Source: https://www.chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/289/1/case.php
Timestamp: 2020-07-08 02:29:41
Document Index: 609364869

Matched Legal Cases: ['art, 183', 'art 3', '§ 69', '§ 14', '§ 2353', '§ 2346']

6. A statement by a juror of how she voted, made in her answer to an information for contempt, held a waiver to that extent of the privilege against disclosure. P. 289 U. S. 18. chanrobles.com-red
Certiorari, 287 U.S. 595, to review the affirmance of a conviction of criminal contempt. See 1 F.Supp. 747. chanrobles.com-red
In September, 1931, there came on for trial in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota an indictment which had been returned against William B. Foshay and others charging them with the use of the mails in furtherance of a scheme to defraud. The petitioner was one of the panel of jurors summoned to attend. She did not know, when the summons came to her, for what case she had been called, and telephoned chanrobles.com-red
Her service as stenographer and typist was not the only tie of friendliness that linked her to the Foshay firm. There were other contacts or relations that are not without significance, though less direct and personal. Until her marriage in 1922, she had been employed with the title of assistant cashier in a bank at St. Paul, of which Mr. Clark was then the president. Foshay in those years was a customer of the bank as depositor and borrower. Mr. Clark resigned as president in 1925, but his business relations with Foshay continued in the years that followed. Letters that passed between them are printed in the record. The tone is cordial, and almost intimate. True, there is nothing to show that the friendly relations had spread to the petitioner. She denies that she had any chanrobles.com-red
The petitioner, after thus testifying, became a member of the jury, which was thereupon complete. The trial which followed lasted eight weeks. Two officers, a man and a woman, were in charge of the jury from the beginning to the end. During the first week of the trial, the petitioner made the remark to several of her fellow jurors that she regarded Mr. Foshay as a victim of circumstances, that he had gone to New York in the fall of 1929 to borrow $18,000,000, but that, because of the stock market crash, had come back without a dollar. When asked by a juror where she had procured that information, which was not supported by the evidence, she said that it was from a newspaper which she had read before the trial. Later on, she gave expression to dissatisfaction with the government because of the way the soldiers were treated after the war. chanrobles.com-red
On November 4, 1931, the government filed an information in support of a rule to show cause why the petitioner should not be punished for a criminal contempt. The information charges that her answers upon the voir dire examination were willfully and corruptly false, and that the effect of her misconduct had been to hinder and obstruct the trial. In response to the rule to show cause, the defendant filed an answer denying the misconduct, and alleging that her vote for acquittal had been dictated by her conscience. There was a full and patient hearing by a District Court of two judges. The court found the facts as they have been stated in this opinion. It drew from them the conclusion that the juror had obstructed the administration of justice, when examined on her voir dire, by "deliberately and intentionally" concealing the fact that she had been employed during the summer of 1929 by the Foshay Company. It drew the conclusion also that she had obstructed the administration of justice by stating falsely that she was free from bias and that her verdict would be based only upon the evidence as chanrobles.com-red
Added to concealment there was positive misstatement. The petitioner stated to the court that her mind was free from bias. The evidence is persuasive that it was hostile to the government. Bias is to be gathered from the disingenuous concealment which kept her in the box. She was intruding into a relation for which she believed herself ineligible and intruding with a motive. The only plausible explanation is a preconceived endeavor to uphold the cause of the defendants and save them from their doom. Bias, thus revealed at the beginning, is confirmed by everything that followed. While the trial was still in progress, she argued with her fellow jurors that Foshay was a hapless victim of circumstances too strong for him, and went outside the evidence, quoting statements in a newspaper to win them to her view. After the chanrobles.com-red
White, C.J.,in Ex parte Hudgings, 249 U. S. 378, 249 U. S. 383. The petitioner is not condemned for concealment, though concealment has been proved. She is not condemned for false swearing, though false swearing has been proved. She is condemned for that she made use of false swearing and concealment as the means whereby to accomplish her acceptance as a juror, and, under cover of that relation, to obstruct the course of justice. There is a distinction not to be ignored between deceit by a witness and deceit by a talesman. A talesman, when accepted as a juror, becomes a part or member of the court. Ex parte Savin, 131 U. S. 267; United States v. Dachis, 36 F.2d 601. The judge who examines on the voir dire is engaged in the process of organizing the court. If the answers to the questions are willfully evasive or knowingly untrue, the talesman, when accepted, is a juror in name only. His relation to the court and to the parties is tainted in its origin; it is a mere pretense and sham. What was sought to be attained was the choice of an impartial arbiter. What happened was the intrusion of a partisan defender. If a kinsman of one of the litigants had gone into the jury room disguised as the complaisant juror, the effect would have been no different. The doom of mere sterility was on the trial from the beginning.
The books propound the question whether perjury is contempt, and answer it with nice distinctions. Perjury by a witness has been thought to be not enough where the obstruction to judicial power is only that inherent in the wrong of testifying falsely. Ex parte Hudgings, supra. chanrobles.com-red
For offenses of that order, the remedy by indictment is appropriate and adequate. On the other hand, obstruction to judicial power will not lose the quality of contempt though one of its aggravations be the commission of perjury. Cf. In re Ulmer, 208 F.4d 1; United States v. Appel, 211 F.4d 5; United States v. Karns, 27 F.2d 453; United States v. Dachis, 36 F.2d 601; Lang v. United States, 55 F.2d 922; 286 U.S. 523; United States v. McGovern, 60 F.2d 880. We must give heed to all the circumstances, and of these not the least important is the relation to the court of the one charged as a contemnor. Deceit by an attorney may be punished as a contempt if the deceit is an abuse of the functions of his office (Bowles v. United States, 50 F.2d 848, 851; United States v. Ford, 9 F.2d 990), and that apart from its punishable quality if it had been the act of someone else. A talesman, sworn as a juror, becomes, like an attorney, an officer of the court, and must submit to like restraints. The petitioner blurs the picture when she splits her misconduct into parts, as if each were a separate wrong to be separately punished. What is punished is misconceived unless conceived of as a unit -- the abuse of an official relation by concealment and deceit. Some of her acts or none of them may be punishable as crimes. The result is all one as to her responsibility here and now. She has trifled with the court of which she was a part, and made its processes a mockery. This is contempt, whatever it may be besides. Sinclair v. United States, 279 U. S. 749; Ex parte Savin, 131 U. S. 267.
The books suggest a doctrine that the arguments and votes of jurors, the media concludendi, are secrets, protected from disclosure unless the privilege is waived. What is said upon the subject in the adjudicated cases is chanrobles.com-red
Assuming that there is a privilege which protects from impertinent exposure the arguments and ballots of a juror chanrobles.com-red
while considering his verdict, we think the privilege does not apply where the relation giving birth to it has been fraudulently begun or fraudulently continued. Other exceptions may have to be made in other situations not brought before us now. It is sufficient to mark the one that is decisive of the case at hand. The privilege takes as its postulate a genuine relation, honestly created and honestly maintained. If that condition is not satisfied, if the relation is merely a sham and a pretense, the juror may not invoke a relation dishonestly assumed as a cover and cloak for the concealment of the truth. In saying this, we do not mean that a mere charge of wrongdoing will avail, without more, to put the privilege to flight. There must be a showing of a prima facie case sufficient to satisfy the judge that the light should be let in. * Upon that showing's being made, the debates and ballots in the jury room are admissible as corroborative evidence, supplementing and confirming the case that would exist without them. Let us assume for illustration a prosecution for bribery. Let us assume that there is evidence, direct or circumstantial, that money has been paid to a juror in consideration of his vote. The argument for the petitioner, if accepted, would bring us to a holding that the case for the people must go to the triers of the facts without proof that the vote has been responsive to the bribe. This is paying too high a price for the assurance to a juror of serenity of mind. People ex rel. Nunns v. County Court, supra. chanrobles.com-red
We turn to the precedents in the search for an analogy, and the search is not in vain. There is a privilege protecting communications between attorney and client. The privilege takes flight if the relation is abused. A client who consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the commission of a fraud will have no help from the law. He must let the truth be told. There are early cases apparently to the effect that a mere charge of illegality, not supported by any evidence, will set the confidences free. See, e.g., Reynell v. Sprye, 10 Beav. 51, 54, 11 Beav. 618; In re Postlewaite, 35 Ch.D. 722, 724; cf. Regina v. Bollivant, [1900] 2 Q.B.D. 163, (1901) A.C.196. But this conception of the privilege is without support in later rulings. "It is obvious that it would be absurd to say that the privilege could be got rid of merely by making a charge of fraud." O'Rourke v. Darbishire, [1920] A.C. 581, 604. To drive the privilege away, there must be "something to give colour to the charge;" there must be "prima facie evidence that it has some foundation in fact." O'Rourke v. Darbishire, loc. cit., supra; also pp. 614, 622, 631, 633. When that evidence is supplied, the seal of secrecy is broken. See also Regina v. Cox, [1884] 14 Q.B.D. 153, 157, 161, 175; cf. Bujac v. Wilson, 27 N.M. 112, 196 P. 513; In re Niday, 15 Idaho, 559, 98 P. 845. The judgment of the House of Lords in O'Rourke v. Darbishire has given to the whole subject a definitive exposition. Nor does the loss of the privilege depend upon the showing of a conspiracy upon proof that client and attorney are involved in equal guilt. The attorney may be innocent, and still the guilty client must let the truth come out. Regina v. Cox, supra; Matthews v. Hoagland, 48 N.J.Eq. 455, 469, 21 A. 1054; State v. Faulkner, 175 Mo. 546, 593, 75 S.W. 116; Standard Fire Ins. Co. v. Smithhart, 183 Ky. 679, 684, 211 S.W. 441; State v. Kidd, 89 Iowa, 54, 56 N.W. 263; chanrobles.com-red
Nothing in our decision impairs the authority of Bushell's case, Vaughan 135, 1670, with its historic vindication of the privilege of jurors to return a verdict freely according to their conscience. There had been a trial of Penn and Mead on a charge of taking part in an unlawful assembly. The jurors found a verdict of acquittal, though, in so doing, they refused to follow the instructions of the chanrobles.com-red
court. For this, they were fined and imprisoned, but were discharged on habeas corpus, Vaughan, C.J.,pronouncing "that memorable opinion which soon ended the fining of jurors for their verdicts, and vindicated their character as judges of fact." Thayer, Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law, p. 167. Bushell's case was born of the fear of the Star Chamber and of the tyranny of the Stuarts. Plucknett, Concise History of the Common Law, p. 114. It stands for a great principle, which is not to be whittled down or sacrificed. On the other hand, it is not to be strained and distorted into fanciful extensions. There is a peril of corruption in these days which is surely no less than the peril of coercion. The true significance of Bushell's case is brought out with clearness in declaratory statutes. By one of these, a statute of New York,
R.S. of N.Y., Part 3, c. 7, Title 4, § 69; Civil Rights Law § 14. The Revisers tell us in their notes that the statute, though new in form, is declaratory of an ancient principle (R.S., 2d ed., vol. 3, p. 741), and so we may assume it is. Matter of Cochran, 237 N.Y. 336, 340, 143 N.E. 212; cf. People ex rel. Nunns v. County Court, supra, 188 App.Div. at 448, 176 N.Y.S. 858. It would give no help to the petitioner though it were enacted for the federal courts. She has not been held to answer for any verdict that she has rendered, nor for anything said or done in considering her verdict. Matter of Cochran, supra. She has been held to answer for the deceit whereby she made herself a juror, and was thereby placed in a position to vote upon the case at all. What was said and done in the jury room is not the gist of her wrongdoing. What was said and done in the jury room is no more than confirmatory evidence of her state of mind chanrobles.com-red
Nor is there anything in our decision at variance with the rule, which is not without exceptions (Mattox v. United States, 146 U. S. 140, 146 U. S. 148; cf. Wigmore, Evidence, vol. 5, §§ 2353, 2354; Woodward v. Leavitt, 107 Mass. 453; Hyman v. Eames, 41 F.6d 6; Fuller v. Fletcher, 44 F. 34, 39), that the testimony of a juror is not admissible for the impeachment of his verdict. McDonald v. Pless, 238 U. S. 264. Here, there was no verdict, and hence none to be impeached. But, in truth, the rule against impeachment is wholly unrelated to the problem now before us -- the limits of the privilege to maintain a confidence inviolate. Wigmore, supra, § 2346. Impeachment may be forbidden though the jurors waive their privilege and combine with the defeated litigant to make the verdict null. Privilege may be asserted though there is nothing to impeach.
In the record now before us, the evidence of guilt is ample, without the happenings in the jury room, to break down the claim of privilege, and thus let in the light. There is the evidence of the concealment of the petitioner's employment, with all its sinister implications. There is the evidence of her arguments with the jurors while the trial was going on. There is even the evidence of her vote, for the fact that she had voted for acquittal had been stated in her answer, and, to the extent of the voluntary disclosure, the privilege had been waived. Indeed, what happened in the jury room added so little to the case that the error, if there had been any, in permitting it to be proved would have to be regarded as unsubstantial and without effect on the result. No one can read the findings of the triers of the facts and hesitate in concluding that, even with this evidence omitted, chanrobles.com-red
4. There was no denial to the petitioner of a fair notice of hearing, nor any variance of substance between the information and the findings. chanrobles.com-red