State v. Mansfield

190 So. 3d 322, 2016 La. App. LEXIS 327, 2016 WL 733177
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedFebruary 24, 2016
DocketNo. 50,426-KA
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 190 So. 3d 322 (State v. Mansfield) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Mansfield, 190 So. 3d 322, 2016 La. App. LEXIS 327, 2016 WL 733177 (La. Ct. App. 2016).

Opinion

GARRETT, J.

[Jn this out-of-time appeal,- the defendant, Orlando Mansfield, contends that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to the prosecutor’s repeated Doyle1 Violations during, his cross-examination in his jury trial held in 2013. For the reasons expressed below, we remand the matter to the trial court for a contradictory hearing at which-the ineffective assistance claim can be fully litigated. -

FACTS

On Sunday, November 21, 2010, Ida Hall reported to the police that she had-been attacked at her, Bastrop home by a man wielding-a metal pipe. She said that, while sitting in her carport, she observed a man she did not know at the edge of her house. He picked up a metal pipe lying on the ground, and approached the steps leading up to her carport. She was standing at the top of the steps. He struck her on the legs with the. pipe several times. Sh.e lunged at him, forcing him to step back on the ground. She then ran inside the house. When he tried to put the pipe in the doorway to prevent her from pulling her storm door shut, she pushed the pipe away and locked the door. The man fled, and she called the police. She described the assailant as a teenage blapk male wearing a navy blue hooded sweater and blue jeans.

[325]*325On Tuesday, November 23, 2010, Laura May, Ms. Hall’s daughter, called the police to report that she had seen someone on the train tracks near her mother’s house. Due to the distance, she was unable to see the. person’s facial features. The person was wearing a faded blue hoodie with the hood 12up, covering his hair; he waved at her. Believing that this person matched the description of her mother’s assailant, she called 911 immediately. However, no one was apprehended that day.

On Wednesday, November 24, 2010, Ms. May called the police to report that she had observed a black male in her mother’s carport. When she saw him, he was about 10 feet from her.' He was dressed in a shirt and a pair of pants; he was not wearing a hoodie. She described him as having a medium complexion and unkempt hair that was about two inches long. He ran away.

Det. Mitchell Jeselink of the Morehouse Parish Sheriffs Office was in charge of the investigation. As the result of a tip from a confidential informant, he developed the defendant as a suspect. He presented what he described as a four-person photo lineup to Ms. Hall and Ms. May. However, as will be explained below, the photos were not presented in a customary lineup format, as they consisted' of four separate pictures containing identifying information. Ms. Hall identified the defendant’s photo as the man who assaulted her, while Ms. May picked out his photo' as the man she saw in the carport several days after her mother’s attack.

■Det. Jeselink arrested the 22-year-old defendant at his mother’s house on November 24, 2010.2 Without obtaining a search warrant, he seized a blue hoodie from the residence. This hoodie had the “Adidas”: logo, on the front, although a hoodie,-with an “Adidas” logo had never been described by Neither Ms: Hall or Ms, May. Ms. Hall subsequently identified it as the one, worn-by her assailant when it was shown to her by the detective..

The defendant was arrested on charges of aggravated battery and attempted aggravated burglary. He was-later charged by bill of information with aggravated battery, aggravated burglary, and attempted unauthorized entry oft an inhabited dwelling.3 The third charge was. subsequently declined by.the state,-.and the. .defendant was tried before a jury on the aggravated battery and aggravated-burglary- charges in September 2013-4 • <

At trial, Ms. Hall and Ms. May positively identified the defendant. The defendant testified on his own béhalf and denied committing the offenses! During his cross-examination of the defendant, the -prosecutor made several references to the defendant’s post-Miranda silence without any objection by defense-counsel. , The jury acquitted the defendant on the aggravated battery, charge and returned a responsive verdict of guilty of simple burglary of an inhabited dwelling on the aggravated burglary charge.

The state filed a habitual offender bill of information, asserting that the defendant [326]*326had a prior felony conviction for simple arson. The trial court adjudicated the defendant as a second felony offender. In January 2014, the defendant was sentenced to nine years at hard labor with credit for time served, with the first year of the sentence to be served without benefit of | ¿parole, probation or suspension of sentence. The trial court ordered that the sentence run consecutively to any parole revocation. No timely motion for appeal was filed on the defendant’s behalf at that time.

In April 2015, the defendant filed a pro se motion for production, seeking documents in order to file' a post-conviction relief (“PCR”) application. One of the proposed grounds for PCR relief set forth in the motion was ineffective assistance of counsel. On May 1,-2015, the trial court signed an order of appeal and for appointment of counsel in which it stated that it accepted and treated the defendant’s pro se motion for production of documents as a motion for appeal.and appointment of appellate counsel. It appointed the.Appellate Project to represent the defendant on appeal.

This appeal followed. The sole assignment of error urged is that trial counsel was ineffective because, during the defendant’s cross-examination, he failed to object or request a mistrial in response to the prosecutor’s repeated references to the defendant’s post-Miranda silence.

LAW

Doyle Violations

In Doyle v. Ohio, supra, the United States Supreme Court held that the use for impeachment purposes of the defendant’s silence at the time of arrest and after receiving Miranda warnings violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision in Doyle rests on the premise that Miranda warnings render the subsequent silence of the defendant “insolubly ambiguous,” and thereby make later use of that silence | fito impeach his or her exculpatory testimony at trial fundamentally unfair. State v. Richards, 99-0067 (La.9/17/99), 750 So.2d 940; State v. Grant, 47,365 (La.App.2d Cir.9/20/12), 105 So.3d 81, writ denied, 2012-2279 (La.4/5/13), 110 So.3d 1073.

A defendant’s due process rights are- violated when a prosecutor impeaches a defendant’s exculpatory story, told for the first time at trial, by cross-examining him about his failure to have told the story after receiving Miranda warnings at the time of his arrest. State v. Marshall, 2013-2007 (La.12/9/14), 157 So.3d 563.

The Doyle proscription against referring to a defendant’s post-arrest silence is not without exceptions. The state is allowed to reference the defendant’s post-arrest silence when the evidence of post-arrest silence is relevant to rebut a defense-raised assertion that the arresting officers failed to properly investigate or that the defendant actively ..cooperated with the police when arrested. State v. Bell, 446 So.2d 1191 (La.1984); State v. Harrison, 46,325 (La.App.2d Cir.5/18/11), 69 So.3d 581.

A Doyle violation is characterized as a trial error which is subject to a harmless error analysis.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
190 So. 3d 322, 2016 La. App. LEXIS 327, 2016 WL 733177, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-mansfield-lactapp-2016.