Courtroom closure during voir dire; Right to a public trial; People v Vaughn; “Fairness, integrity, or public reputation of the judicial proceeding”; People v Sherrill; Ineffective assistance of counsel; Failure to object to the decision to exclude spectators during voir dire; Prosecutorial error; Bolstering the credibility of key prosecution witnesses; Lay opinion testimony; MRE 701; Authentication of evidence; Hearsay; MRE 801(d)(2); Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (LWOP) sentence; People v Taylor

The court affirmed defendant’s first-degree felony murder, armed robbery, and felony-firearm convictions, but vacated his LWOP sentence for his murder conviction and remanded for resentencing under Taylor. Defendant first argued that he was denied his right to a public trial “when the trial court closed the courtroom to spectators during voir dire.” The record showed “that the trial court did not order spectators barred from the courtroom for the entirety of the trial. Rather, [it] stated that the courtroom did not have room for spectators who were not potential jurors during the process of voir dire. In other words, the overriding interest that the trial court noted as the rationale for its determination to close the courtroom during voir dire was that it simply did not have room to include 65 potential jurors as part of the jury venire and to also allow spectators.” The court concluded “that the trial court recognized that the need to limit spectators to ‘make the courtroom a safer environment for the jury and others’ was an overriding public interest that would have been prejudiced if the courtroom had remained open to the public during the voir dire proceedings.” It noted that the “trial court repeatedly made it clear that there was simply insufficient space to accommodate both the jury venire and spectators.” The record also showed that its “closure of the courtroom was not broader than necessary to protect the overriding public interest of maintaining the safety of everyone in the courtroom.” The record did not indicate whether it “considered any other reasonable alternatives. Further, the trial court did not make factual findings on the record to support its decision to close the courtroom. However, similar to the defendant in Sherrill,” defendant in this case did not object to the closure, “which would have given the trial court an opportunity to consider any other reasonable alternatives and make factual findings on the record. Moreover, even though [it] did not make express findings concerning whether it had considered (and presumably rejected) possible alternatives to closing the courtroom, it did state on the record on more than one occasion throughout voir dire that there was not room in the courtroom for much more than the 65 people that were part of the jury venire, counsel, and the [trial] court staff, and that a temporary closure to spectators who were not part of the venire was required.” Defendant did not establish “that these factual statements by the trial court were clearly erroneous.” Thus, the court was satisfied that the trial “court’s reasons for closing the courtroom to spectators were discernible from the record.” Defendant failed to establish “plain error that ‘is readily apparent from the record.’”