State v. Cantu
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The defendant, John R. Cantu, was charged with multiple counts including felony stalking, violation of protection from stalking orders, criminal damage to property, criminal trespass, and felony criminal threat. During his trial, Cantu testified on his own behalf as the sole defense witness. However, during cross-examination, the judge removed Cantu from the stand for being uncooperative and, at the prosecutor's request, struck his entire testimony from the record. Cantu was subsequently convicted on several counts and appealed, arguing that the district court's decision to strike his entire testimony from the record deprived him of his constitutional right to testify, which was structural error requiring automatic reversal.
The Court of Appeals agreed that the district court erred in ordering Cantu's testimony stricken from the record and that this error denied Cantu the constitutional right to testify. However, the panel held that the error was not structural, but could be analyzed using the harmless error standard. The panel concluded that the error was harmless and affirmed the convictions.
The Supreme Court of the State of Kansas disagreed with the Court of Appeals' conclusion. The Supreme Court held that the complete and improper denial of a criminal defendant's constitutional right to testify is structural error. The court reasoned that the right to testify is a fundamental right grounded in multiple provisions of the United States Constitution. The court further explained that structural errors are defects affecting the fundamental fairness of the trial's mechanism, preventing the trial court from serving its basic function of determining guilt or innocence and depriving defendants of basic due process protections required in criminal proceedings. The court concluded that the complete and wrongful denial of a defendant's constitutional right to testify by improperly removing a defendant from the stand and striking the defendant's entire testimony is structural error because it renders the criminal trial fundamentally unfair, regardless of whether the outcome of the trial would have been different had the defendant been permitted to testify and his or her testimony been left intact. Therefore, the Supreme Court reversed Cantu's convictions and remanded for a new trial.
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