Supreme Court of Rhode Island Addresses the Question of When Judges Cross the Line When Interrogating Witnesses

Similar to its federal counterpart, Rhode Island Rule of Evidence 614(b) provides that

The court may interrogate witnesses, whether called by itself or by a party.

I can’t remember reading a single case in which a judge has violated Rule 614(b) in questioning a witness, and the recent opinion of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island in Rodrigues v. Cantone, 2024 WL 5135384 (R.I. 2024), is no exception. But that opinion does point to prior precedent in which that court concluded a judge crossed the line.

The facts in Cantone are relatively unimportant, with the key point simply being that the defendant cited to the prior opinion of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island in State v. Nelson, 982 A.2d 602 (R.I. 2009). In Nelson, Nicki Nelson was charged with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor, resulting in serious bodily injury, and for driving to endanger, resulting in personal injury. At trial, the prosecution called Dr. Kettelle, who examined Nelson after her car accident and testified about how her intoxicated state affected his examination and treatment of her. After the parties examined and cross-examined her, the judge engaged in his own lengthy interrogation.

In addressing the defendant’s appeal to this extended interrogation, the Supreme Court of Rhode Island ruled as follows:

We have great respect for the trial justice and recognize that he has considerable discretion in the administration of the jury trial. However, we are further of the opinion that the trial justice erred when he questioned Dr. Kettelle, that the error was prejudicial and not harmless, and that defendant’s judgments of conviction must be vacated. The trial justice explained that his sole motivation in questioning Dr. Kettelle was to clarify the location of specific pages of a lengthy medical record. When the trial justice questioned Dr. Kettelle, both the manner of his interrogation and the testimony elicited from the witness went beyond the limits of clarification….

As we repeatedly have emphasized, the parameters of judicial interrogation are narrowly confined to clarification of justifiably confusing matters for the jury….A trial justice may, for example, conduct a limited interrogation of a witness to inquire about the witness’s height and weight at various relevant intervals….In McVeigh, this Court held that “[b]ecause neither the prosecutor nor defense counsel inquired about these subjects, this was an area that conceivably may have been a basis for confusion in the minds of the jurors.”…Here, the voluminous medical record did not in and of itself lead to a conclusion that the jury was confused or that it needed clarification. Indeed, the trial justice noted after defense counsel’s objection that “I didn’t want the jury to be confused and that was my point in questioning Dr. Kettelle, not to * * * as you put it, place the defendant in harm’s way.” He apparently did not believe that the jurors were confused, but rather did not want them to become confused with respect to the fifty-five page medical record. Therefore, the trial justice’s questioning of Dr. Kettelle about the medical record did not constitute clarification of a point of confusion for the jury. There seems little question to us that the trial justice’s questioning prejudiced defendant. This is so because the trial justice’s questioning took on an air of cross-examination and the questions twice elicited answers from the witness that he was unable to perform standard tests on defendant because of her level of intoxication. Doctor Kettelle testified that it would have been “malpractice” for him to conduct a certain examination on Nelson because she was too drunk to cooperate. This was devastating testimony in a drunk-driving trial.

Judicial interrogation that elicits inflammatory information from a witness is beyond the narrow parameters allowing only for clarification of confusing issues for the jury. Here, the prosecution and defense already had questioned the witness regarding how defendant’s intoxicated state affected his examination and treatment of her. Therefore, the trial justice’s interrogation of Dr. Kettelle was not limited to a discrete issue left unresolved through counsels’ examination. Rather, the trial justice’s interrogation of Dr. Kettelle improperly served as an extension of the direct and cross-examination and went beyond acceptable limits. The questioning severely prejudiced defendant because it reinforced defendant’s intoxication to the jury.

-CM