Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 03 August 2006
• Docket Number: No. 121, September Term, 2004.,121, September Term, 2004.
• Citation: 904 A.2d 534,394 Md. 98
• Parties: Willard H. WILLIAMS v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

904 A.2d 534

394 Md. 98

Willard H. WILLIAMS v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 121, September Term, 2004.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

August 3, 2006.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Brian J. Murphy, Assigned Public Defender (Nancy S. Forster, Public Defender, on brief), Baltimore, for Appellant.

Brian S. Kleinbord, Asst. Atty. Gen. (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Atty. Gen. of MD, on brief), Baltimore, for Appellee.

Argued before BELL, C.J., RAKER, WILNER, CATHELL, HARRELL, BATTAGLIA and GREENE, JJ.

BELL, Chief Judge.

The dispositive issue in the case sub judice is whether the defendant is entitled to a new trial as a result of a juror's non-disclosure, during voir dire, of the fact that a member of that juror's family was employed as a secretary in the State's Attorney's Office ("SAO") that was prosecuting the defendant and when the relationship was not discovered until after the trial had been completed. This issue is one of first impression for this Court. A similar, but certainly not identical, issue has been considered by the Court of special Appeals, however. It was first addressed in Burkett v. State, 21 Md.App. 438, 319 A.2d 845 (1974). In that case, the trial court voir dired the juror, albeit after the fact, with regard to the reason for the nondisclosure, concluding that it was inadvertent. The intermediate appellate court, in affirming, formulated a test:

"[T]he grant of a new trial, where information inadvertently is withheld by a juror's failure to respond to voir dire inquiry, should be left to the sound discretion of the trial judge unless:

"(a) actual prejudice to the accused is demonstrated, or

"(b) the withheld information, in and of itself, gives rise to a reasonable belief that prejudice or bias by the juror against the accused is likely."

Id. at 445, 319 A.2d at 849. We agree with this analytical construct for the circumstances there presented. It does not, as we shall see, resolve the factual scenario that this case presents.

The appellant, Willard H. Williams ("Williams"), and his co-defendant, Kevin Jones ("Jones"), were charged with distribution of cocaine and related offenses and tried, by jury, in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. During the voir dire process, the trial judge asked the venire, inter alia, whether:

"... any member of the panel, any member of your immediate family or household or anyone else that you're close to and get significant advice from, been in the past, going to be in the future or are currently employed or doing business with or otherwise closely associated with any law enforcement agency? That includes the City Police, the County Police, the State Police, or any other kind of police. The attorney General for the State of Maryland or any other State, the State's Attorney's Officer [sic], Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and other State or District Attorney's office, the United State's Attorney Office for the Federal District of Maryland or any other federal district, Federal law enforcement agencies including but not limited to FBI, DEA, ATF, INS, IRS, Customs, Coast Guard, Military Police, NSA, CIA, Homeland Security or any other type of outfit that either has a security function or has an investigative function? Also, include parole and probation agents, sheriff's departments, correctional officers and other employees of correctional facilities and people who work for private security companies, then be prepared to tell us about that when you come up."

Juror 560, Ernestine Lane, as later discovered, was the sister of a secretary in the State's Attorney's Office. Nevertheless, she did not respond to the question. She had responded to other venire questions, however, as follows:

"The Court: Any information you'd like to share with us?

"Juror 560: No.

"The Court: Ever been in a courtroom before—witness, juror, spectator?

"Juror 560: Juror.

"The Court: Civil, criminal or not picked? Did you have to award money or did you have to vote somebody not guilty or guilty?

"Juror 560: Award money.

"The Court: Anything about that experience that would cause you to be unfair to either of these two gentlemen or the State?

"Juror 560: No."

Ms. Lane was seated as juror number four and served on the jury.

Both Williams and Jones were convicted of the crimes charged. When they were informed by the State of Ms. Lane's familial relationship with an employee of the State's Attorney's Office, they offered the non-disclosure as one of the grounds for their motion for a new trial. Emphasizing the non-disclosure of the familial relationship—"the juror never disclosed that during voir dire"—and relying on Leach v. State, 47 Md.App. 611, 425 A.2d 234 (1981) and Burkett v. State, 21 Md.App. 438, 319 A.2d 845 (1974), to which he referred the Court, Williams argued¹:

"Both are similar situations where there were voir dire questions, information was obviously withheld or not disclosed and the Court says; the withheld information in and of itself gives rise to a reasonable belief that prejudice or bias by a juror against the accused is likely. I think in this case the fact that we did not know that this juror had a relationship with the State's Attorney's Office that it is reasonable and the presumption is that there was a bias. And based on that I would ask the Court to Grant my Motion for a new trial."

The prosecutor confirmed that Ms. Lane was "the sister of one of the secretaries in my office," but, because the he "ha[d] not asked Ms. Lane, ha[d] not called Ms. Lane, had any contact with Ms. Lane about the situation," he was unable to respond to the court's question as to why the juror did not disclose the relationship.² No other information being available, Ms. Lane was not called to testify as to the reason for the non-disclosure, the prosecutor submitted and the court denied the new trial motion, ruling:

"Well that's pretty remote; a sister of a secretary in the State's Attorney's Office. If the Court of Appeals wants to grant a new trial on that basis they're more than welcome to do it. We struggle in Baltimore with an electorate with less than a high school education, that is not very sophisticated, and doesn't understand the simplest of questions. If the Court of Appeals wants to create laboratory circumstances and create precision in each trial, which pre-supposes that jurors will come in here that come in and understand simple English questions, or a defendant gets multiple trials at great expense to the taxpayers, let them do so. I'm not going to. Motion for New Trial is denied."

Williams filed an appeal to the Court of Special Appeals. We, on our own motion, issued the writ of certiorari while the case was pending in that court. Williams v. State, 384 Md. 581, 865 A.2d 589 (2005). For the reasons that follow, we shall reverse the judgment of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City.

A.

The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution,³ as applied to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, guarantees criminal defendants an impartial jury trial. Attorney Grievance Comm'n of Maryland v. Gansler, 377 Md. 656, 675, 835 A.2d 548, 558 (2003); Jenkins v. State, 375 Md. 284, 300, 825 A.2d 1008, 1017 (2003); Ware v. State, 360 Md. 650, 670, 759 A.2d 764, 774 (2000). There is a similar guarantee provided by Article 21 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights.⁴ Bristow v. State, 242 Md. 283, 289, 219 A.2d 33, 36 (1966). See Gansler, 377 Md. at 675, 835 A.2d at 559; Jenkins, 375 Md. at 299, 825 A.2d at 1017. The guarantee is not that the juror will not have formed or expressed an opinion with regard to the matter at issue, only "that he shall be without bias or prejudice for or against the accused, and that his mind is free to hear and impartially consider the evidence, and to render a verdict thereon without regard to any former opinion or impression existing in his mind, formed upon rumor or newspaper reports." Garlitz v. State, 71 Md. 293, 300, 18 A. 39, 41 (1889). See Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 723, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 1643, 6 L.Ed.2d 751, 756 (1961); Bristow, 242 Md. at 288-89, 219 A.2d at 36; Kujawa v. Baltimore Transit Co., 224 Md. 195, 201, 167 A.2d 96, 98 (1961); Newton v. State, 147 Md. 71, 76, 127 A. 123, 126 (1924). Thus, "[t]he potency of the Sixth Amendment [and Article 21] right to a fair trial relies on the promise that a defendant's fate will be determined by an impartial fact finder who depends solely on the evidence and argument introduced in open court." Allen v. State, 89 Md.App. 25, 42, 597 A.2d 489 (1991), cert. denied, 325 Md. 396, 601 A.2d 129 (1992). Of course, a "fundamental tenet of our legal system" is that, to be impartial, the fact finder must presume the innocence of the criminal defendant. Wright v. State, 312 Md. 648, 652, 541 A.2d 988, 990 (1988) (citing Johnson v. State, 227 Md. 159, 163, 175 A.2d 580, 582 (1961)).

Critical in ensuring that the guarantee is meaningful is the voir dire of the venire, the purpose of which is to exclude from the venire potential jurors for whom there exists cause for disqualification, so the jury that remains is capable of deciding the matter before it based solely on the facts presented, and uninfluenced by extraneous considerations. Hill v. State, 339 Md. 275, 279, 661 A.2d 1164 (1995). As we put it in that case,

"Undergirding the voir dire procedure and, hence, informing the trial court's exercise of discretion regarding the conduct of the voir dire, is a single, primary, and overriding principle or purpose: `to ascertain "the existence of cause for disqualification."'"

Id. at 279, 661 A.2d at 1166 (quoting McGee v. State, 219 Md. 53, 58, 146 A.2d 194, 196 (1959), in turn quoting Adams v. State, 200 Md. 133, 140, 88 A.2d 556, 559 (1952)). See Jenkins, 375 Md. at 331, 825 A.2d at 1035-36 ("[O]ne of the ways to protect a defendant's constitutional right to an impartial jury is to expose the existence of factors which could cause a juror to be biased or prejudiced through the process of voir dire examina...