Opinion
2 CA-CR 2023-0235
07-16-2024
The State of Arizona, Appellee, v. Roderick Aaron Harrell, Appellant.
Kristin K. Mayes, Arizona Attorney General Alice M. Jones, Deputy Solicitor General/Section Chief of Criminal Appeals By Phillip A. Tomas, Assistant Attorney General, Phoenix Counsel for Appellee Law Offices of Christopher L. Scileppi PLLC, Tucson By Christopher L. Scileppi Counsel for Appellant
Not for Publication - Rule 111(c), Rules of the Arizona Supreme Court
Appeal from the Superior Court in Pima County No. CR20165200001 The Honorable Christopher Browning, Judge
Kristin K. Mayes, Arizona Attorney General Alice M. Jones, Deputy Solicitor General/Section Chief of Criminal Appeals By Phillip A. Tomas, Assistant Attorney General, Phoenix Counsel for Appellee
Law Offices of Christopher L. Scileppi PLLC, Tucson By Christopher L. Scileppi Counsel for Appellant
Judge Kelly authored the decision of the Court, in which Presiding Judge O'Neil and Judge Vasquez concurred.
MEMORANDUM DECISION
KELLY, JUDGE
¶1 Roderick Harrell appeals from his convictions and sentences for theft of means of transportation and conducting a chop shop to buy or possess stolen property. He argues that the trial court erred in refusing to strike a juror for cause who formerly worked with one of the state's witnesses. Because we find no error, we affirm.
Factual and Procedural Background
¶2 "We view the facts and all reasonable inferences therefrom in the light most favorable to sustaining" Harrell's convictions. State v. Allen, 235 Ariz. 72, ¶ 2 (App. 2014). In January 2016, the manager of a Harley Davidson motorcycle dealership reported a stolen motorcycle to law enforcement. Nine months later, Harrell brought a motorcycle to the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) and spoke to Officer Wilson in the ADOT Enforcement Division. Harrell claimed he had assembled the motorcycle himself and wanted to register it and obtain a special Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) for it. He was unable to provide any proof of ownership or bill of sale as to the frame, engine, or any other part of the vehicle. Wilson gave Harrell a special VIN application form to complete, and Harrell wrote on the form that he had bought the engine and body parts "at swap meets and Craigslist" and had fabricated the frame and internal engine parts.
¶3 Officer Wilson believed the parts and labels on the motorcycle were from the manufacturer, so he inspected the vehicle and located one component with a Harley Davidson emblem followed by numbers that matched a stolen motorcycle. Wilson called the Pima County Sheriff's Office, and Detective Barber arrived to investigate. They found that the motorcycle's VIN number, transmission case number, and engine case number had all been ground off, but other component parts, including the crank case, fork, and tires had unique Harley Davidson serial numbers that all matched a stolen motorcycle.
¶4 Harrell was charged with theft of a means of transportation by control or by controlling stolen property and conducting a chop shop to buy or possess stolen property. In 2018, a jury found him guilty on both counts, and the trial court later found as an aggravating factor that he had three or more prior felony convictions pursuant to A.R.S. § 13-703 and sentenced him to concurrent ten-year terms of imprisonment. This appeal followed. We have jurisdiction pursuant to A.R.S. §§ 12-120.21(A)(1), 134031, and 13-4033(A).
Discussion
¶5 Harrell argues on appeal that the trial court erred in refusing to excuse juror thirteen for cause after she informed the court during the second day of trial that she had previously worked with Officer Wilson seventeen years earlier. On a party's motion to strike a juror for cause, the court must excuse the juror if there are reasonable grounds to believe that the juror cannot render a fair and impartial verdict. Ariz. R. Crim. P. 18.4(b). However, mere familiarity or personal acquaintance with a witness or persons associated with the prosecution does not require that a juror be struck for cause, provided the court determines the witness can still be fair and impartial. State v. Bible, 175 Ariz. 549, 573 (1993); see State v. Hill, 174 Ariz. 313, 319-21 (1993) (trial court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to strike for cause juror acquainted with the prosecutor and state witnesses when juror testified he could remain fair and impartial). A juror may serve if the juror can set aside any personal opinions or knowledge and render a verdict based solely on the evidence produced in court. State v. Clabourne, 142 Ariz. 335, 344 (1984).
¶6 Because the trial court is in the best position to observe a juror's demeanor, tenor, and expression of feelings, State v. Oliver, 169 Ariz. 589, 592 (App. 1991), we review rulings on motions to strike a juror for cause for an abuse of discretion, giving deference to the judge who observed the juror. See State v. Burns, 237 Ariz. 1, ¶ 22 (2015); see also State v. Colorado, 256 Ariz. 97, ¶¶ 17-19 (App. 2023). The burden of establishing that a juror was not fair and impartial rests with the party challenging the court's failure to strike. State v. Lavers, 168 Ariz. 376, 390 (1991).
¶7 On the second day of trial, Officer Wilson testified. During the noontime recess, the trial court advised the parties that juror thirteen had informed his bailiff that she recognized Wilson. Outside the jury's presence, and with the parties' agreement, the court brought juror thirteen into the courtroom for further questioning. The juror acknowledged that she did not initially recognize his name during voir dire, but stated that she "recognized him as soon as he came in." She thought he recognized her as well. The juror explained that in 2001, she was the HR manager at a company where Wilson was a supervisor for "about a year" before he began his career in law enforcement.
¶8 The trial court inquired further into whether either juror thirteen or Officer Wilson had any type of supervisory authority over the other, and juror thirteen responded that she was not his direct supervisor, but that as HR manager, she was in a position of authority over Wilson and over his manager as well. The court then asked juror thirteen:
Was there anything about his employment, and your interactions with him, that would affect your objectivity here, or did you form an opinion that he's especially a good person, especially a bad person, anything positive or negative, or was he just another employee?
Juror thirteen responded, "He had a very positive impact on me. I mean he did a great job." The court then asked:
Okay. So the $64,000 question is, can you be completely fair and impartial with regard to judging Mr. Wilson's testimony? Can you judge it in this case by the same standards that you judge every other witness, and choose to believe or disbelieve any or all, or part or some of everything that he says?
Juror thirteen responded, "Absolutely."
¶9 The trial court continued, "So he's not going to have any advantage with you because you knew him in the past and thought he was a nice gentleman?" Juror thirteen responded, "No." The court explained that it was "satisfied that juror [thirteen] remains fair and impartial, and her limited, long-ago association with Mr. Wilson is not such that it will compromise her ability to evaluate his testimony by the same standards as any other witness." Harrell moved to strike juror thirteen for cause, arguing that she had a "preconceived notion of Mr. Wilson's credibility" and "prejudged his character." The court denied the motion.
¶10 On appeal, Harrell contends that the trial court's questions to juror thirteen were leading and "necessarily encouraged the answer the juror gave." He also argues that the court failed to "gather any additional facts which it could assess" in determining the juror's fairness and impartiality, especially her comment that the witness "had a very positive impact on [her]." Harrell points to a 2022 comment added to Rule 18.5(f), Ariz. R. Crim. P., when the rules were amended to eliminate peremptory challenges, which states, "The court should refrain from attempting to rehabilitate prospective jurors by asking leading, conclusory questions that encourage prospective jurors to affirm that they can set aside their opinions and neutrally apply the law." Ariz. R. Crim. P. 18.5(f) cmt. to 2022 amend. Harrell argues that Officer Wilson's testimony was "instrumental" in proving the state's case and that the court abused its discretion in failing to remove juror thirteen for cause.
Harrell concedes that his 2018 jury trial preceded the 2022 amendments to the rules and he does not argue that the amendments apply to his case. See State v. Towery, 204 Ariz. 386, ¶ 6 (2003) (Constitution does not require retroactive application of new rules to cases that have become final.).
¶11 On the record before us, Harrell has failed to meet his burden of establishing that juror thirteen was not fair and impartial. See Lavers, 168 Ariz. at 390-91. The trial court here conducted a proper inquiry into the details of juror thirteen's prior association with Officer Wilson and followed up on factors that would lead to an objective assessment of the juror's ability to be fair and impartial. When juror thirteen mentioned that Wilson was a supervisor at their previous employment, the court asked whether Wilson supervised juror thirteen, which revealed the opposite; juror thirteen was in a position of authority over Wilson. After the juror stated that Wilson "had a very positive impact on [her]" and "did a great job," the court asked two follow-up questions to ascertain whether the witness would have any credibility advantage with her, to which the juror responded unequivocally in the negative.
¶12 Moreover, juror thirteen worked with Officer Wilson for "about a year" in 2001 and stated that she had only "run into him" once in the past seventeen years. The trial court concluded that "there's nothing about her prior association with him that would cause her to treat his testimony any differently than any other witness in the case." Deferring to the court's superior ability to assess the demeanor and credibility of jurors, see State v. Hoskins, 199 Ariz. 127, ¶ 37 (2000), as well as the juror's own unequivocal statements that she could judge Wilson's testimony fairly and impartially, we find no error in the court's determination that juror thirteen could set aside her personal knowledge and opinion of Wilson in weighing his credibility. See Clabourne, 142 Ariz. at 344. The court did not abuse its discretion in denying Harrell's motion to strike juror thirteen for cause. See State v. Jimenez, 255 Ariz. 550, ¶ 5 (App. 2023).
Disposition
¶13 We affirm Harrell's convictions and sentences.