Court Opinion

ID: 9466080
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:05:17.457655+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:32.206280
License: Public Domain

TONE, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Judge Swygert’s dissent leads me to add a few words in explanation of why I have joined in Judge Jameson’s opinion. A careful reading of the final arguments in their entirety convinces me that the prosecutor’s improper statements were harmless, judged by the standard set forth in Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 764, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946); see also United States v. Shepherd, 576 F.2d 719, 723-24 (7th Cir. 1978). I can say, in Mr. Justice Rutledge’s words in Kotteakos, “with fair assurance, after pondering all that happened without stripping the erroneous action from the whole, that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error.” 328 U.S. at 765, 66 S.Ct. at 1248.
The prosecutor’s statements about tax evasion, read in context, were not an effort to rely on, or create prejudice by referring to, conduct not charged in the indictment. The offense charged was failure to report income, and of course the defendant did not pay taxes on the income he did not report, and the evidence so showed. The acts proved amounted to both false reporting and failure to pay taxes that were due. If done wilfully they amounted to tax evasion as well as deliberate false reporting. The only seriously contested issue, and the issue on which both sides focused in closing arguments, was whether defendant’s conduct was wilful. The jury was properly instructed that the charge against the defendant was false reporting. The references to tax evasion could hardly have misled the jury or prejudiced the defendant.
The most serious prosecutorial improprieties, statements to the effect that if some people do not pay their taxes others will have to make up the deficiency, were in a sense an appeal to the jurors’ pecuniary interests. Those interests are, of course, de minimis so far as the amount involved in this case is concerned; and the statements themselves amount to no more than the assertion of what must be obvious to anyone upon a moment’s thought. I cannot believe the statements could have influenced the jury when considered in the context of the argument as a whole and the trial as a whole.
This is not to say that deliberate prosecutorial misconduct should be tolerated or that statements of the kind described above should be encouraged or approved even when innocently made. When, however, they appear, as they do to me here, to be the result of inexperience and the heat of battle rather than intentional disregard of the rules of professional conduct, and the reviewing court determines that they were harmless, justice would not be served by requiring that the case be tried again.
Senior District Judge JAMESON joins in Circuit Judge TONE’S concurring opinion.