State v. Williams

• Decision Date: 25 January 2011
• Docket Number: No. WD 71136.,WD 71136.
• Citation: 328 S.W.3d 366
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Jarvis T. WILLIAMS, Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

328 S.W.3d 366

STATE of Missouri, Respondent,

v.Jarvis T. WILLIAMS, Appellant.

No. WD 71136.

Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District.

Nov. 2, 2010.

Motion for Rehearing and/or Transfer t Supreme Court Denied Dec. 21, 2010.

Application for Transfer Denied Jan. 25, 2011.

Rosemary E. Percival, Assistant Public Defender, Kansas City, MO, for Appellant.

Chris Koster, Attorney General, Jayne T. Woods, Assistant Attorney General, Jefferson City, MO, for Respondent.

Before Division II: JOSEPH M. ELLIS, Presiding Judge, and ALOK AHUJA and KAREN KING MITCHELL, Judges.

KAREN KING MITCHELL, Judge.

Jarvis T. Williams appeals the judgment of the Circuit Court of Jackson County, Missouri ("trial court"), convicting him, after a jury trial, of one count of second-degree murder, section 565.021,¹ three counts of first-degree assault, section 565.050, and four counts of armed criminal action, section 571.015. On appeal, Williams claims that the trial court plainly erred by effectively closing the courtroom during jury selection. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

Factual and Procedural Background

The events surrounding the offense are not particularly relevant to this appeal and are summarized briefly for background only. On October 23, 2005, at sometime around 3:00 a.m., several people began shooting at a particular automobile in a crowded gas station parking lot in Kansas City. One of the occupants of the target automobile was killed, and two of the other three occupants were also shot, causing injury. It is believed that at least five different guns fired shots during the incident, and several of those guns have been determined to have been semi-automatic rifles. One of the occupants of the target automobile who had been shot later testified that Williams was one of the shooters.

Shortly after the shooting, a Kansas City police officer saw a car speeding down the street away from the gas station. The officer followed in the direction he saw the speeding car go and caught up with the car several blocks later. The car had hit a light pole. The airbags had deployed, but there were no passengers in the car. The officer did find one semi-automatic rifle in the car. The rifle was hot to the touch, indicating that it had been recently fired. Although there were no fingerprints found on the gun itself, Williams's fingerprints were found on the inner side of one of two magazines which had been taped together and inserted into the gun.

Hearing on his radio that a suspect's car had been found wrecked and abandoned nearby, another Kansas City police officer began patrolling nearby streets, looking for fleeing suspects. That officer found Williams and arrested him.

At Williams's trial, which began on Monday, March 23, 2009, a jury panel was brought into the courtroom for jury selection. The court instructed the panel to break for lunch and return to the courtroom afterwards. As Williams and his counsel left the courtroom, the victim's mother and two other women shouted at him, yelled that he had killed the victim and that he would pay for the rest of his life. The women had to be held back by a guard. At least two members of the jury panel witnessed the outburst. As a result, the trial court judge, stating that her primaryresponsibility was "to make sure that Mr. Williams has a fair trial," was forced to discharge the entire jury panel (fifty-nine people) and another fifty-seven-member panel, which had been "mixed in" with the first panel in the courthouse and thereby perhaps contaminated. The court warned all of the spectators in the courtroom that any other similar incidents would not be tolerated, and any people who could not control themselves would be barred from the trial and maybe barred from the courthouse.

The next morning, Tuesday, March 24, 2009, a new panel of fifty-seven or fifty-eight potential jurors was being escorted to the courtroom. The trial court again instructed the spectators that "there [was] to be no communication with the [panel members] who [were] in the room." However, either the victim's mother or one of Williams's family members made some comments to one of the panel members in the hallway outside the courtroom. Again, the tainted panel and a reserve panel were quashed, a mistrial was declared, and the process was scheduled to start over again the following week. The trial judge, evidencing her frustration, stated:

[W]e have now had two panels two days in a row who we have been unable to even get to the first step with. Yesterday there was a communication not directed at the panel but directed at Mr. Williams, which panel members—some panel members overheard. This morning, the information to the Court is that as the panel was waiting to come into the courtroom, there was communication from the defendant's family to at least one of the venirepersons. And we have no idea what that communication was or to whom whatever was said that person may have—may have repeated what was said.

I said yesterday and I will say again, this trial is going to be conducted in a manner that is in compliance with the law. I don't care who the wrongdoer is. I don't care if it's from the victim's family or the defendant's family. If someone has to be excluded, they will be excluded from this courtroom.

The court went on to ask the attorneys for both sides whether they had any suggestions as to how to proceed. The court suggested allowing one family member from each side to be present for voir dire. Then Williams's counsel stated that he had discussed the matter with the prosecution, and he did not feel that anyone other than the parties and counsel needed to be present for voir dire.² Williams's counsel suggested, "Judge, my proposal for the future to deal with this issue would be that the Court not allow any spectators in the courtroom during the voir dire process ... other than court personnel and attorneys and the panel members. I think that's all we really need in the courtroom." The prosecution agreed.

The trial judge then stated in open court:

I'm certainly willing to do this. We can't do this a third time and have it—I've never had this happen. And it is not going to happen again. So what I will do is issue an order that all members of the public, family members, relatives, will be excluded from the courtroom during the jury selection process.

There was no objection from any party or member of the public at the time the trial court made this pronouncement. The following Monday, March 30, 2009, having had no objection from the oral pronouncementthe previous week, the court issued a more narrowly tailored written order barring nine named individuals as well as "any member of the public associated with either the Defendant or the alleged victim" in the case from the fifth floor of the courthouse during jury selection. No objection was raised with the trial court. A jury was successfully selected, and there were no other disruptions during the trial. Nothing prohibited any member of the public from being present during the remainder of the trial. Williams was found guilty of every count with which he was charged. He now appeals, his sole point on appeal being that the trial court plainly erred by effectively closing the courtroom during jury selection.

Standard of Review

Properly preserved, whether a defendant's right to a public trial has been violated is a question of law subject to de novo review. State v. Brightman, 155 Wash.2d 506, 122 P.3d 150, 154 (2005). However, because Williams did not object to the trial court's alleged closure of the courtroom during jury selection, nor did he raise the issue in his motion for a new trial, the alleged error is not properly preserved for appeal. Nevertheless, Williams urges this court to analyze the matter under the plain error standard set forth in Missouri Supreme Court Rule 30.20.

Legal Analysis

I. A criminal defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a public trial

A. A criminal defendant may waive his personal right to a public trial

Plain error review is available, at this court's discretion, even if an error has not been properly preserved for appeal, if the court finds that manifest injustice or a miscarriage of justice has resulted therefrom. Rule 30.20. However, the failure to preserve the issue must result from inadvertence or negligence. See State v. Johnson, 284 S.W.3d 561, 582 (Mo. banc 2009) (requiring finding of inadvertence or negligence for plain error review). When " 'counsel has affirmatively acted in a manner precluding a finding that failure to object was a product of inadvertence or negligence,' " or it is clear that counsel acted "for a trial strategy reason," plain error review is waived. Id. (quoting State v. Mead, 105 S.W.3d 552, 556 (Mo.App. W.D.2003)) (emphasis added).³

In this case, not only did Williams's counsel not object to the exclusion from the courtroom of certain individuals, family members, and associates of either the defendant or the victim during jury selection, he requested that all members of the public be excluded. Defense counsel asked that the courtroom be closed to everyone but the defendant, counsel, and court personnel after the judge suggested allowing one representative of each family to be present during voir dire. Counsel's clear objective was to preserve Williams's right to a fair trial by ensuring that a fair andimpartial jury was chosen, without interference from the members of either the victim's family or Williams's own. Counsel's request to close the courtroom to spectators effectively waives Williams's right to plain error review of this issue.

B. Structural trial rights may be limited

Williams also seems to argue that, because the denial of a defendant's right to a public trial is a "structural defect," see United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. 140, 148, 126 S.Ct. 2557, 165 L.Ed.2d 409 (2006), this court must reverse the trial court's judgment because of the allegedly erroneous closure of the courtroom during jury...