Westmark v. State

• Decision Date: 27 December 1984
• Docket Number: No. 83-256,83-256
• Citation: 693 P.2d 220
• Parties: Michael J. WESTMARK, Appellant (Defendant), v. The STATE of Wyoming, Appellee (Plaintiff).
• Court: Wyoming Supreme Court

Page 220

693 P.2d 220

Michael J. WESTMARK, Appellant (Defendant), v. The STATE of Wyoming, Appellee (Plaintiff).

No. 83-256.

Supreme Court of Wyoming.

Dec. 27, 1984.

Leonard D. Munker, State Public Defender, and Sylvia Lee Hackl, Appellate Counsel, Wyoming Public Defender Program, Cheyenne, for appellant.

A.G. McClintock, Atty. Gen., Gerald A. Stack, Deputy Atty. Gen., John W. Renneisen, S. Asst. Atty. Gen., Margaret M. White, Asst. Atty. Gen., Cheyenne, for appellee.

Before ROONEY, C.J., and THOMAS, ROSE, BROWN and CARDINE, JJ.

ROSE, Justice.

Appellant Michael J. Westmark was convicted by a jury of attempted second-degree murder and assault and battery. He urges the following issue on appeal "[Whether] appellant's constitutional right to remain silent was violated by the prosecutor's impermissible comments during trial." ¹

The appellant charges that it was error to allow the following interrogation:

"Q. Isn't it true, Mr. Westmark, that nobody has ever heard this self defense story prior to your actually relating it for the first time here in Court today?

"A. Mr. Mealey.

"Q. It's true that you never mentioned anything to the officers at the time you were arrested, isn't it, regarding that?

"A. That's true.

"Q. Okay. Isn't it true that you never told any officers that you stabbed anybody in self defense that night? True or false?

"A. My attorney had advised me not to talk to the police officers concerning this matter.

"Q. But, Mr. Westmark, you didn't have an attorney at the time you were pulled over on the highway, did you?

"A. No, sir, I didn't.

"Q. And at that point in time, you didn't tell anybody about a stabbing or self defense, did you?

"A. No, sir, I didn't.

"Q. In fact, the first time that story has been related to anybody is right in this courtroom today; isn't it?

"A. No, sir."

During the State's case-in-chief, appellant's silence at the time of arrest regarding self-defense was alluded to by questions from the prosecutor and answers by a police officer as follows:

"Q. At that point, did the Defendant, or any time during the course of your conversation with the Defendant, raise the issue that he had been acting in self defense?

"A. No. He didn't.

"Q. Did he ever mention self defense?

"A. No. He didn't."

During summation, the prosecutor for a third time brought to the jury's attention the fact that Westmark had not told the officers about his claim of self-defense. He said:

" * * * If the defendant had, in fact, acted in self defense twice within the past hour, why didn't he say so? He could have said, 'Yes, there has been a stabbing and that guy attacked me.' "

This interrogation and these remarks by the prosecutor lead unfailingly to the conclusion that little if any attention has been paid to that which this court has said about respecting the constitutional right of the citizen-accused to not have his silence called to the jury's attention. Since we overruled Clenin v. State, Wyo., 573 P.2d 844 (1978) in Richter v. State, Wyo., 642 P.2d 1269 (1982), where we held that such violations were not necessarily prejudicial and, under some fact situations, constitute harmless error, our attention has been called to far too many instances where prosecutors seem to be playing "Russian roulette" ² with this impermissible practice. The game seems to be that prosecutors will take the chance and ask about or comment upon silence even though they know that these interrogations are impermissible as being in violation of the defendant's Fifth Amendment rights to the federal constitution ³ and his Art. 1, § 11, Wyoming constitutional rights ⁴--on the theory that the Supreme Court in all probability will hold the error to be harmless.

No more.

We herewith return to the rule of Clenin v. State, supra, and will hold that any comment upon the accused's exercise of his or her right to remain silent is prejudicial error which will entitle the accused to a reversal of the conviction. ⁵

We will reverse Westmark's conviction and remand for a new trial.

Appellant Westmark did not register an objection to the questions which were put to him by the prosecutor on direct and cross-examination, nor did he object to the remarks made by the State's attorney in summation. Therefore, the issue of appellant's right to remain silent comes here under the plain-error doctrine. Rule 49(b), W.R.Cr.P.; Rule 7.05, W.R.A.P. ⁶

In this assignment of error we must determine

(a) if the questions to a police officer on direct examination and cross-examination of appellant and the prosecutor's remarks in summation constituted error; and

(b) if we find error we must next determine if the plain-error doctrine applies.

The Questions and Comments on Silence Constituted Error

It is Westmark's contention that the above-recited questions during direct and cross-examination and comments during summation are in violation of his rights as those rights are contained in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment and under Art. 1, § 11 of the Wyoming Constitution. This claim is based upon Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610, 96 S.Ct. 2240, 49 L.Ed.2d 91 (1976). In Doyle, the Court said:

"We hold that the use for impeachment purposes of petitioners' silence, at the time of arrest and after receiving Miranda warnings, violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment." 426 U.S. at 619 .

In Wyoming, the question of whether or not the defendant was advised of his constitutional right to remain silent is not relevant to his assertion of this right. In a part of the Clenin opinion that was not overruled by Richter, we said:

"The record does not disclose whether Clenin was advised of his constitutional rights by a law enforcement officer. There are comments in Doyle v. Ohio, supra, and in some of the cases following it, which discuss the significance of that advice in relation to trial interrogation about the failure to furnish information to law enforcement officials. The right of an accused to remain silent, however, under Art. 1, § 11 of the Constitution of the State of Wyoming, which provides: 'No person shall be compelled to testify against himself in any criminal case, * * *,' does not depend upon his being advised of that right, but exists by virtue of the constitutional language. Advice as to that right by law enforcement officers or by the justice of the peace or by the judge of the district court is only for the purpose of expanding its protection by assuring that the accused person is aware of it." 573 P.2d at 846.

Thus, in Wyoming, the wording of Art. 1, § 11 of our Constitution brings with it the implicit assurance that silence will carry no penalty and therefore it would be "unfair and a deprivation of due process" ⁷ to permit the defendant's silence to be used to impeach his exculpatory testimony offered at trial.

This court has long been concerned about the problem at hand in this appeal--philosophically, factually and from the pure legal point of view. In Jerskey v. State, Wyo., 546 P.2d 173, 175 (1976) we said:

"The theory of the privilege against self-incrimination is a good, high-principled concept aimed at the preservation of the very most basic of the individual's rights in a democratic society and one which should be readily embraced by all of us."

We remembered that Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694, 10 A.L.R.3d 974 (1966) referred to Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977 (1964). The Miranda Court said:

" * * * That case was but an explication of basic rights that are enshrined in our Constitution--that 'No person * * * shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,' and that 'the accused shall * * * have the Assistance of Counsel'--rights which were put in jeopardy in that case through official overbearing. These precious rights were fixed in our Constitution only after centuries of persecution and struggle. And in the words of Chief Justice Marshall, they were secured 'for ages to come, and * * * designed to approach immortality as nearly as human institutions can approach it,' Cohens v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 387, 5 L.Ed. 257 (1821)." 384 U.S. at 442-443 .

In Jerskey, we pondered the evil which is described when courts ignore or do not assign the intended importance to such rights as those embodied in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Art. 1, § 11 of the Wyoming Constitution when we said:

"It is because of these ancient tendencies by which men in possession of the powers of government seek, with the weaponry of government, to impose their will upon those whom they govern (or 'serve') that the protections embodied in the Federal Fifth Amendment and the Wyoming Constitution, Article 1, Section 11, were needed.

"The evil is so often spawned in the name of the law and the pursuit of the public order as expressed by officials who are engaged in doing what is 'good,' 'right,' 'fair,' 'in the public interest,' or who are so often 'just doing their duty.' However, when public officials adopt their own ideas about morality as standards for adjudicating the righteousness of others--absent the guidelines furnished by the common and statutory law pool of experience contributed to by all civilized people--the 'good,' the 'right,' and the 'fair' become the expedient. The standard for the successful society is then judged according to the end result with precious little attention being paid to the manner by which it is achieved and to how many heads may have fallen into the basket in the process. Government becomes ultra powerful and the citizen is relegated to the least rather than the most important unit of the social order. The fragile cobwebs of human rights become misty visions which tend to blend with the ghosts of some public official's private opinion of what is 'good,' 'fair,' 'right,' and 'just' until they...