A man convicted of manslaughter in a 2013 road-rage shooting will get a third trial, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
Chris Aaron Schnarr will get a new day in court because his right to a public trial was violated during his 2015 trial when a bailiff excluded three of his family members from 2½ hours of jury selection, the court ruled Thursday.
A Pulaski County jury convicted Schnarr in 2015 in the shooting death of Arista Aldridge. A September 2014 trial of Schnarr in the shooting ended in a mistrial when the jury could not agree on a verdict.
On May 11, 2013, Schnarr nearly collided with Aldridge's tan sport utility vehicle after Aldridge did not yield the right-of-way to Schnarr near the Sixth Street exit off of Interstate 30, according to court records.
Aldridge and Schnarr exchanged profanities, and Aldridge cut Schnarr off on Sixth Street, stopped his car, got out of it and approached Schnarr. Aldridge was not armed, but Schnarr pulled out his handgun, pointed it at Aldridge and told him to leave. When he did not, Schnarr testified that he shot at Aldridge three times. Aldridge fell to the ground and died from a gunshot wound on the abdomen.
Schnarr was charged with first-degree murder, but a jury found him guilty of a lesser charge of manslaughter in the second trial.
Attorneys for Schnarr appealed his conviction, arguing that the Circuit Court should have declared a mistrial when a bailiff excluded three members of Schnarr's family from the courtroom during jury selection, infringing on his constitutional right to a public trial, a Sixth Amendment right.
Schnarr's attorneys had requested a mistrial after first discovering the exclusion of his family members, and prosecutors had argued the court was too full to accommodate everyone. Judge Leon Johnson ruled that the courtroom was not closed and that Schnarr was not denied the right to a public trial.
In the majority opinion issued Thursday, Justice Courtney Goodson wrote that the court found merit in that argument, arguing that the courtroom had been closed because of the exclusion of the three family members. Goodson also wrote that the right to a public trial extended to jury selection, "a crucial part of any criminal case."
Attorneys for Schnarr also argued that Johnson should not have refused to give instructions on negligent homicide and imperfect self-defense to the jury. The state argued that the evidence did not provide a rationale for Johnson to have given such instructions to the jury.
Goodson wrote that Schnarr could not have been unaware of his shooting Aldridge, so the jury did not need to be instructed on negligent homicide. Further, Aldridge was not armed and had not threatened Schnarr with bodily harm, so the jury did not need instructions on imperfect self-defense.
Schnarr's third and final point of appeal argued the Circuit Court should not have excluded evidence of Aldridge's past violent behavior.
The Surpeme Court rejected Schnarr's complaint of Aldridge's past being excluded, arguing that Aldridge's past was irrelevant to Schnarr because Schnarr had no prior knowledge of it.
Justice Josephine Linker Hart wrote a concurring opinion.
Justice Shawn Womack wrote a concurring and dissenting opinion, agreeing with the majority that Schnarr's sentence should be reversed but disagreeing with the ruling that Schnarr's trial had been unjustly closed.
Womack argued that the presence of another attorney and a reporter indicated the trial was only partially closed, which did not "rise to the level that would undermine the fairness of the proceedings." But Womack, unlike the majority, believed that Schnarr should have been allowed an imperfect self-defense instruction at trial, arguing that the facts presented in the case could be used to conclude that Schnarr had negligently formed the belief that he needed to use deadly force in self-defense.
Metro on 01/27/2017