A Lucas County judge declared a mistrial Tuesday morning in the case against murder suspect Juan Garibaldo after a portion of a police interrogation he had previously ruled as inadmissible was played for the jury Monday afternoon.
While disagreeing with a defense lawyer’s assertion that the forbidden evidence’s introduction was caused by “bad faith” or actual malfeasance, Common Pleas Judge Eric Allen Marks said police interrogators’ reference in the recording to Garibaldo’s prior conviction for beating a girlfriend was “highly prejudicial” against him in the current case.
The forbidden material had been excluded from an initial edit of the interrogation video that had been prepared for the trial. After defense lawyers were given that version of the recording for their review late last week, they requested additional material be redacted before its presentation to the jury.
Judge Marks granted that request early in Monday’s proceedings. But when staff in the Lucas County Prosecutor’s Office prepared a new version of the recording, the original video was inadvertently used as the baseline and thus the initial round of redactions was not included.
“It’s something that was completely avoidable” had the recording’s trial version been prepared sooner, the judge said after describing his mistrial decision to have been made “with extreme reluctance.”
Garibaldo, 37, of the 300 block of Eastern Avenue is charged with aggravated murder, murder, and other charges for the March 2, 2022 death of Sarah Schulte, 39, whose brutally stabbed body was found by a downstairs neighbor in a stairwell at the West Toledo duplex where she lived.
Judge Marks directed lawyers on both sides to return Monday after consulting with witnesses and others involved in the case about when a new trial can be scheduled.
Defense lawyer Mark Geudtner’s motion for a mistrial was the second such motion he had filed during the trial, for which testimony began July 11. On Thursday morning, Judge Marks denied the first one, which Mr. Geudtner filed after Kyle Fulmer, an FBI agent, made reference the afternoon before to elements of a dispute between Garibaldo and Ms. Schulte about a puppy that Judge Marks had ruled inadmissible.
In that situation, the judge accepted an argument from Erin Kennedy, an assistant Lucas County prosecutor, that Mr. Fulmer’s testimony was an “isolated statement” that the jury could be instructed to ignore.
He agreed that mistrials are considered in case law to be an “extreme remedy” and jury instructions are sufficient to address “inadvertent answers that are given by a witness” where the likelihood of irreconcilably tainting the trial is low.
The recorded reference to Garibaldo’s prior felonious assault conviction occurred when Toledo Police Department detectives interrogated Garibaldo the evening after Ms. Schulte’s death and tried to elicit a confession.
Judge Marks said there was “nothing improper as investigative techniques” shown in the recording, but that part of the interrogation was “clearly outside of what should be admitted at trial.”
In making the mistrial motion, Mr. Geudtner said the trial’s five days of state testimony had been rampant with “high levels of disorganization, unpreparedness, and ineptitude” resulting in “numerous delays” for sidebar discussions about evidence.
Ms. Kennedy said a disc with the second round of redactions the defense had requested was not made over the weekend because prosecutors did not know how Judge Marks would rule on that evidence’s admissibility until Monday. The reintroduction of material previously excluded, she said, was “an error” but in similar situations, the issuance of curative instructions to the jury rather than declaration of a mistrial “all held up on appeal.”
“I was afraid because I hadn’t listened to it” before the final edit was played for the jury, Ms. Kennedy said before noting she had been poised to stop the video player if the recording appeared to be veering into inadmissible content.
And Judge Marks noted that the defense as well opted not to delay the proceedings Monday afternoon in order to watch the video in the jury’s absence before it was admitted as evidence.
That Garibaldo had a prior criminal conviction, the judge noted several times, was not the issue, but rather the reference to prior acts “similar to the charged offense” that tainted juries irreconcilably in past Ohio cases.
First Published July 18, 2023, 4:17 p.m.
