John H. Brown v. State of Arkansas

Summary

The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed John H. Brown's conviction for first-degree sexual assault and twenty-five-year sentence. The court held that Brown's sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim and several other arguments were unpreserved, unsupported by an adequate proffer, or waived, including challenges involving a calendar, courtroom closure, excluded defense testimony, and alleged prosecutorial misconduct.

Holdings

1. A defendant must specifically identify in a directed-verdict motion the element of the offense that the State allegedly failed to prove. Because Brown did not identify any missing element or proof, his sufficiency challenge was not preserved for appeal.
2. An appellate court will not consider an alleged discovery violation when the appellant failed to obtain a ruling on the issue in the trial court.
3. An appellate court cannot review the exclusion or characterization of evidence when the appellant failed to proffer the evidence and its substance is not apparent from the context.
4. A party may not appeal from a decision to which the party agreed.
5. A claim based on the exclusion of testimony is not preserved for appellate review when the appellant fails to proffer the excluded testimony.
6. A cumulative-error claim based on prosecutorial misconduct requires objections to the alleged errors individually, a cumulative-error objection in the trial court, and a trial-court ruling. Because Brown did not satisfy those preservation requirements, the court would not address the claim.

Questions Presented

1. Whether Brown's challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence was preserved when his directed-verdict motions failed to specify the element the State allegedly failed to prove.
2. Whether the appellate court could review the alleged discovery violation concerning the prosecutor's calendar when Brown obtained no ruling on that issue.
3. Whether the appellate court could review the ruling that the calendar was protected work product when Brown failed to proffer the calendar or make it part of the record.
4. Whether Brown could challenge the exclusion of family members from the courtroom when he agreed to the subsequent order excluding all family members during H.M.'s testimony.
5. Whether Brown preserved his claim that exclusion of Lieutenant Whitten's testimony denied him the ability to present a defense when he failed to proffer the testimony.
6. Whether Brown preserved his cumulative prosecutorial-misconduct claim when he failed to object individually to the alleged errors, make a cumulative-error objection, and obtain a ruling.

Disposition

affirmed