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 |
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.
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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)).
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 (...
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