BENTON COUNTY : Conviction upheld despite note of prior drug case
Posted on Thursday, May 15, 2008
Prosecutors who disclosed in court a Benton County man’s previous drug dealing before he was convicted of methamphetamine charges committed a “harmless error,” the Arkansas Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.
Ruben Marmolejo was given a 25-year sentences for being an accomplice to the delivery of methamphetamine in 2006.
Both the 5-1 majority ruling and a dissent by Judge Wendell Griffen referenced a similar case — Chor J. Phavixay v. State of Arkansas — decided by the state Supreme Court last month.
In the Phavixay case, the Supreme Court ordered a new trial for a Sebastian County man whose methamphetamine conviction came after prosecutors told the jury about his criminal past.
The appeal court’s majority ruled that the Phavixay case didn’t apply to Marmolejo’s conviction because any evidence about his prior criminal acts was “harmless in view of overwhelming proof of guilt as presented through the testimony,” according to the opinion written by Judge Sam Bird.
“Because Phavixay did not analyze the issue of harmless error, it does not guide our present decision,” wrote Bird in a footnote to the seven-page opinion.
The 4-3 Supreme Court ruling in April said that evidence of prior drug dealing by Phavixay — convicted in Sebastian County in 2007 — wasn’t “independently relevant” and didn’t meet the legal standard for introducing prior criminal acts.
Dissenters contended the decision by the state’s highest court would upset precedent and lead to confusion over which prior “bad acts” are admissible.
In Wednesday’s appeals court dissent, Griffen wrote the error in Marmolejo’s trial was not harmless. He said the facts of the case were even stronger in favor of reversal than those in Phavixay.
“The testimony labeling [Marmolejo ] as a “ supplier” or a “drug dealer” was [proof ] of nothing except the fact that [Marmolejo ] was alleged to have sold drugs... at some unknown time in the past. Yet the State was permitted to plaster the drug dealer / drug supplier label... accomplishing its goal of implanting in the mind of the jury that [Marmolejo ] dealt drugs this time because he had done so before, ” Griffen wrote.
Marmolejo, 34, is an inmate at the Grimes Unit in Newport. Besides his Benton County conviction, he has an additional 10-year sentence from Washington County. He is eligible for parole in 2014.
The case at the Court of Appeals is Ruben Marmolejo v. State of Arkansas, CACR 07-899.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
