Franklin v. State

• Decision Date: 30 June 2004
• Docket Number: No. 1481-00.,1481-00.
• Citation: 138 S.W.3d 351
• Parties: B.J. FRANKLIN, Appellant, v. The STATE of TEXAS.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

138 S.W.3d 351

B.J. FRANKLIN, Appellant, v. The STATE of TEXAS.

No. 1481-00.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

June 30, 2004.

Petition for review from the Court of Appeals.

Craig L. Henry, Texarkana, for appellant.

Betty Marshall, Assistant State's Prosecuting Attorney, Matthew Paul, State's Attorney, Austin, for State.

OPINION

KEASLER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which PRICE, JOHNSON, HERVEY, and HOLCOMB, JJ., joined.

We granted review in this case to determine whether the Court of Appeals erred in applying a constitutional harm analysis to the trial court's denial of a mistrial after one of the jurors revealed during trial that she knew the victim. We conclude that it did not.

Facts

During voir dire at B.J. Franklin's trial, defense counsel asked the veniremembers if they knew any of the participants in the trial. None of the jurors indicated that they knew the participants. But when the State called its first witness — the victim — to the stand, Juror Spradlin notified the judge that she knew the victim because Spradlin was the assistant leader of the victim's girl scout troop and that her daughter was also in that troop. Spradlin told the judge that she had not recognized the victim's name during voir dire but recognized the victim when she saw her at trial. The trial judge asked Spradlin if she could listen to the evidence in the case and base her judgment just on what she heard from the stand. Spradlin stated that she could.

Defense counsel moved for a mistrial, stating that if he had known about the relationship between Spradlin and the victim, he would have exercised a peremptory challenge against Spradlin. Defense counsel also requested to ask Spradlin some additional questions about her relationship with the victim. When the trial judge refused to allow additional questioning, defense counsel objected that his client's due process rights were being violated. He stated that he would have asked Spradlin about her relationship with the victim, how long the relationship lasted, whether or not she could set aside that relationship in deciding the case, and whether she would give more or less credence to the victim's testimony and truthfulness due to the relationship. Defense counsel stated that the judge was preventing him from developing any testimony regarding potential biases. The judge overruled defense counsel's objections and denied the motion for mistrial.

Procedural History

Franklin was convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a child, and the jury sentenced him to life in prison. Franklin appealed, arguing that the trial court erred in denying the motion for mistrial "based upon a juror's failure to accurately answer questions during voir dire and also because he was unable to intelligently exercise his peremptory strikes as a result of that failure."¹ The Sixth Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction, finding that although the trial court erred in refusing to permit further questioning of the juror, Franklin failed to preserve error because he did not request to make a bill of exceptions "that would have explored the relationship between the juror and the victim, thus providing information from which [the Court of Appeals] could assess whether the information was truly material."²

We granted Franklin's petition for discretionary review, which claimed along with three other grounds for review that the information Spradlin withheld was material and that he had preserved the issue for review. We concluded that Franklin had preserved error and that the information withheld by Spradlin was material.³ We remanded the cause to the Court of Appeals to conduct a harm analysis.⁴

On remand, the Court of Appeals reversed Franklin's conviction. It determined that the error was of a constitutional dimension subject to harm analysis under Rule 44.2(a).⁵ The Court of Appeals found that Juror Spradlin's failure to accurately answer counsel's voir dire questions prevented him from intelligently exercising peremptory strikes or from requesting a challenge for cause.⁶ It reasoned that "a defendant's constitutional right to counsel requires that counsel be permitted to question the jury panel in order to intelligently exercise peremptory challenges," so Spradlin's withholding of material information was of constitutional dimension. And because the trial judge refused to admit information that would have permitted the Court of Appeals to "apply a harm analysis to the juror's failure to answer counsel's voir dire questions accurately," it could not determine beyond a reasonable doubt that the error did not contribute to Franklin's conviction.⁷

We then granted the State's petition for discretionary review, which contends that the Court of Appeals erred in analyzing the improper limitation of defense questioning for harm under Rule 44.2(a) of the Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure. The State also argues that the Court of Appeals erred in holding that the improper limitation of defense counsel questioning in this case was harmful where the record does not show that the jury was not fair and impartial.

Analysis

The State characterizes the error at issue here as follows: "Is there a constitutional right for counsel to ask questions that are relevant only the to the exercise of peremptory challenges?" The Court of Appeals rejected the characterization of the issue in those terms,⁸ as do we. The error at issue here is the trial judge's denial of a mistrial when, after the trial began, Juror Spradlin revealed that she knew the victim. The trial judge's refusal to allow defense counsel to ask Juror Spradlin questions about her relationship with the victim is considered in the harm analysis, but it is not primarily the error in question. Because the jury had been sworn and the trial had begun, the appellant's only remedy was a mistrial; defense counsel could not have moved to challenge the juror for cause or to peremptorily strike the juror. So, the issue here is what standard of harm should be applied to the trial judge's denial of a mistrial based on the juror's withholding of material information.

Under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 44.2, the standard of review for errors of a constitutional dimension differs from the standard for other errors.⁹ The rule provides that:

(a) Constitutional error. If the record in a criminal case reveals constitutional error that is subject to harmless error review, the court of appeals must reverse a judgment of conviction or punishment unless the court determines beyond a reasonable doubt that the error did not contribute to the conviction or punishment.

(b) Other errors. Any other error, defect, irregularity, or variance that does not affect substantial rights must be disregarded.¹⁰

Was a constitutional right affected by the juror's withholding of material information during voir dire and the judge's subsequent denial of a mistrial, compounded by the trial court's refusal to allow defense counsel to ask questions to develop a record of actual bias or prejudice? We have said before that "[c]onstitutional provisions bear on the selection of a jury for the trial of a criminal case."¹¹ And while not every error in the selection of a jury violates the constitutional right of a trial by an impartial jury,¹² we conclude that the error in this case did violate that right.

The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a trial before an impartial jury.¹³ Part of the constitutional guarantee of the right to an impartial jury includes adequate voir dire to identify unqualified jurors.¹⁴ And we have consistently held that essential to the Sixth Amendment guarantees of the assistance of counsel and trial before an impartial jury "is the right to question veniremembers in order to intelligently exercise peremptory challenges and challenges for cause."¹⁵ In Salazar v. State, we held that "where a juror withholds material information during the voir dire process, the parties are denied the opportunity to exercise their challenges, thus hampering their selection of a disinterested and impartial jury."¹⁶ We also found "[t]hat a juror will state that the fact that he withheld information will not affect his verdict is not dispositive of the issue where the information is material and therefore likely to affect the juror's verdict."¹⁷ The fact that the juror did not intend to intentionally withhold information "is largely irrelevant when considering the materiality of information withheld."¹⁸

Here, Juror Spradlin withheld material information — that she was the victim's assistant Girl Scout troop leader, and that her daughter was also in the same Girl Scout troop as the victim — that prevented Franklin not only from intelligently exercising his peremptory challenges but from exercising a challenge for cause as well. And, under Salazar, Spradlin's statement to the trial judge that she could consider the evidence and base her decision on the evidence does not mean that Franklin was not deprived of an impartial jury.¹⁹ The trial judge, informed of the relationship between Spradlin and the victim, refused to grant a mistrial and denied Franklin the opportunity to discover whether the relationship affected Franklin's right to a trial by an impartial jury.

And the error did not end there. The trial judge also deprived Franklin of the ability to develop evidence of bias or prejudice on the record. In this case, defense counsel told the court:

Had I been allowed to ask questions, I would have asked questions concerning the nature of the relationship with [the victim], how long it had lasted, whether or not she could set aside any of her relationship with [the victim], in sitting in judgment in this particular case, or whether she would tend to give more credence or less credence to [the victim]'s testimony and truthfulness due to that relationship.

Counsel explained that these questions were relevant to Spradlin's "potential biases" and would have uncovered information...