tried by a jury in Norfolk Superior Court in October, 1971, upon indictments charging them severally with assault and battery upon a correctional officer, contrary to the statute, G.L. c. 127, § 38B. 1 The jury found Tarrant not guilty, but Brown guilty, and Brown was sentenced to one to two years at Walpole following completion of his current sentence.
Brown (hereafter called the defendant) pursues his appeal under G.L. c. 278, §§ 33A--33G. Abandoning other exceptions, the defendant presses assignments based only on those exceptions which support a contention that, by reason of excessive security precautions taken during trial, he was deprived of a fair trial with an impartial jury.
The facts of the offence, as they could be found by the jury, may be briefly recounted. The defendant during a period of free time returned to his cell on the second tier of maximum security block 6 at Walpole. (Other inmates to the number of perhaps forty were in the block during the incident.) Finding his cell door locked (evidently because of malfunction), the defendant yelled down complainingly to the block officer, Richard A. Correia. Correia said the door would be opened in five minutes when an officer returned to the control gallery. The defendant went out of the block, then returned, confronted Correia at his desk, and said, 'If you have anything against me, let it out and I'll knock your head off.' Correia told the defendant he was in detention for threatening an officer. As another officer, william Gratton, appeared, the defendant left the block, Correia following, and spoke to a senior corridor officer who said if the defendant was in detention he should go back to his block. The defendant returned to block 6 with Correia still following and intending to escort the defendant to his cell. As they reached the stairway to the second tier, the defendant turned his head and asked if he was being locked up. Correia answered yes. The defendant then turned around and struck Correia in the eye. Correia, the larger man, grabbed the defendant in a 'bear hug' and they fell across the stairway with Correia on top. The defendant kneed Correia in the groin and with a free hand tore at Corria's ear. Tarrant approached and attempted to lift Correia off the defendant. As officer Gratton came up, Tarrant pushed him and he fell back. Correia suffered injuries which involved surgery and kept him out of work for nine weeks. None of the others appears to have been injured.
For the prosecution only Correia and Gratton testified. 2 For the defence, five Walpole inmates were called. The jury could have found their testimony weak and contradictory. The effect of some of it was to suggest that Correia assaulted the defendant because he had 'ratted' to the senior corridor officer.
Turning to the trial in court room 10 of the Norfolk Superior Court, counsel for the defence asked for a mistrial just before the jury were empanelled because, he said, the venire as they made their way through a corridor into the court room had mingled with the two shackled defendants and officers escoring them, also headed toward the court room. Defence counsel moved again for a mistrial when the first defence witness was led to the witness stand shackled. Both motions were denied and exceptions noted. These exceptions, which ground the assignments of error, were perhaps literally short of raising the question of the asserted excessiveness of the security measures taken as a whole (the assignments attempt to stretch the exceptions), but in the circumstances of the case we take that question to be before us. 3
When the appeal was heard in our court, the defendant's counsel sought to describe the entire situation at the trial, but was hard put to do so because the stenographic transcript was not sufficiently revealing. Accordingly the court remanded the case for an evidentiary hearing and findings of fact by a judge of the Superior Court on the issue of alleged excessive security precautions. Such a hearing was held on May 2, 1973, in the same court room 10 by a judge other than the trial judge, the latter having meanwhile retired.
By agreement of counsel the judge conducted the questioning, with further examination by counsel when they desired it. Ten jurors testified individually. 4 In addition, there were stipulations of counsel as to certain facts; a certificate of the trial judge (he could not testify because he was then hospitalized); and photographic exhibits depicting the court room and other parts of the court house.
There was difficulty in reconstructing the scene of the trial more than a year and a half after the event, but we learn the following from the findings and record made at the hearing.
The trial judge conferred privately before trial with the sheriff of Norfolk county who informed him of the prior convictions of both the accused and of the fact that the defendant had been involved in two escapes. The sheriff said he regarded the defendants and their inmate witnesses as major security risks. In the light of this information and the sheriff's recommendation, the judge was of the opinion that shackling of the defendants and the witnesses was required for the safety of the court, the jury, and all participants at the trial.
The veniremen, including some who became jurors in the case, merged temporarily in the corridor with the defendants and four uniformed court officers guarding them as all were moving toward the court room. Although the veniremen had opportunity to see the defendants thus escorted, only one of the jurors said that he saw a person in custody at that time and he could not identify the person as the defendant.
The defendants, seated just behind the bar, were handcuffed, the handcuffs being attached to waist belts, and two uniformed court officers were stationed near each defendant (in addition there was the usual complement of court officers). All jurors had opportunity to observe these officers and the defendants' handcuffs, and some jurors saw the waist restraints. 5
The defence witnesses were severally escorted to the witness stand by two uniformed correctional officers from Walpole who remained in the court room while the witnesses gave testimony and then escorted them out. The winesses were handcuffed; at least one of them also wore a waist belt and had particular difficulty in using a chart pointer.
Court room 10 is on the first floor of the building not far from ground level and has two doorway exists; its windows are not barred.
These facts (and other facts and considerations to be mentioned shortly) are to be appraised in the light of propositions widely accepted. Shackling and other unusual security measures are of course to be avoided if possible. 6 These displays tend to create prejudice in the minds of the jury by suggesting that a defendant is a bad and dangerous person whose guilt may be virtually assumed; they may interfere with a defendant's thought processes and ease of communication with counsel; intrisically they give affront to the dignity of the trial process. 7 The shackling of a witness can have comparable effect: it may influence a jury's judgment of credibility and further hurt the defendant in so far as the witness is conceived to be associated with him. 8 Yet the judge has a duty to do what may be necessary to prevent escape, to minimize danger of harm to those attending trial as well as to the general public, and to maintain decent order in the court room. 9 He may attach significance to the report and recommendation of an official charged with custody of prisoners placed on trial (see the sheriff's duties under G.L. c. 126, § 16), but he may not pass his responsibility to that official. 10 When special restraints are imposed, the judge's charge to the jury should seek to quell prejudice by reasoning and warning against it. 11 Fair trial by an impartial jury is not denied when the relevant factors are weighed to a sensible conclusion that safeguards are needed which, in the circumstances of the content and conduct of the case, will not bring the rationality of the process or its decorum below an acceptable level. The burden is on a defendant to show that the judge's decision in the matter was wrong, and an appellate court, acknowledging that the judge has a range of discretion, will not reverse his decision and vacate a conviction unless he is shown to have been arbitrary or unreasonable. 12
In the present case the judge knew that at least three prisoners held under maximum security conditions at Walpole would be in a relatively open court room during the major part of the trial. The defendant himself was charged with a crime bespeaking a reckless and hopeless rebellion against authority, after a record of involvement in two escapes in the past. Thus some special measures of restraint were indicated. 13 But it might remain a question whether those adopted did not go beyond the necessities of the case, even though the sheriff advised them. What is important here is that, from the nature of the crime charged and the evidence that had to be brought forward, the jury must anyway have learned that the defendant, the codefendant Tarrant, and all defence witnesses were prisoners at Walpole and therefore previously convicted of serious crime. The physical restraints and other shows of force in the corridor or court room could not, we think, have added much if anything to the minds of...
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