Lawyers say shackles violated the man’s right to a fair trial.
WASHINGTON — Shackled with leg irons and a belly chain, Carman L. Deck was sentenced to death by a Hillsboro jury in 2003. Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether Deck’s shackling violated his right to a fair trial.
Lawyers in Deck v. Missouri argued before the high court Tuesday. Deck was convicted and sentenced to death in 1998 for murdering an elderly couple. He won a retrial on his death sentence after the Missouri Supreme Court granted his appeal for ineffective assistance of counsel in 2002. It was during this retrial that the Jefferson County court required him to appear in shackles.
A key issue in the case argued before the Supreme Court was whether the shackling during the sentencing stage unfairly disadvantaged Deck. The court already held in Holbrook v. Flynn that shackling a defendant during the actual trial when the jury determines whether to convict the defendant is an “inherently prejudicial practice.”
Rosemary Percival, a Kansas City assistant public defender arguing on behalf of Deck, asked that the court extend its ruling to the sentencing phase. The shackles “make the defendant appear dangerous, violent and untrustworthy,” Percival told the high court. “The question of character is a key factor that the jury considers.”
Percival argued that the shackles impede communication with counsel and affect the psychological state of the defendant.
Justice Antonin Scalia queried whether the shackles during the sentencing phase of trial in fact might be an advantage for the defendant. “I might think showing what existence it is to be a life prisoner” cuts in favor of the defendant, he said. Scalia later playfully suggested that a defendant dressed in a nice suit and smiling, which he characterized as a prosecutor’s dream, might be more prejudicial.
Percival responded that “the jury is searching the heart and mind of the defendant. Shackling the defendant basically places a thumb on the death side of this scale.”
Missouri Assistant Attorney General Cheryl Nield emphasized that Deck had already been convicted of murder. “By definition, he was a dangerous individual,” she said. The court refocused her argument, asking whether Deck was actually dangerous in the courtroom, whether the restraint was reasonable and who had the burden of showing the reasonableness of the restraint.
Nield argued that the shackles were not in fact visible and as such were reasonable — a point the justices jumped on. The court asked how the shackles could not have been visible. Justice Anthony Kennedy then offered a hypothetical scenario, asking whether shackling a traffic offender with nonvisible restraints was reasonable, to which Nield said yes. Kennedy also asked Nield whether it would be appropriate to place a defendant in a cage; Nield said that was a possibility provided it was reasonable.
Nield further argued that Deck was a flight and security risk and that the shackles did not affect the jury’s outcome. “To restrain somebody convicted of killing not one but two people,” she said, “does not send the jury irrevocably down the path of sentencing death.”