Court Opinion

ID: 9459561
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:24:04.690283+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:13.104856
License: Public Domain

*838LAY, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
Although I concur fully with the analysis and holding of Judge Heaney, in view of the dissent filed I feel constrained to make an additional comment.
The cases are legion outlining the role of the trial judge when making comments to the jury. As Judge Matthes summarizes in his dissent, “if a judge deems it desirable for the sake of achieving a just result to comment upon the evidence solely for the purpose of aiding and guiding the jury in arriving at a just and fair verdict he is privileged to do so; but he must be. careful not to intrude upon the province of the jury to make an unfettered and uninfluenced determination of fact matters submitted for their consideration.” (My emphasis.)
When does a trial judge cross the line? If the district judge did not invade permissible boundaries here, then we might as well forget the rhetorical warnings and simply instruct lawyers that in the future this court will not entertain error relating to prejudicial judicial comment. If, as is asserted here, the evidence is so overwhelming, why must any trial judge advise a jury that in his opinion the essential elements of the criminal offense have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt?
I sense comments such as this are fomented because of a lingering doubt by some jurists that jurors as a whole are not really intelligent enough to come to the right conclusion. This lingering doubt has been the basis down through the years for the continuing invidious attack against the jury system. How wrong this is. Judges have no gifted insight or peculiar competence in determining facts; their view as to what is right and just must always be equated with that of the common man. In this area of the law the benevolent judgment of a judge deserves no higher consideration on the scale of justice than any other man. The danger of such comment is that it places the defendant at an unfair disadvantage since it allows the presid*839ing judge to testify as a professional witness and in a manner no other witness would ever be allowed to do.
When a judge informs a jury that in his opinion the essential elements of a crime have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, he instructs the jury that the defendant is guilty. To attempt to hold otherwise is to shadow box with reality. When this is done, the judge serves as a fact finder. Yet as a fact finder he possesses the same human frailties, biases and prejudices as the ordinary juror. In fact, he falls far short of the valued expertise of the jury, for the priceless value of the composite jury is its ability to equate conduct in terms of community values and common affairs of life. A single judge cannot possess a similar sense of community values.
We should not forget, as Justice Strong noted almost a century ago in Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 308-309, 25 L.Ed. 664 (1879): “The very idea of a jury is a body of men composed of the peers or equals of the person whose rights it is selected or summoned to determine; that is, of his neighbors, fellows, associates, persons having the same legal status in society as that which he holds.” This postulate is destroyed if the judge assumes the thirteenth chair in the jury box.
In a criminal proceeding, whenever any trial judge comments on the evidence in such an unfair manner so as to tell the jury, directly or indirectly, that a defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, it is my judgment that, regardless of the strength of the evidence, the defendant has been denied a fair trial and due process requires a reversal of the conviction.