State v. Segura

• Decision Date: 11 December 2013
• Docket Number: No. 13–398.,13–398.
• Citation: 127 So.3d 1034
• Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. Brian SEGURA.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US

127 So.3d 1034

STATE of Louisiana

v.Brian SEGURA.

No. 13–398.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Third Circuit.

Dec. 11, 2013.

Hon. J. Phillip Haney, District Attorney, Sixteenth Judicial District Court, Angela B. Odinet, Assistant District Attorney, St. Martinville, LA, for Appellee, State of Louisiana.

Susan K. Jones, Attorney at Law, Gonzales, LA, Stephen J. Haedicke, The Law Offices of Stephen J. Haedicke, LLC, New Orleans, LA, Edward J. Marquet, Louisiana Appellate Project, Lafayette, LA, for Defendant/Appellant, Brian Segura.

Court composed of JOHN D. SAUNDERS, SHANNON J. GREMILLION, and PHYLLIS M. KEATY, Judges.

GREMILLION, Judge.

Defendant, Brian Segura, was charged by grand jury indictment with two counts of aggravated kidnapping, violations of La.R.S. 14:44, and one count of armed robbery, a violation of La.R.S. 14:64. At the sentencing hearing, the State summarized its charges as follows:

[Defendant] victimized a young mother and her young child, kidnaped them at knifepoint, tied the mother up, [and] robbed them of money that she was supposed to withdraw from the ATM machine.

On October 6, 2011, four days before the trial, the local newspaper, The Daily Iberian, ran a disparaging story about Defendant. On the same day, a local television station, KATC, ran several segments derivative of the newspaper article. On October 7, 2011, Defendant filed a “Motion for Change of Venue on Basis of Pretrial Publicity.” Subsequently, on October 10, 2011, Defendant filed a “Motion for Individual Sequestered Voir Dire on Publicity.” On that same date, the trial court heard argument and testimony regarding the motion for change of venue.

The trial court, however, decided to rule on the motion for change of venue after the jurors were questioned individually during voir dire. After jury selection, the trial court denied the motion for change of venue, noting that a jury had been selected.

Defendant was found guilty as charged and was sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor without benefits on each count of aggravated kidnapping and fifty years at hard labor without benefits on the armed robbery conviction. The trial court ordered the sentences to run concurrently with one another, but consecutively to sentences imposed against Defendant in Iberia and Lafayette Parishes as well as any other sentence Defendant was currently serving.

Defendant assigns two errors, both of which spring from the pretrial publicity. Namely, he complains of the trial court's denial of his motion to change venue and the trial court's denial of several juror challenges for cause.

CHANGE OF VENUE

Defendant argues that he was denied the right to a fair trial by the trial court's refusal to grant his motion for change of venue. The jury pool, Defendant argues, was “irrevocably tainted through intensive media coverage of his alleged crimes shortly before trial.” Defendant asserts that he introduced three media items that appeared in the local press in the four days before his trial began on October 10, 2011.

First, the defense introduced an article that appeared in the Daily Iberian on Thursday, October 6, 2011 entitled “Murder Confession.” After recounting details of the seven-year-old murder of Carrie Billeaud, the newspaper article quoted Iberia Parish Sheriff, Louis Ackal, as stating that Defendant finally cooperated in the murder investigation of Billeaud when he was threatened with the “needle.” Before that time, Defendant had led the detectives to several “ghost locations” in search of evidence, costing the parish about $136,000 in materials and labor. Once Defendant finally cooperated, detectives located the baseball bat used in the murder as well as the stolen money bags inside a shed belonging to Defendant's mother. The newspaper article also quoted Sheriff Ackal as stating that Defendant admitted to killing Billeaud, and admitted to thinking of killing the woman that he kidnapped (but did not because of the child in the car). The newspaper article also quoted Sheriff Ackal's statement that Defendant was the ringleader of an incident in jail wherein a deputy was taken hostage and stabbed. According to Sheriff Ackal, Defendant admitted to wanting to kill the deputy.

Second, Defendant introduced clips from several KATC news segments that aired on October 6, 2011. In the clips, KATC quoted Sheriff Ackal's statement in the Daily Iberian regarding Defendant's confession to the Billeaud murder, posted a picture of Defendant, quoted Sheriff Ackal as stating that Defendant was a person of interest in the Billeaud murder, and stated that Sheriff Ackal denied the interview with the Daily Iberian. In one of the segments, KATC also mentioned that Defendant was involved in a hostage situation at the jail and that Defendant would be going to trial the following Monday on aggravated kidnapping and armed robbery charges. Finally, KATC stated that no arrests had been made in the Billeaud murder and showed footage of one of Billeaud's relatives crying because of her death.

Lastly, Defendant introduced an article that was printed on Sunday, October 9, 2011, in the Daily Iberian newspaper. This article stated that Defendant's attorney had filed a motion for change of venue because of the inflammatory remarks made by Sheriff Ackal and the District Attorney, which were printed in the Daily Iberian and reported by KATC. The Sunday article mentioned Sheriff Ackal's statement, printed in the Thursday article, that Defendant confessed to the Billeaud murder. The Sunday article also mentioned the facts surrounding the present charges of aggravated kidnapping and armed robbery, as well as the hostage and stabbing incident at the Iberia Parish Jail. Notably, while Defendant introduced this article in support of the motion for change of venue, defense counsel stated that “It is not our inclination that the article printed in the Sunday paper tainted the jury.”

Thus, we are left to consider the possible effects of a single newspaper article and several T.V. news segments, all of which derived from that newspaper article, and all of which were broadcast on a single day very shortly before the jury was selected.

In a recent case, the Louisiana Supreme Court set forth the law regarding a change of venue:

The right to an impartial jury and a fair trial is guaranteed to every defendant. SeeLa. Const. art. I, § 16; State v. Sparks, 88–0017, p. 15 (La.5/11/11), 68 So.3d 435, 456,cert. denied,––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 1794, 182 L.Ed.2d 621 (2012); State v. Lee, 05–2098, p. 32 (La.1/16/08), 976 So.2d 109, 132;State v. Bell, 315 So.2d 307, 309 (La.1975). To effect this guarantee, the law provides for a change of venue when a defendant establishes that he or she will be unable to obtain an impartial jury or a fair trial at the place of original venue. Sparks, 88–0017 at 15, 68 So.3d at 456;Lee, 05–2098 at 32, 976 So.2d at 132;Bell, 315 So.2d at 309.

Changes of venue are governed by La.C.Cr.P. art. 622, which provides:

A change of venue shall be granted when the applicant proves that by reason of prejudice existing in the public mind or because of undue influence, or that for any other reason, a fair and impartial trial cannot be obtained in the parish where the prosecution is pending.

In deciding whether to grant a change of venue the court shall consider whether the prejudice, the influence, or the other reasons are such that they will affect the answers of jurors on the voir dire examination or the testimony of witnesses at the trial.

In exceptional circumstances, prejudice against a defendant may be presumed. See State v. David, 425 So.2d 1241, 1246 (La.1983) (“[U]nfairness of a constitutional magnitude will be presumed in the presence of a trial atmosphere which is utterly corrupted by press coverage or which is entirely lacking in the solemnity and sobriety to which a defendant is entitled in a system that subscribes to any notion of fairness and rejects the verdict of the mob.”) Otherwise, it is the defendant's burden to demonstrate actual prejudice. State v. Manning, 03–1982, p. 7 (La.10/19/04), 885 So.2d 1044, 1061;State v. Vaccaro, 411 So.2d 415, 423–24 (La.1982).State v. Magee, 11–574, pp. 10–11 (La.9/28/12), 103 So.3d 285, 298,cert. denied,––– U.S. ––––, 134 S.Ct. 56, 187 L.Ed.2d 49 (2013).

In State v. Connolly, 96–1680 (La.7/1/97), 700 So.2d 810, the supreme court found the trial atmosphere not utterly corrupted by press coverage when two newspaper articles recounted the basic facts surrounding the crime, and one newspaper article mentioned the fact that the defendant was involved in another murder. Additionally, details concerning the murder for which the defendant stood trial were aired on radio and television. Connolly differs from the present case in that the articles in Connolly were printed several months to a couple of years prior to trial. The articles in the present case were printed only a few days before trial.

Despite this distinction, we do not presume prejudice in the present case. The supreme court in Magee did not presume prejudice despite the fact that the media coverage in Magee resumed in the days immediately preceding Magee's trial. Furthermore, in State v. Lee, 05–2098 (La.1/16/08), 976 So.2d 109,cert. denied,555 U.S. 824, 129 S.Ct. 143, 172 L.Ed.2d 39 (2008), the Louisiana Supreme Court did not presume prejudice in a case where the defense introduced thousands of print and media stories regarding the search for the South Louisiana Serial Killer, including media stories that covered Lee's conviction in another case. The media coverage in the present case, like the media coverage in Connolly, Lee, and Magee, did not utterly corrupt the trial atmosphere.

We did, however, compare Connolly, Lee, and Magee to Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723, 83 S.Ct. 1417, 10 L.Ed.2d 663 (1963), where prejudice was presumed when Rideau's twenty-minute “confession” was aired three times on television in the community where the crime and trial...