UKEENAN NAUTICA THOMAS v. STATE OF MARYLAND
Court of Appeals of Maryland, Hotten, July 28, 2017,
Voir Dire- Police-Witness Questions- When requested, a voir dire question related to a witness’ occupation (such as police-officers) must be asked directly without being diluted by including other irrelevant occupations.
Certified question from CoSA. Why???
the Court of Special Appeals filed a certified question of law with this Court, which we reformulated
Take that, CoSA!
Here the Court holds that it’s abuse of discretion for a trial court to elaborate on the underlying issue and give a proper explanation of prior CoA holdings. I suppose when your previous rulings are “it was unreasonable for you to follow our precedent,” you set the bar pretty low for logic… but still…
Facts
Thomas invited a victim to go buy drugs with him. Thomas and a co-conspirator then robbed the victim.
Thomas was charged with armed robbery and related charges in Baltimore County. Three of the State’s witnesses were going to be police officers.
During jury selection (voir dire) Thomas wanted the judge to ask prospective jurors whether they “believe that a law enforcement officer’s testimony is entitled to greater weight than any other witness just because he is a law enforcement officer.”
The judge declined to ask it that way and instead gave the panel an extremely lengthy explanation of witness credibility, which ended with the question whether anyone would “automatically give more or less weight to the testimony of a physician, a clergyman, a firefighter, a police officer, psychiatrist, social worker, electrician or any other witness merely because of their title, profession, education, occupation or employment?” No juror responded affirmatively to that question.
Thomas was convicted and appealed, claiming he was entitled to a question specifically about bias regarding police officers.
The Court of Special Appeals certified the question to the Court of Appeals for their consideration.
Law from the Case
Held: The Court of Appeals agreed with Thomas that the voir dire question the judge asked about general occupational bias was not sufficient because it was not tailored to the specific occupation, status or affiliation of the witness(es) in the case.
Voir Dire – “Voir Dire” of jurors involves asking them questions to determine whether there is anything about a juror’s state of mind which would be cause to disqualify them.
Voir Dire – There are two causes for disqualification of a juror:
(1) failure to meet the statutory qualifications, or
(2) a “collateral matter reasonably liable to have undue influence over a juror”, such as a bias or prejudice.
Voir Dire- if a potential juror is likely to give more credibility to a specific witness based on that witness’s occupation, status, category, or affiliation then, upon request, the trial judge must ask a voir dire question that seeks to uncover that bias.
Voir Dire – If a police witness is going to testify in a trial, it is an abuse of discretion for the judge not to ask whether any prospective juror has an occupational bias regarding the credibility of police officers (more likely to believe what they say because of their job).
From the case: The Court of Appeals looked at the model question on this issue, which asks: “Would you tend to believe or disbelieve the testimony of a law enforcement officer more than the testimony of any other witness?” In comparison, “the trial judge’s inquiry consisted of 450 words and was more than 30 sentences long.”