Medici v. Com.

• Decision Date: 09 June 2000
• Docket Number: Record No. 991389.
• Citation: 532 S.E.2d 28,260 Va. 223
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court
• Parties: Lawrence P. MEDICI v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia.

532 S.E.2d 28

260 Va. 223

Lawrence P. MEDICI v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia.

Record No. 991389.

Supreme Court of Virginia.

June 9, 2000.

Jennifer A. Hess Smith, Assistant Public Defender, for appellant.

Eugene Murphy, Assistant Attorney General (Mark L. Earley, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.

Present: CARRICO, C.J., LACY, HASSELL, KEENAN, KOONTZ, and KINSER, JJ., and STEPHENSON, Senior Justice.

STEPHENSON, Senior Justice.

In this appeal, we determine whether the Court of Appeals erred in ruling that the trial court correctly (1) refused to strike for cause a prospective juror, (2) admitted into evidence the defendant's prior rape convictions in the guilt/innocence phase of his trial, and (3) refused to accept the defendant's stipulation that he had prior rape convictions.

I

A grand jury of the Circuit Court of Fairfax County indicted Lawrence P. Medici on four offenses. Count I of the indictment charged that Medici "did rape [the victim], a second or subsequent offense." Count II charged that Medici "did engage in cunnilingus with [the victim], against her will, by force, threat or intimidation, a second or subsequent offense." Count III charged that Medici "did engage in fellatio with [the victim], against her will, by force, threat or intimidation, a second or subsequent offense." Count IV charged that Medici "did attempt to engage in anal sodomy with [the victim], against her will, by force, threat or intimidation."

A jury found Medici guilty of each offense charged. The jury recommended a sentence of life imprisonment for each charge set forth in Counts I, II and III of the indictment and 10 years' imprisonment for the charge contained in Count IV of the indictment. By order entered February 17, 1998, the trial court sentenced Medici in accordance with the jury's verdict.

In an unpublished opinion dated May 25, 1999, the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court's judgment. Lawrence P. Medici v. Commonwealth of Virginia, Record No. 0527-98-4. We awarded Medici an appeal limited to the issues stated above.¹

II

A brief summary of the facts will suffice. The eighteen-year-old victim, a drug addict, was acquainted with Medici as her supplier of illicit drugs. On May 21, 1997, Medici left a message on the victim's answering machine advising her that he had "an amazing amount of cocaine" and that she should come over to his house. The victim went to Medici's house the following morning on her way to school. Medici escorted the victim to the basement where she saw a mirror covered with white powder. As the victim observed the powder, Medici ordered her to remove her clothing. The victim initially refused, but did remove her clothing when she noticed that Medici was armed with a knife. Thereafter, Medici forced the victim to engage in fellatio, cunnilingus, and sexual intercourse, and he attempted to engage the victim in anal sodomy. The victim immediately reported the incident to her high school guidance counselor.

III

We first consider whether the trial court erred in refusing to strike for cause a potential juror. During voir dire, Medici sought to have Inga Bennett stricken for cause because Bennett's husband had been murdered and the accused murderer was then represented by Medici's counsel's employer, the Office of the Public Defender. When questioned by counsel and the trial court, Bennett unequivocally stated that those circumstances would not affect her ability to judge the evidence fairly and impartially. The trial court refused to strike Bennett for cause, stating that "she was very adamant that she could be objective in this case."

We considered a similar issue in Cantrell v. Crews, 259 Va. 47, 523 S.E.2d 502 (2000), decided after the decisions of the trial court and the Court of Appeals in the present case. In Cantrell, the issue was "whether the trial court erred in refusing to strike for cause a prospective juror who, at the time of trial, was a client of the law firm representing the plaintiff." Id. at 49, 523 S.E.2d at 503. The prospective juror was, at the time, a plaintiff in a pending personal injury action. In response to questioning, the prospective juror assured the trial court that she could "ignore" her representation by the plaintiffs law firm and "be totally fair to both sides." Id. at 50, 523 S.E.2d at 503. The trial court denied the defendants' motion to strike the prospective juror for cause, concluding that she could ignore her personal relationship and be fair. Id.

We held that the trial court abused its discretion in refusing to strike the juror for cause and that the ruling constituted reversible error. In so holding, we stated the following:

Public confidence in the integrity of the process is at stake. It cannot be promoted when a sitting juror is, at the time of trial, a client of the law firm representing one of the parties to the litigation as a result of a similar occurrence.

This is true even though, as the record shows, the juror states that the circumstances of her representation would have no "bearing" on her judgment as a juror and that she could "be totally fair to both sides."

Id. at 51, 523 S.E.2d at 504.

It is true, as the Attorney General argues, that an appellate court must give deference to a trial court's ruling whether to exclude or retain a prospective juror and that the ruling will not be disturbed on appeal unless it is plainly wrong and amounts to an abuse of discretion. Vinson v. Commonwealth, 258 Va. 459, 467, 522 S.E.2d 170, 176 (1999). We think, however, that the present case is controlled by our decision in Cantrell. Here, the prospective juror's husband had been murdered, and the accused murderer was represented by a lawyer in the same Public Defender's Office that also served as counsel for Medici. While we have no reason to question Bennett's honesty and sincerity, we think that permitting her to sit as a juror, in the circumstances of this case, would weaken public confidence in the integrity of criminal trials. Accordingly, we hold that the trial court abused its discretion in failing to strike Bennett as a juror and that the ruling constitutes reversible error.

IV

We next consider whether Medici's prior convictions of rape in California were improperly admitted into evidence during the Commonwealth's case-in-chief. Medici makes three arguments in support of this contention.²

A

First, Medici argues that the admission of the evidence in the guilt/innocence phase of his trial violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. As previously noted, Medici was charged in three counts of the indictment with violating the rape and forcible sodomy statutes. He was also charged with the violation of Code § 18.2-67.5:3, which provides in subsection A as follows:

Any person convicted of more than one offense specified in subsection B, when such offenses were not part of a common act, transaction or scheme, and who has been at liberty as defined in § 53.1-151 between each conviction shall, upon conviction of the second or subsequent such offense, be sentenced to life imprisonment and shall not have all or any portion of the sentence suspended, provided it is admitted, or found by the jury or judge before whom he is tried, that he has been previously convicted of at least one of the specified offenses.

Medici asserts that, "because the Commonwealth currently has a bifurcated system in place[,] the prior conviction should be introduced in the [penalty] phase of the trial." Medici further asserts that, "[t]o do otherwise would be to violate a defendant's right to due process."

In Spencer v. Texas, 385 U.S. 554, 567-69, 87 S.Ct. 648, 17 L.Ed.2d 606 (1967), the Supreme Court upheld a defendant's conviction despite the admission into evidence in the guilt/innocence phase of the trial of the defendant's prior conviction for the purposes of sentence enhancement. More recently, in Marshall v. Lonberger, 459 U.S. 422, 438 n. 6, 103 S.Ct. 843, 74 L.Ed.2d 646 (1983), the Supreme Court reaffirmed Spencer and held that the accused's due process rights were not violated by the admission of his prior conviction into evidence in the guilt/innocence phase of the trial. Similarly, in Brown v. Commonwealth, 226 Va. 56, 59, 307 S.E.2d 239, 241 (1983), we ruled that "[d]ue process does not require that an accused be given a bifurcated trial when he is charged under a statute authorizing enhanced punishment for repeating offenders."

The Supreme Court also has stated that "a state rule of law `does not run foul of the Fourteenth Amendment because another method may seem to our thinking to be fairer or wiser or to give a surer promise of protection to the prisoner at bar.'" Spencer, 385 U.S. at 564, 87 S.Ct. 648 (quoting Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 104, 54 S.Ct. 330, 78 L.Ed. 674 (1934)). The Court has further noted that "[a] determination of the `best' recidivist trial procedure necessarily involves a consideration of a wide variety of criteria [and] is a far cry from a constitutional determination that this method of handling the problem is compelled by the Fourteenth Amendment." Id. at 567-68, 87 S.Ct. 648.

In the present case, the trial court instructed the jury that Medici's prior convictions "should be considered ... only for proof ... of a prior conviction, and not as proof that [Medici] committed the offenses to which he is charged." We presume that jurors followed a court's instruction, unless the record plainly shows otherwise. See Spencer v. Commonwealth, 240 Va. 78, 95, 393 S.E.2d 609, 619,

cert. denied, 498 U.S. 908, 111 S.Ct. 281, 112 L.E d.2d 235 (1990). Here, nothing in the record suggests that the jury did not follow the court's instruction.

We express no opinion whether the better policy would be to introduce a prior conviction into evidence only during the sentencing phase. We also do not decide whether a prior conviction is an element of the offense charged. Medici's...