When to Move for a Mistrial in Lehigh County
You have probably seen motions for a mistrial in movies. They are not common, like most situations in movies. A Lehigh County criminal attorney should know that mistrial's are for "extraordinary" purposes. As the Superior Court noted,
A mistrial is an "extreme remedy … [that] … must be granted only when an incident is of such a nature that its unavoidable effect is to deprive defendant of a fair trial." Commonwealth v. Vazquez, 421 Pa. Super. 184, 617 A.2d 786, 787-88 (Pa. Super. 1992). This means that even if a judge could give "curative instructions" (i.e. "disregard what was just said" to the jury), it would not maintain fairness in the trial. A court must consider, after a motion for a mistrial, all surrounding circumstances before finding that curative instructions were insufficient and the extreme remedy of a mistrial is required. Richardson, 437 A.2d at 1165.
In the case of Richard Patton, a Bucks County criminal defense lawyer made a motion for mistrial in the case. The case involved Mr. Patton getting into a drunk argument with a woman and getting into his car and driving off. It appears that the woman grabbed/jumped on the back of his truck as he sped away (it was ruled that he was driving over the speed limit). The parties had litigated a pretrial Motion in Limine to keep out the prosecution's witnesses which would allude to alleged prior domestic violence between the defendant and the deceased woman. The Court ruled that no prior insinuations could be admitted during the trial.
Example of a Motion for Mistrial
During the trial, however, an exchange between the Prosecutor and the defendant on cross-examination included the question from the prosecutor, "Can you explain then why she, on more than one occasion, had bruises? Why she was in a...[objection by defense counsel]". After a sidebar with the judge, the defense lawyer moved for a mistrial as the Prosecutor disobeyed the judge's granting of the Motion in Limine. The judge denied the Motion for a Mistrial and instructed the prosecution to abandon any questions pertaining to the Appellant's prior acts of violence. On appeal, the court noted,
As you can see, even though the prosecutor crossed the line, it still did not rise to the level of a mistrial.We first note that the prosecutor did not go beyond asking the Appellant whether he had ever given Demou any bruises, and this question was answered by the Appellant in the negative. Though the insinuation was that the Appellant was at least aware of prior domestic violence between himself and Demou, this de minimus exchange simply did not rise to the level of depriving the Appellant of a fair trial. Commonwealth v. Patton, 2009 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 295 (Pa. County Ct. 2009)