Opinion ID: 272895
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Jones' Confession.

Text: 18 After Kuhle had testified, the Government sought to introduce a post-arraignment confession given by Jones about the events surrounding the Fairview, Paramus and Hillsdale burglaries. In the confession as signed Jones admitted that: 19 (1) On January 12, he, Mulhearn and Pizzo broke into the Fairview Post Office, and broke open a safe therein. They took the proceeds first to the home of Pizzo's brother and then to Journal Square in Jersey City where they met Joe Fallo, to whom Pizzo had arranged to sell 'the stuff.' Jones and Fallo drove to New York City, where Jones waited in a bar while Fallo went off with the stamps. Jones telephoned Kuhle to come over and 'cover' him when he got the money from Fallo, which Kuhle did. Though Kuhle reported that Fallo had taken off when the other later left him alone in a car, the money was later secured. (2) On June 3, he, Bozza and Kuhle broke into the Paramus Post Office. They took the stamps and tools to Guzzo's home. Kuhle drove Bozza back to Brooklyn. On the following day Guzzo delivered 'the stuff' and Jones, Mulhearn and Guzzo took it to Bozza; Bozza handed it on to Guarnieri. Next day Jones, Mulhearn and Guzzo met Bozza and Guarnieri in Brooklyn to receive $9,500 in payment; after sharing some of the profits with Mulhearn and Guzzo, the burglars split the remainder three ways. (3) On June 23, Jones, Mulhearn and Kuhle burglarized the Hillsdale Post Office. They took 'the stuff,' the tools and a stolen gun to Guzzo's house. Two days later they and Pizzo went over to Manhattan and met Tony West. Since Tony didn't want to do business while all were there, Kuhle and Jones waited in a bar. Ultimately $9,000 was collected. 20 After a postal inspector had testified to the taking of Jones' confession, counsel for the other defendants, all of whom were named in it, moved for a severance; this was denied. Over objection by counsel for all defendants save DeLutro, the judge permitted the prosecutor to read the confession to the jury, with the word 'blank' replacing each name except Kuhle's; he forthwith instructed that the statement could 'only be assessed against the defendant Jones,' that the jury should not 'try to speculate as to how else this might be assessed because of the form' in which it had been presented, and that they were to consider it only against Jones as they would have if he had been separately tried. The prosecutor's use of the confession in his summation was consistent with this instruction, and the judge repeated it in his charge. An hour after retiring, the jury, accepting a suggestion in the prosecutor's summation, asked for Jones' confession-- the only item of evidence so requested; this was furnished, without repetition of the instruction, with the names blacked out. 21 Not even appellate judges can be expected to be so naive as really to believe that all twelve jurors succeeded in performing what Judge L. Hand aptly called 'a mental gymnastic which is beyond, not only their powers, but anybody's else.' Nash v. United States, 54 F.2d 1006, 1007 (2 Cir. 1932). It is impossible realistically to suppose that when the twelve good men and women had Jones' confession in the privacy of the jury room, not one yielded to the nigh irresistible temptation to fill in the blanks with the keys Kuhle had provided and ask himself the intelligent question to what extent Jones' statement supported Kuhle's testimony, or that if anyone did yield, his colleagues effectively persuaded him to dismiss the answers from his mind. It well may be that a juror's engaging in this process 'furthers, rather than impedes, the search for truth,' as Judge Hand suggested, 54 F.2d at 1007. So, as some think, would the introduction of many statements banned by the hearsay rule. 12 But the Sixth Amendment guarantees every accused the right 'to be confronted with the witnesses against him,' and it 'cannot seriously be doubted at this late date that the right of cross-examination is included' in the constitutional guarantee. Pointer v. State of Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 404, 85 S.Ct. 1065, 1068, 13 L.Ed.2d 923 (1965). 22 The Government argues that however this may stand as a matter of good sense, Delli Paoli v. United States, 352 U.S. 232, 77 S.Ct. 294, 1 L.Ed.2d 278 (1957), and decisions of this court cause it to stand otherwise as a matter of law; these decisions, it argues in substance, have created a conclusive presumption that the jury will follow a proper instruction to consider a confession only against the confessor and to ignore its significance as to other defendants. 23 We do not read Delli Paoli as going so far. Indeed, as was immediately noticed, the novelty of the decision lay not in the result but in the agreement of the five Justices in the majority and the four dissenters in refusing to consider an instruction as inevitably sufficient, cf. Blumenthal v. United States, 332 U.S. 539, 559, 68 S.Ct. 248, 92 L.Ed. 154 (1947), thereby implicitly recognizing that there may be situations in which admission of a confession implicating co-defendants would be prejudicial in spite of proper instruction. See Note, Developments in the Law-Criminal Conspiracy, 72 Harv.L.Rev. 920, 990 (1959). The majority defined the issue as being 'whether, under all the circumstances, the court's instructions to the jury provided    sufficient protection' against misuse of the confession; determination of that issue depended on (1) 'whether the instructions were sufficiently clear,' as Judge Mishler's certainly were in this case, and (2) 'whether it was reasonably possible for the jury to follow them.' 352 U.S. at 239, 77 S.Ct. at 299. The Court noted five factors, the combination of which was thought to warrant an affirmative answer to the second question in Delli Paoli's case. Ours differs in a number of significant respects. The conspiracy charged was not 'so simple in its character that the part of each defendant in it was easily understood,' 352 U.S. at 241, 77 S.Ct. at 299; three separate conspiracy counts and seven substantive counts were sent to the jury. Here the other defendants requested a severance as soon as the Government's intention to offer the confession became known. Contrast 352 U.S. at 241, 77 S.Ct. 294 and United States v. Leviton, 193 F.2d 848, 856 (2 Cir. 1951), cert. denied, 343 U.S. 956, 72 S.Ct. 860, 96 L.Ed. 1350 petit. for rehearing denied, 343 U.S. 988, 72 S.Ct. 1079, 96 L.Ed. 1375 (1952). Although in a sense the confession in both cases 'merely corroborated what the Government already had established,' 352 U.S. at 242, 77 S.Ct. at 300, the similarity is more formal than real. Whereas the admission in Delli Paoli was hardly critical to a case already made out by testimony of outside observers, Jones' confession furnished devastating corroboration of the heavily attacked testimony of an accomplice on which the prosecution almost entirely depended for proof of guilt. 13 This admission by a defendant that Kuhle had worked with him and all the others probably ended whatever chance any of them might have had to find a juror unconvinced of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Indeed, even if the jury could perform the feat of not speculating over the inserted blanks, Jones' confession of his own association with Kuhle would have a serious spillover effect at least on Mulhearn and Pizzo. Finally, the jury's request for Jones' confession, which they would hardly have needed if their interest were solely in its bearing on Jones' guilt, 14 creates a real doubt, not present in Delli Paoli, that at least some of them, 'failed to follow the court's instructions.' 352 U.S. at 242, 77 S.Ct. at 300. We therefore cannot regard Delli Paoli as controlling in the Government's favor. 24 The three decisions of this court on which the Government most heavily relies are United States v. Caron, 266 F.2d 49 (1959), United Stated v. Castellana, 349 F.2d 264 (1965), cert. denied, 383 U.S. 928, 86 S.Ct. 935, 15 L.Ed.2d 847 (1966), and United States v. Casalinuovo, 350 F.2d 207, 211-214 (1965). 14A The Castellano decision is readily distinguishable since, as Judge Kaufman carefully pointed out, there was less danger than in Delli Paoli of 'prejudicial spill-over effect on the defendants other than the declarant,' 349 F.2d at 274-275, whereas here there was clearly more. So also is Casalinuovo; not only did the case present all but one of the five factors stressed in Delli Paoli, as Judge Moore noted, 350 F.2d at 212, but the co-defendants made no motion for severance and no objection to the receipt of the confession until the Government's summation. The Caron decision is closer since a timely motion for severance was made, but the court stressed that the prosecution's case rested heavily on the testimony of two witnesses who were not parties to the conspiracy. Without going so far as to say that the logic of Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908, 1 A.L.R.3d 1205 (1964), necessarily removes any basis for relying on an instruction to limit the damaging effects of a confession implicating a co-defendant, cf. 378 U.S. at 434-435, 84 S.Ct. 1774 (dissenting opinion of Harlan, J.); People v. Aranda, Cal., 47 Cal.Rptr. 353, 359-360, 407 P.2d 265, 271-272 (1965) (Traynor, C.J.), but see Johnson v. State of New Jersey, 384 U.S. 719, 86 S.Ct. 1772, 16 L.Ed.2d 882, 1966, discussed in the dissent, we think the circumstances here were such as to put the Government to the choice which Judge Frank in this court, 229 F.2d at 324, and the four discenters in the Supreme Court thought to have been demanded in Delli Paoli-- either accept a severance of the trial of the confessor or forego use of the confession. By this ruling we do not mean to cast general doubt on the value of instructions to disregard or limit evidence, cf. United States v. Gorman, 355 F.2d 151, 153 (2 Cir. 1965); we hold only that there is a point where credulity as to the efficacy of such instructions with respect to a confession implicating co-defendants is overstrained, and that this point was reached here. 25 The error in continuing the joint trial with Jones' confession in evidence requires reversal of all convictions where the confession implicated one of the appellants in the crime charged, namely, the convictions of Bozza, Mulhearn and Guarnieri on Counts 21, 23 and 24 relating to the Paramus burglary, and of Mulhearn, Pizzo and DeLutro 15 on Counts 26 and 27 relating to the Hillsdale burglary. On the other hand Jones does not urge in this court that the confession, which recites the receipt of warning that he did not have to make any statement unless he so desired and to have counsel while making it, was inadmissible as to him, and his convictions thus remain unaffected. This leaves for consideration the conviction of Bozza on substantive Counts 1, 4 and 5 relating to the Morganville, Middletown, Woodbridge and Keyport burglaries, the conviction of Bozza, Mulhearn and Pizzo on conspiracy Count 6, relating to the same, and that of Guarnieri on Count 28 relating to comforting and assisting Bozza knowing be had committed the Keyport burglary. As to the last, the confession's reference to connections between Bozza and Guarnieri after the Paramus burglary might well have affected the jury in passing on this Count. The question as to Counts 1, 4, 5 and 6 is harder since Jones' confession, vaulting from the Fairview burglary in January to the Paramus episode in June, said nothing about the four burglaries in between. But the same theory on which we have supported the receipt of the testimony as to the Fairview burglary for its bearing on the others works against the Government on this point; since that evidence was sufficiently probative to justify admission although showing another crime, the significance of its repetition in Jones' confession as corroborating Kuhle's account of the intermediate burglaries was likewise substantial enough to have been prejudicial on the facts here. 26 We reverse these five convictions with regret. Judge Mishler was painstaking and adept in his conduct of this difficult trial, and the Government's presentation was generally a fair one. It would be far easier if an appellate court could shirk the task of determining whether the Delli Paoli limits have been exceeded, by simply bowing to the trial court's discretion. A large measure of such respect is indeed demanded. The trial judge may be better able to prophesy the capacity of a particular jury to follow limiting instructions which Judge Learned Hand considered beyond his intellectual powers, and the necessary weighing of disparate factors demands deference in the interest of avoiding the mere substitution of one fallible judgment for another on what are imponderables on any view. However, despite the concluding remarks in Delli Paoli as to the discretion of the trial judge, 352 U.S. at 243, 77 S.Ct. at 300, we do not believe the Court meant that his decision whether a case presented nigh impossible 'practical limitations' to the jury's following instructions should be free from meaningful review. See Note, 72 Harv.L.Rev. supra at 990. Taking as the appropriate standard that the decision of the trial court on such an issue 'cannot be set aside by a reviewing court unless it has a definite and firm conviction that the court below committed a clear error of judgment in the conclusion it reached upon a weighing of the relevant factors,' In re Josephson, 218 F.2d 174, 182 (1 Cir. 1954) (Magruder, J.), and fully recognizing the difficult problem that confronted the trial judge, we have such a 'definite and firm conviction' here. Having this, we are unable to avoid reversal by invoking the principle of harmless error. To be sure the evidence apart from Jones' confession was ample for convictions on all counts if the jury believed Kuhle, as we have relatively little doubt it would have even without the impressive corroboration which the confession furnished. However, it is not enough 'that the jury would have in all probability returned a verdict of guilty' against the other defendants without knowledge of Jones' confession, which they were forbidden to possess. Sunrall v. United States, 360 F.2d 311, 314 (10 Cir. 1966). The test is whether belief 'is sure that the error did not influence the jury, or had but very slight effect,' Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 764-765, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 1248, 90 L.Ed. 1257 (1946)-- even if that be the standard in an area with 'grave constitutional States, 353 U.S. 391, 423, 77 S.Ct. 963, 1 L.Ed.2d 931 (1957). We cannot conscientiously answer that question in the affirmative in this case, however much affirmative in this case, however much we would like to do so. 27