State v. Henning, 94-332

• Decision Date: 20 March 1996
• Docket Number: No. 94-332,94-332
• Citation: 545 N.W.2d 322
• Parties: STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Lawrence Michael HENNING, Appellant.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 322

545 N.W.2d 322

STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Lawrence Michael HENNING, Appellant.

No. 94-332.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

March 20, 1996.

Linda Del Gallo, State Appellate Defender, and Sharon R. Stevens, Assistant State Appellate Defender, for appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Martha Boesen and Thomas G. Fisher, Jr., Assistant Attorneys General, J. Patrick White, County Attorney, and Janet Lyness, Assistant County Attorney, for appellee.

Considered by McGIVERIN, C.J., and CARTER, NEUMAN, SNELL, and TERNUS, JJ.

CARTER, Justice.

Defendant, Lawrence Henning, appeals from a judgment of conviction on a charge of vehicular homicide in violation of Iowa Code section 707.6A(1)(a) (1993). The judgment followed his conviction by a trial jury. As grounds for reversal, defendant asserts insufficiency of the evidence, improper allowance of expert testimony, and failure of the trial court to grant a new trial based on the jurors' discussion of his three prior OWI convictions as a result of information obtained from sources outside the trial. The court of appeals rejected all of these contentions and affirmed the judgment. We are satisfied that the court of appeals adequately resolved the issues concerning sufficiency of the evidence and allowance of expert testimony. Our review of the juror-misconduct issue, however, leaves us with a firm conviction that sufficient prejudice was shown to warrant the granting of a new trial on that ground.

While driving on an unlighted portion of Highway 218 south of Iowa City at 11 p.m., the defendant struck a bicycle. The bicycle rider, Chris Harding, age thirteen, was killed from the impact. The victim was wearing dark clothing at the time, and the bicycle had neither lights nor reflectors. During the three-hour period immediately preceding the fatal collision, defendant had been eating and drinking beer at a restaurant in the area. He testified that he had ordered four beers but only consumed three. The State offered evidence that the glasses of beer served to defendant held eighteen ounces. Expert testimony on the part of the State indicated that at the time of the collision defendant's ability to drive an automobile would have been impaired by the quantity of beer that he agreed he had consumed. Expert testimony offered by the defendant refuted that contention.

The trial was subjected to a five-day interruption consisting of three days during which the judge was required to attend a state judicial conference and the following weekend. It appears from evidence later presented that several jurors learned during this time that the defendant had a prior record of OWI convictions. After the jury had commenced deliberating, a court attendant notified the court that one juror had approached him and claimed knowledge of defendant's prior OWI convictions. The court attendant advised the court as follows:

Approximately 11:14 a.m. this date I was buzzed by the jury. At that time the judge and I talked just prior to that about taking the jury to lunch. When I told the jury we were going to be going to lunch at approximately 11:30, the juror David McNabb waved to me and stated that he needed to speak to me right away. To me, it appeared that he was possibly going to be ill. I didn't want to speak to him in front of everyone. He just stepped out of the room. At that time he expressed to me that he knew about three OWI's. At that time I told him to stop, that I didn't want to hear any more about whatever else he had to say. I advised him to go back into the jury room. At that time I reported directly to the judge.

After receiving this information, the court gave the jury a general admonition that, although not referring to the subject of defendant's prior infractions, emphasized that no consideration should be given to information obtained from sources outside the courtroom.

Following the return of a verdict of guilty, defendant filed a motion for new trial in which the subject of the juror discussions of his prior OWI convictions was developed by means of juror affidavits. These affidavits indicated that, during the time the trial was interrupted, several jurors learned that defendant had three prior OWI convictions. This information had been obtained from friends, coworkers, and from a television feature played for viewing in the area that was entitled "What the Jurors Don't Know." At least one juror had viewed this program, which indicated that the information set forth was based on court records. The juror affidavits further indicated that the subject of defendant's prior OWI convictions was thereafter mentioned to the rest of the jurors during deliberations but had not, in the opinion of the affiants, affected the verdict. This circumstance illustrates that, during a criminal trial, media dissemination of information concerning the character of the defendant is not always in the public interest. Even if the information disseminated is entirely accurate, it may by its very nature cause an unwarranted prejudice and produce an unwanted disruption of the judicial process.

The district court denied the motion for new trial after discussing in a written ruling several of our decisions in which the jurors' knowledge of unrelated prior bad acts of an accused was held not to warrant a new trial. ¹ Consideration of these and other cases reveal that we have been loath to grant a...