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Floudiotis v. State4/6/1999
Upon appeal from Superior Court. REVERSED.
In this appeal of a joint trial of four co-defendants allegedly involved in an assault and conspiracy, we reverse the judgment of the trial court following a jury verdict against the defendants. We hold, in part, that the trial court committed reversible error in the admission of unfairly prejudicial evidence of marginal relevance against all defendants. This prejudicial evidence included photographs of the defendants' tee-shirts and tattoos and offensive comments attributed to certain defendants, all of which (in varying degrees) tended to depict the defendants as racist in a case where all the defendants and both of the victims were white. Race was not an issue and the evidence was not probative on the identification issue.
In view of the possibility of a new trial, we have expressed our views on other evidentiary issues and the proper procedures for the trial court to employ in determining whether, and to what extent, any retrial that is likely to involve essentially the same complex evidentiary problems among the various defendants will be joint or several.
Facts
At about 1:15 a.m. on July 16, 1995, Kimberly and Mark Butler exited the Deer Park Tavern. According to the Butlers' testimony at trial, a young white male with a crew cut hairstyle threw beer on Kimberly as Mark began backing his truck out of its parking space in the Deer Park parking lot. Kimberly opened her door and began exiting the vehicle when she was dragged to the ground and beaten to the point of unconsciousness. Mark exited the truck to see what was happening when several young white males suddenly surrounded him and began to beat him. That was his last recollection before losing consciousness. Both Kimberly and Mark suffered serious injuries. Both sustained broken jaws, cuts and bruises, and Mark also sustained a broken collarbone.
The only eyewitness to the actual assault was Augustino Parodi, a musician playing at the Deer Park that night. At trial, Parodi testified that he was stowing his musical equipment in his car in the Deer Park parking lot when he saw a group of six to eight young white males with crew cuts attack a couple walking in the parking lot. He saw one person deliver a flying kick to the back of the male victim followed by everybody in the group participating in the assault by punching and kicking the male victim. At one point, according to Parodi, one of the assailants took a metal object out of a pickup truck and hit the male victim with it. After the attack, Parodi saw some of the young men get into a small light colored car while others entered the pickup truck from which the assailant had taken the metal object. Parodi described this truck as "maybe orange and rusty, kind of tan."
Upon learning of an incident in the parking lot, David Fecak, a Deer Park employee , ran outside. He saw four men standing over a man and a woman, but he did not see any physical violence. Soon after he arrived on the scene, Fecak observed the four men get into a "red maroon-like-rust-colored pickup truck" in the parking lot and leave the scene. As the truck exited the parking lot, Fecak recorded the license plate number and went to aid the Butlers, the man and woman he had observed on the ground.
Corporal Ted Ryser of the Newark Police Department noticed the same pickup truck exiting the Deer Park parking lot and followed it on suspicion of drunken driving. Eventually, he pulled the pickup truck over. In addition to the driver, Michael Reynolds, Corporal Ryser observed three passengers in the truck: Christopher Floudiotis, Owen Carr and Brent Eaton. After obtaining Reynolds' license and registration, Corporal
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