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State v. Peek5/3/2000
Association Project on Standards for Criminal Justice, Standards Relating to Trial by Jury ยง 4.1(c)). Without these safeguards, "in-court shackling is inherently prejudicial to the defendant." Id.
In this case, the trial court did not conduct a hearing nor provide sufficient reason to justify the use of leg restraints when the defendant requested that they be removed. The trial court made an oblique reference to a situation "where a defendant needs to be restrained in the courtroom," but such a conclusion does not provide this court with any information by which we can assess whether the trial court's decision to use restraints complied with the safeguards contemplated by Willocks. We have no way of knowing what about this defendant led the trial court to believe that he should be restrained in leg shackles. There is nothing in the record to indicate what other security measures were available. "The fact that the defendant constituted a security risk [if such was the case here] does not automatically make shackling the least security measure necessary." State v. Thompson, 832 S.W.2d 577, 581 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1991). No instructions were given to the jury concerning the use of shackles. We assume that the reason for this failure to give instructions was that the trial court had taken measures to prevent the members of the jury from ever seeing the leg restraints on the defendant.
We hold that the trial court erred in failing to state on the record any clear showing of necessity for leg shackles.
Harmless Error
We must next determine whether the convictions must be reversed under the circumstances of this case. Because this is an issue of constitutional right to due process of law, the analysis to be used is that provided for constitutional errors, which is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 828, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967) (upholding the application of a harmless error analysis to federal constitutional errors in state criminal trials). The Chapman court noted that:
All of these [harmless error] rules, state or federal, serve a very useful purpose insofar as they block setting aside convictions for small errors or defects that have little, if any, likelihood of having changed the result of the trial. We conclude that there may be some constitutional errors which in the setting of a particular case are so unimportant and insignificant that they may, consistent with the Federal Constitution, be deemed harmless, not requiring the automatic reversal of the conviction.
Id. at 22, 87 S.Ct. at 827. Since Chapman, the federal courts have narrowed the constitutional violations that require automatic reversal and expanded those that are subject to the harmless error rule to the point that in today's jurisprudence, the application of the harmless error rule is the norm and not the exception. See Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570, 578, 106 S.Ct. 3101, 3106, 92 L.Ed.2d 460 (1986) (" hile there are some errors to which Chapman does not apply, they are the exception and not the rule."). This court has applied constitutional harmless error analysis to the use of shackles. See State v. Thompson, 832 S.W.2d 577, 582 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1991) (holding that constitutional harmless error analysis applied where defendant was shackled during the trial).
In this case, the record shows that precautions were taken by the trial court to assure that the members of the jury had no opportunity to see that the defendant was restrained in leg shackles. Cloths extending to the floor covered both the State and defense tables, and the tables were repositioned so that the defense table faced the jury box, alleviating a
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