Fremont County district judge bans racist term from evidence
Fremont County district judge bans racist term from evidence
By Clair McFarland
The Ranger
Via Wyoming News Exchange
RIVERTON — Acknowledging race-based unrest in the nation, a local judge ordered racial slurs to be removed from audio evidence in an upcoming trial.
Riverton man Alfonso Roman, 32, is charged with conspiring to deliver methamphetamine, which in this case is punishable by up to 40 years in prison and $50,000 in fines – a harsher penalty than usual because he also has been convicted of drug delivery before, for cocaine.
Although his in-person trial was stalled for months by COVID-19 restrictions, Roman is scheduled to stand before a jury next month.
When considering which evidence is allowed at trial, Fremont County District Court Judge Jason Conder ordered on Oct. 13 that a jailhouse phone call in which Roman discusses “snitches,” should be partially silenced – to remove the pejorative term commonly referred to as the N-word. The judge wrote that Roman’s use of racial slurs could bias the jury against him for perceived bad character.
“Although (the recording is) relevant, there is a real concern that the (crime-proving) value of this evidence may be outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice caused by the repeated use of these racial slurs,” he said.
In criminal law, evidence is allowed at trial if it is relevant to the crime charged, as long as its potential to prejudice a jury against the defendant does not outweigh its demonstration of the facts of the case.
From inside the Fremont County Detention Center, Roman spoke to his brother by phone for 15 minute and 37 seconds, after being informed the call would be recorded.
The pair discussed several people, “and what should happen to them because of their cooperation with law enforcement,” Conder wrote in his order.
The two men contemplated what type of harm should come to the “snitches.”
They also used some derivative of the offensive word about 40 times.
Roman’s defense attorney, Fremont County Public Defender supervisor Jonathan Gerard, argued before Conder that Roman’s use of the pejorative term would “elicit the jury’s emotions and result in unfair prejudice to the defendant,” due especially to nation-wide conflict related to racial tensions.
Fremont County Attorney deputy Tim Hancock countered Gerard’s concern, writing that “the jury hearing the word... may cause prejudice against the defendant. However, the state does not believe that hearing the defendant speak these words would unfairly prejudice him,” to the extent that the evidence should be altered or excluded.
Hancock wrote further that Roman wasn’t using the word as an attack on black people, but as a term for friends and foes alike, used “to refer to other individuals who, actually, are not black.”
Conder agreed with Hancock’s assessment that Roman’s slang isn’t intended as hate speech, “but rather as an inartful way of describing another individual.”
However, Conder wrote that in his view, allowing a jury to hear Roman use the word repeatedly creates “a genuine risk of unfair prejudice.”
Conder ordered prosecutors to omit the word from the recording.
He wrote in a footnote that if the state is unable to silence specific portions of jail calls from audio recordings then prosecutors must inform the court by way of writing, and a new course of action would have to be determined.
Roman initially was charged with three different drug offenses punishable by 120 years in prison, but prosecutors dropped the latter two allegations, leaving one count of methamphetamine delivery on the trial agenda.
The charges stem back to the summer of last year. He was arrested Sept. 4, 2019.
In a completely separate case, Roman was found guilty and convicted in March of 2020 of various drug charges.
His trial was, unbeknownst at the time to everyone involved, the last jury trial before COVID-19 shutdowns barricaded the courts from many proceedings. Now it is Roman, again, who may be the subject of the first in-person jury trial to follow the court shutdown.