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SUPREME COURT OF ARKANSAS
No. CR-16-615
Opinion Delivered: March 2, 2017
COURTNEY JARRELL DOUGLAS
APPELLANT APPEAL FROM THE UNION
COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT
V. [NO. 70CR-15-324]
STATE OF ARKANSAS HONORABLE HAMILTON H.
APPELLEE SINGLETON, JUDGE
AFFIRMED.
RHONDA K. WOOD, Associate Justice
A Union County jury found appellant Courtney Douglas guilty of first degree
murder and possession of a firearm by certain persons. On the murder charge, he received
a sentence of life imprisonment plus an additional fifteen years for use of a firearm. On the
possession-of-a-firearm charge, he received forty years and a fine of $15,000. For reversal,
Douglas asserts that the circuit court erred by (1) denying his motion for new trial because
court security had barred members of his family from the courtroom during voir dire and
(2) denying his request to instruct the jury on manslaughter and justification. After
considering his arguments, we affirm.
In August 2015, Douglas and Terrance Billings got into a dispute at the home where
Douglas was staying. After the argument, Billings returned to his home. However, Douglas
decided he wanted to talk with Billings some more about the disagreement and shortly
thereafter went to Billings’s home. When he arrived, Billings met Douglas at the door, and
an altercation began on Billings’s front porch. Douglas shot Billings, who died at the scene.
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Douglas first argues on appeal that the circuit court erred in denying his motion for
new trial because court security denied members of his family entry into the courtroom
during voir dire. The decision whether to grant or deny a motion for new trial rests with
the sound discretion of the circuit court, and we will not reverse unless there is a manifest
abuse of discretion. Holloway v. State, 363 Ark. 254, 213 S.W.3d 633. A circuit court’s
factual determination on a motion for new trial will not be reversed unless clearly erroneous.
Id. As we have repeatedly stated, issues of witness credibility are for the trial courts to weigh
and assess; we will defer to their superior position. Id.
First, we must address the State’s allegation that this issue is not preserved for appeal
because Douglas failed to object at the time the alleged violation occurred. To preserve an
issue for appeal, a defendant must object at the first opportunity, and a motion for mistrial
must likewise be made at the first opportunity. Jordan v. State, 2012 Ark. 277, 412 S.W.3d
150. To be timely, an objection must be contemporaneous, or nearly so, with the alleged
error. Schnarr v. State, 2017 Ark. 10. However, as we recently stated in Schnarr, “[l]ike
other fundamental rights, a right to a public trial may be relinquished only upon a showing
that the defendant knowingly and voluntarily waived such a right.” Id. at 6 (citing Walton
v. Briley, 361 F.3d 431, 434 (7th Cir. 2004)).
Here, one of Douglas’s family members testified that she did not tell his trial attorney
that she had been refused entry into the courtroom during voir dire. She first made his
counsel aware of the issue after the trial ended. The State offered no evidence to contradict
this testimony or otherwise assert that Douglas knew of the potential violation before the
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trial ended. Therefore, we cannot say that Douglas knowingly and voluntarily waived his
right to a public trial, and we conclude that the issue is preserved for appellate review.
Turning to the merits of Douglas’s argument, in Schnarr, we reaffirmed that the right
to a public trial extends to voir dire. 2017 Ark. 10, at 7. However, not every closure rises
to the level of a constitutional deprivation of this fundamental right. Id. In some instances,
a closure may be so trivial or de minimus that it does not violate an appellant’s public-trial
rights. Id. In evaluating whether a courtroom closure is so de minimus that it does not
implicate a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a public trial, we consider length of the
closure, the significance of the proceedings that took place while the courtroom was closed,
and the scope of the closure. Id.
Here, the circuit court, after hearing the testimony of Douglas’s family members and
court security, and after reviewing video surveillance from inside the courtroom, concluded
that there was no closure, not even a de minimus one. A circuit court’s finding of fact will
not be reversed unless clearly erroneous. Strom v. State, 348 Ark. 610, 74 S.W.3d 233
(2002). The court affirmatively stated that it did not close the courtroom, and there is
nothing in the record to suggest otherwise. Some family members claimed court security
kept them from entering the courtroom. However, the court found the testimony of the
family members was “without credibility,” stating their version of events was “just not
believable.” In its written order, the circuit court further stated that court security “did not
prevent the public or defendant’s family or friends from access to and/or entry into the
courtroom during the voir dire/jury selection process.” Accordingly, the circuit court’s
findings were based primarily on its assessment of the credibility of the witnesses. As the
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circuit court is in a superior position to evaluate the credibility of the witnesses, we defer to
its assessment of the witnesses’ testimony. See Johnson v. State, 2015 Ark. 387, 472 S.W.3d
486. Because the court’s finding that the courtroom was not closed is not clearly erroneous,
we hold that the circuit court did not abuse its discretion in denying Douglas’s motion for
new trial.
Next, Douglas argues that the circuit court erred in denying his jury instructions on
extreme-emotional-disturbance manslaughter and justification. However, he admits that
his trial counsel “proffered the wrong instruction for the circumstance” and that the correct
jury instructions were not proffered. Our rule is well settled that counsel must object and
proffer a jury instruction in order to later appeal the instructions given to the jury. Willis v.
State, 334 Ark. 412, 977 S.W.2d 890 (1998). We have been hesitant to allow exceptions
to this requirement. Id. Nevertheless, Douglas asks this court to reverse the judgment
pursuant to the third and fourth exceptions espoused in Wicks v. State, 270 Ark. 781, 606
S.W.2d 366 (1980). The third exception to the contemporaneous-objection rule is when
the error is so flagrant and so highly prejudicial in character as to make it the duty of the
court on its own motion to have instructed the jury correctly. Id. The fourth exception
provides that the appellate courts are not precluded from taking notice of error affecting
substantial rights, although they were not brought to the attention of the trial court. Id.
We find no merit to Douglas’s argument that the third and fourth Wicks exceptions
apply. The third Wicks exception applies only when the “error is so flagrant and so highly
prejudicial in character as to make it the duty of the court on its own motion to have
instructed the jury correctly.” Rackley v. State, 371 Ark. 438, 440, 267 S.W.3d 578, 580
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(2007). Douglas cites no cases in which a jury instruction error has been considered by this
court on direct appeal in the absence of an objection and proffer of the instruction in the
trial court. We conclude that the circumstances presented here do not warrant application
of the third Wicks exception.
Additionally, the fourth Wicks exception involves an evidentiary error that affects a
defendant’s substantial rights. The issue Douglas raises here concerns a failure to give the
proper jury instructions, which is not evidentiary in nature. Thus, his argument does not
fall within the fourth Wicks exception. Accordingly, we conclude that Douglas’s arguments
on appeal do not fall within any of our extremely narrow and strictly guarded exceptions to
the contemporaneous-objection rule. Therefore, because Douglas failed to bring the errors
he avers on appeal to the trial court’s attention, they are not preserved for our review.
The record has been reviewed in accordance with Ark. Sup. Ct. R. 4-3(i) and no
reversible error has been found.
Affirmed.
Jeff Rosenzweig, for appellant.
Leslie Rutledge, Att’y Gen., by: Amanda Jegley, Ass’t Att’y Gen., for appellee.
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