Glover v. EIGHTH JUD. DIST. COURT OF STATE

220 P.3d 684, 125 Nev. 691, 125 Nev. Adv. Rep. 53, 2009 Nev. LEXIS 63
CourtNevada Supreme Court
DecidedNovember 12, 2009
Docket51941
StatusPublished
Cited by37 cases

This text of 220 P.3d 684 (Glover v. EIGHTH JUD. DIST. COURT OF STATE) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Nevada Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Glover v. EIGHTH JUD. DIST. COURT OF STATE, 220 P.3d 684, 125 Nev. 691, 125 Nev. Adv. Rep. 53, 2009 Nev. LEXIS 63 (Neb. 2009).

Opinions

[696]*696OPINION

By the Court,

Pickering, J.:

This petition for a writ of prohibition asks us to decide whether the district court violated petitioner Shawn Glover’s double jeopardy rights when it granted a mistrial and ordered him to stand trial a second time on murder and lesser related charges. The district court determined that defense counsel had irretrievably biased the jury by putting before them facts not in evidence, making mistrial a “manifest necessity.’ ’

The controversy arose out of a voluntary statement Glover gave the police. The State told the defense that it did not intend to use Glover’s statement at trial. The district court ruled that, when offered by the defense, the statement was inadmissible hearsay. Despite this ruling, defense counsel repeatedly put the statement before the jury, first in his opening statement, when he displayed excerpts of Glover’s police statement on PowerPoint; then during cross-examination of the detective who interrogated Glover, whom defense counsel asked to show the jury an envelope, neither marked nor admitted in evidence, and confirm that it contained a videotape of Glover’s interrogation; and again in closing argument. Although the State’s objections were sustained, the jury could not help but get the point that the defense thought Glover’s excluded statement was crucial and unfairly forbidden them.

Matters came to a head in closing argument when, despite earlier orders in limine, the defense exhorted the members of the jury to ask themselves why the State would not let them see or hear what Glover said to the police. The court rebuked defense counsel and directed him to discontinue this line of argument. He continued with it anyway, even after the court ordered him to stop, telling the jurors that the State kept Glover’s police statement from them because it “is devastating to their case, absolutely devastating.” It was at this point that the court called a recess, asked for input on the options available, including possible curative instructions, and ultimately, declared a mistrial.

[697]*697We uphold the district court’s orders excluding Glover’s statement and prohibiting argument about its content. Significantly, the defense admits that Glover’s out-of-court statement was hearsay. While the State could have offered the statement as the admission of a party opponent, no legitimate negative inference arose from the State’s decision not to offer this otherwise inadmissible evidence. The State’s failure to use the statement just meant the State had invoked the hearsay rule, which deems a defendant’s exculpatory out-of-court statements self-serving and thus inadmissible.

We also reject Glover’s double jeopardy challenge. Arizona v. Washington, 434 U.S. 497, 514 (1978), frames the question before us, which is not whether other reasonable judges might have assessed the risk of juror bias differently and proceeded with the trial, but whether the judge who presided over this trial abused his discretion in making the determination he did. Id. at 511. Here, as in Washington, the defense brought the mistrial order upon itself by arguing facts not in evidence and violating the court’s orders in limine, and now seeks to benefit from the mistrial order its rule violations produced. The district judge saw firsthand the impact the defense’s improper argument had on the jurors. It related directly to the key contested issue of self-defense. The number of times the excluded evidence was put before the jurors and the drama that played out before them over its exclusion led the district court to conclude that the risk of jury bias and the public’s interest in having an impartial jury decide this case outweighed Glover’s right to have the case conclude before the jury first sworn to hear it. On this record, we cannot say that the district judge did not exercise “sound discretion” — that is to say, that he acted “irrationally or irresponsibly” — in declaring that mistrial was a “manifest necessity.” Id. at 514. Accordingly, we deny the petition and dissolve our temporary stay of Glover’s retrial.

FACTS

The core issue in this case was self-defense. Six eyewitnesses saw Glover shoot Derek Moore in broad daylight in Glover’s front yard. By all accounts Moore started the fight. Uninvited, Moore drove his SUV onto Glover’s property, got out, and threatened Glover’s younger brother, Byron, whom Moore accused of having burglarized Moore’s girlfriend’s house. By the time Glover shot him, though, Moore and the two people who accompanied him to the Glovers’ house had gotten back into the SUV. Also undermining self-defense, Glover had time to go into his house and back outside to Moore’s vehicle (whether to get the gun he used to shoot Moore or to yell for his mother to call the police is disputed) before he shot Moore at near point-blank range.

[698]*698Moore and his companions drove to a neighboring grocery store parking lot. His companions called 911 but Moore’s gunshot wound was mortal, and he died before emergency services arrived. Police took gunshot residue samples from Moore. Because they did not find a gun in Moore’s SUV or on his person, they did not run gunshot residue tests on the samples.

Police were also dispatched to the Glover home. Glover and Byron had fled to their grandmother’s house. Later that day, Glover’s mother called and asked the police to come back. Glover had returned home from his grandmother’s by then. He surrendered himself and his gun to the police. The police took Glover into custody and transported him to the station, where Glover gave the police the voluntary videotaped statement that underlies this writ proceeding.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE TRIAL COURT

At trial, Glover admitted killing Moore but asserted self-defense made the homicide justifiable. Before the defense gave its opening statement, the parties reviewed outside the presence of the jury the PowerPoint slides the defense planned to use in its opening statement. The prosecution warned that it did not plan to introduce Glover’s statement to the police into evidence and that it objected on hearsay grounds to the defense using the statement. Nonetheless, during its opening statement, the defense put up a PowerPoint screen that showed the jury transcribed quotes from Glover’s police statement. The court sustained the prosecution’s objections to the defense’s displaying this inadmissible evidence.1

[699]*699Glover’s police statement came up next in connection with Jesus Prieto’s testimony. Prieto was the detective who responded to the 911 call and later took Glover’s statement. Reviewing the following day’s witnesses outside the jury’s presence, the State said it doubted it would call Prieto and that, if it did, it did not plan to ask him about Glover’s statement. When the defense said it would call Prieto if the State didn’t, the court confirmed its earlier ruling that, if offered by Glover, his police statement was inadmissible hearsay. After hearing argument, the court clarified that the defense could establish through Prieto (or Glover) that Glover turned himself in and argue that this supported self-defense. However, the court reiterated “you still can’t go into the statement.” Defense counsel affirmed that he “agreed” he could not get into the “contents of [Glover’s] statement, even indirectly.’ ’

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
220 P.3d 684, 125 Nev. 691, 125 Nev. Adv. Rep. 53, 2009 Nev. LEXIS 63, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/glover-v-eighth-jud-dist-court-of-state-nev-2009.