Opinion ID: 255084
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: McCarthy's Guilty Plea

Text: 71 All of the appellants assert the trial court erred prejudically in failing to grant motions for a mistrial when co-defendant McCarthy pleaded guilty toward the end of the first week of trial. The change of plea was accepted out of the presence of the jury; because counsel for most of the defendants felt a cautionary instruction would only serve to call the jury's attention to — and emphasize — the guilty plea, the court did not inform the jury of the circumstances concerning McCarthy's subsequent absence from the case and courtroom. The court did, however, charge them at length concerning the proper means of individually determining the guilt or innocence of each defendant. 72 Three weeks after the jury returned with its verdict attorney Garlock, counsel for Mittelman, moved for a new trial, which motion was joined in by other defendants, on the strength of affidavits executed by Mr. Garlock and his wife. The affidavits asserted that the Garlocks had encountered by chance, four days after the conclusion of the trial, one of the jurors in the case. The juror allegedly told the attorney that the jury had heard radio accounts and had read newspaper reports of the guilty plea; that said newspapers were brought into the jury room where they were discussed by members of the panel; and that the juror ventured the opinion that McCarthy's plea in effect said that the other defendants were also guilty. The court denied the motions for a new trial and also declined to hold a hearing to question the jurors concerning the effect on their decision of the change in plea. 73 It was not error to refuse to grant a mistrial when McCarthy pleaded guilty. Certainly the guilty plea cannot be used as evidence against the remaining defendants, Babb v. United States, 5 Cir., 1955, 218 F.2d 538; United States v. Hall, 2 Cir., 1950, 178 F.2d 853; United States v. Toner, 3 Cir., 1949, 173 F.2d 140; but see Grunberg v. United States, 1 Cir., 1906, 145 F. 81, 86. But the federal courts have uniformly held it not error, if proper cautionary instructions are given, for the jury to be informed during trial that one or more defendants have pleaded guilty, or even for the jury to be present when the pleas are entered. Wood v. United States, 8 Cir., 1960, 279 F.2d 359; Davenport v. United States, 9 Cir., 1958, 260 F.2d 591; Richards v. United States, 10 Cir., 1951, 193 F.2d 554; Schliefer v. United States, 3 Cir., 1923, 288 F. 368. Appellants attempt to distinguish these cases on the strength of McCarthy's counsel's strong opening to the jury and because McCarthy held himself out as innocent at the start of trial. Such a distinction is meaningless; all defendants who start trial hold themselves out as innocent and the fervor or effectiveness of an opening statement cannot call for a different result. As in United States v. Falcone, 2 Cir., 1940, 109 F.2d 579, 582, The existence of some kind of conspiracy was proved beyond peradventure, and the only important issue was whether these appellants were connected with the enterprise. The appellants' presentation of their cases, generally heaping all possible blame on McCarthy, strongly supports the thesis that there was no resultant prejudice from the change of plea. 74 The question raised by the denial of defendants' motion for a new trial based on the jury's knowledge and use of news accounts of the McCarthy plea is more difficult. Despite Lord Mansfield's original flat prohibition of impeachment by juriors of their verdict, Vaise v. Delaval, 1 T.R. 11, 99 E.R. 944 (K.B. 1785), the government properly concedes that there is no bar to admitting jury testimony to prove the fact they read the newspaper, Mattox v. United States, 1892, 146 U.S. 140, 13 S.Ct. 50, 36 L.Ed. 917. But it seriously contends we cannot consider testimony by jurors as to the actual effect the papers had on their decision, if any, and that this distinction is in accord with the opinion in Mattox. McDonald v. Pless, 1914, 238 U.S. 264, 35 S.Ct. 783, 59 L.Ed. 1300, expressed a still more hostile attitude toward the admission of jury testimony to impeach verdicts, barring not only testimony as to matters solely within the knowledge of each individual juror but also matters known to the jury in common but not to outsiders, such as the fact that their verdict was reached by averaging the damage awards each thought proper. The Court had earlier stated, in Hyde v. United States, 1912, 225 U.S. 347, 384, 32 S.Ct. 793, 56 L.Ed. 1114, that jurors will not be heard on matters of impeachment provable solely by their own testimony and not subject to corroboration. McDonald and Hyde were cited with approval by the Supreme Court as late as 1953, Stein v. People of State of New York, 346 U.S. 156, 178, 73 S.Ct. 1077, 97 L.Ed. 1522, for the statement that jurors will not be heard to testify their verdict was a compromise. 75 In Jorgensen v. York Ice Machinery Corp., 2 Cir., 1947, 160 F.2d 432, this court indicated doubt as to the rule against impeachment and placed its decision sustaining a verdict which affidavits asserted to have been reached by majority vote in order to permit the foreman to go home in a family crisis, rather on the ground that the irregularity was not such as to call for upsetting the verdict. But we have since refused to hear jurors' testimony that they relied on legal knowledge imparted to them in another case, Rotondo v. Isthmian S. S. Co., 2 Cir., 1957, 243 F.2d 581. We there stated the rule as permitting testimony that evidence reached the jury outside court, but as excluding testimony as to the reasons that in fact induced them to find their verdict. 243 F.2d 581, at page 583. 76 The juror's testimony that he interpreted McCarthy's plea as implicating the remaining defendants and that the verdict was influenced in fact would thus not be admissible. This is what Mattox stated; it is what we held in Rotondo. Marshall v. United States, 1959, 360 U.S. 310, 79 S.Ct. 1171, 3 L.Ed. 2d 1250, is no authority to the contrary. There the trial judge before verdict polled the jury to obtain assurance they would not be influenced by the offending news article; the Supreme Court did not order a second inquiry after verdict but decided the matter was of a nature too inflammatory not to have affected the jury. In Krogmann v. United States, 6 Cir., 1955, 225 F.2d 220, a new trial was ordered, in part because the judge had re-read to the entire jury an offending headline without quizzing them all as to whether it would affect them, but the events occurred before verdict rather than after. Even Wigmore, one of the McDonald rule's sharpest critics, who would permit jury testimony to attack compromise and quotient verdicts as well as to note extraneous influences, and would also permit asking the jury about probable effects before verdict, 8 Wigmore on Evidence § 2350, draws the line on post-verdict motive testimony by jurors; he would invoke the parol evidence rule to exclude such inquiry, 8 Wigmore on Evidence § 2349. 77 There are many cogent reasons militating against post-verdict inquiry into jurors' motives for decision. The jurors themselves ought not be subjected to harassment; the courts ought not be burdened with large numbers of applications mostly without real merit; the chances and temptations for tampering ought not be increased; verdicts ought not be made so uncertain. Whenever information erroneously reaches the ears of the jury in open court, the judge's instruction to disregard it may be disobeyed; yet it is not suggested that in such a case the jury ought be polled as to whether any of them relied on the forbidden knowledge. Even though presumably the jurors themselves know best, the question is determined, as is the question whether an error was prejudicial, on the basis of the nature of the matter and its probable effect on a hypothetical average jury. The same reasons apply when the improper knowledge reached the jury outside the courtroom. It was not error to refuse to examine the jurors as to their mental processes. 78 Stripped of the offered proof that the jury erroneously considered McCarthy's guilt as indicative of the guilt of the others, the question presented is virtually the same as on the motion for a mistrial. We assume that Mattox v. United States, supra, makes admissible the statement that the jurors read in the newspapers the accounts of the McCarthy plea. The unanimous Circuit Court authority that such a plea may be accepted in open court is implicit recognition, however, that the probable effect on the jury of such knowledge is not sufficiently harmful to require a new trial; we agree. The situation here presented is a far cry from the infinitely more damaging information obtained by the jury in Marshall (defendant's own prior felony conviction) or in Mattox (two previous murders by the defendant; newspaper stated that the evidence was so conclusive that even the defendant's family had given up hope). Proper cautionary instructions were here given; the existence of the conspiracy itself was overwhelmingly proven; defendants at trial strove mightily to put all blame on McCarthy's shoulders; and, finally, the fact that two of the defendants were acquitted weighs against the conclusion that the jury was prejudicially affected.