Karen v. California

• Decision Date: 18 October 1976
• Docket Number: No. 75-6494,75-6494
• Citation: 97 S.Ct. 268,429 U.S. 900,50 L.Ed.2d 185
• Parties: Raimo KAREN v. State of CALIFORNIA
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

429 U.S. 900

97 S.Ct. 268

50 L.Ed.2d 185

Raimo KAREN

v State of CALIFORNIA

No. 75-6494

Supreme Court of the United States

October 18, 1976

On petition for writ of certiorari to the Court of Appeal of California for the Second Appellate District.

The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.

Mr. Justice MARSHALL, with whom Mr. Justice BRENNAN joins, dissenting.

At the beginning of his trial for manslaughter, petitioner, who acted as his own counsel throughout the trial, asked the judge to provide him with civilian clothes. He represented that he had been in jail for five years and had no suitable civilian clothing. Although there is some suggestion that petitioner might have been able to obtain suitable clothes,¹ the trial court did not reject his request for that reason.² Rather, it held that petitioner's appearance before the jury in clothes labeled "L. A. CO. JAIL" was "proper." Petitioner objected.

Only five months ago, this Court unanimously recognized that an accused's appearance before a jury in identifiable jail clothes could deprive him of his fundamental right to a fair trial by undermining the presumption of innocence:

"(T)he constant reminder of the accused's condition implicit in such distinctive, identifiable attire may affect a juror's judgment. The defendant's clothing is so likely to be a continuing influence throughout the trial that, not unlike placing a jury in the custody of deputy sheriffs who were also witnesses for the prosecution, an unacceptable risk is presented of impermissible factors coming into play." Estelle v. Williams, 425 U.S. 501, 504-505, 96 S.Ct. 1691, 48 L.Ed.2d 126 (1976).

Under Estelle, the trial court's ruling that clean jail clothes are "proper" attire for trial is clearly wrong.

That petitioner asked that the State supply him with clothes, rather than that he be allowed to wear clothes of his own, cannot justify the trial court's ruling. In a system aspiring toward the ideal of equal justice under law, indigence cannot be allowed to deprive an accused of that presumption of innocence which "lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law." Id., at 503, 96 S.Ct. 1691, quoting Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432, 453, 15 S.Ct. 394, 39 L.Ed. 481 (1895). "There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has." Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12, 19, 76 S.Ct. 585, 100 L.Ed. 891 (1956).

The California Court of Appeal correctly assumed that the trial court's ruling was erroneous. It held, however, that the error was "harmless beyond a reasonable doubt." Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). In essence, the appellate court reasoned that petitioner was not harmed by his appearance in jail clothing because he was also deprived of the presumption of innocence by other actions taken by the trial court. Specifically, the Court of Appeal recognized that the California procedure of permitting a manslaughter defendant ³ to be tried on an information alleging murder, allowing the prosecutor to argue to the jury that a murder was committed, and instructing the jury on the elements of first- and second-degree murder, inevitably taints the defendant in the eyes of the jury. The appellate court felt constrained to approve this procedure because of California Supreme Court precedent: ⁴

"By following the California Supreme Court mandate and permitting defendant to be tried on an information alleging murder, by receiving evidence of murder, and by its instructions to the jury, the trial court informed the jury that this was not the run-of-the-mill defendant. The damage done by defendant's appearance in jail clothing was accomplished by a procedure held valid by our Supreme Court. Any error in denying defendant's motion for civilian clothing thus did not further prejudice him."

This reasoning transforms the harmless error rule of Chapman into the legal equivalent of the doctrine that two wrongs make a right.

This Court has never passed on the prejudicial and unnecessary ⁵ procedure that the appellate court thought rendered the error here harmless. But in Price v. Georgia, 398 U.S. 323, 90 S.Ct. 1757, 26 L.Ed.2d 300 (1970), we did reject a harmlessness claim in a case almost identical to petitioner's. In Price, the defendant's first trial had ended in an acquittal on a murder charge and a conviction on a manslaughter charge; the conviction was reversed on appeal. The defendant then was retried on the murder charge and again convicted only of manslaughter. The State argued that any error in retrying the defendant for murder was harmless in light of the fact that he was acquitted of the murder charge at the second trial. That argument was rejected, in part because the defendant had improperly been made to suffer the trauma and risk of a second murder trial. But the Court cons...