Court Opinion

ID: 9464516
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:36:09.933319+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:40.348230
License: Public Domain

WIDENER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority affirms the district court, finding that the prosecutor’s questioning “was highly prejudicial and deprived Foster of a fair trial.” I respectfully dissent.
Federal courts are not ordinarily concerned with the sufficiency of evidence in habeas corpus petitions. “The only constitutional question is whether petitioner’s conviction rests upon ‘any evidence at all.’ ” Freeman v. Slayton, 550 F.2d 909, 911 (4th Cir. 1976), cert. den. 429 U.S. 1111, 97 S.Ct. 1150, 51 L.Ed.2d 566 (1977), quoting Williams v. Peyton, 414 F.2d 776 (4th Cir. 1969). Thus, the discussion of the “scarcity of the evidence,” at p. 506 is immaterial. Viewing “the scarcity of the evidence as relevant to the issue of whether the prosecutor’s improper cross-examination was so prejudicial as to deprive Foster of a fair trial,” p. 506, n. 6, is merely another way of stating that the majority is impermissi-bly considering the weight of the evidence despite its disavowal. I note in passing that this court has affirmed a federal conviction in which the only evidence of guilt was the presence of the accused’s fingerprint near the scene of the crime. United States v. Bryant, 454 F.2d 248 (4th Cir. 1972). As it considers the weight of the evidence here, the majority applies a more stringent standard in a State habeas corpus review than was applied in a federal criminal appeal in Bryant. Exactly the reverse should be true.
Turning to the questions themselves, the majority attacks the prosecutor’s good faith in asking them. In the teeth of a contrary decision by the North Carolina Supreme Court,1 and despite 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), which provides that the North Carolina court’s determination “shall be presumed to be correct,” the majority finds that the prosecutor failed to act in good faith. The majority seems to base its necessarily subjective determination of bad faith solely upon the State’s dismissal for “lack of sufficient evidence” of the indictments on which the questions were premised.2 p. 506. However, the sole support in the record for this is the following statement by the State in its answer: “these cases were apparently untried for lack of sufficient evidence.” Fairly read, the passage shows only that the prosecuting authorities lacked sufficient evidence to convict Foster of the crimes charged in the dismissed indictments; that is, evidence establishing his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
A fair reading of the majority opinion may only be that, in this circuit, as a matter *508of constitutional law, prior acts impeachment is permissible only when the prosecutor possesses evidence proving the prior acts beyond a reasonable doubt. For, if there should be a lesser standard applied, such as preponderance of the evidence or probable cause,3 to permit constitutionally a prosecutor to question an accused as to prior acts, the decision of the district court must be reversed. The record permits no conclusion except that the State lacked evidence to support the indictments beyond a reasonable doubt, and in the absence of any other evidence, the prisoner must be taken to have failed to meet his burden of proof.
Finally, this circuit, in many cases, has approved the admission of evidence of prior acts as evidence in federal criminal prosecutions. In United States v. Woods, 484 F.2d 127 (4th Cir. 1973), evidence of prior acts was admitted as proof of the substantive offense, although there were neither indictments nor convictions on account of such acts. In United States v. Tibbetts, 565 F.2d 867 (4th Cir. 1977), this court approved the admission of a December 10, 1975 telephone call of a bomb threat, for which the defendant was not indicted, as evidence in a charge of making a bomb threat on May 3, 1976, for which the defendant was indicted and tried. This court approved admission of the evidence, not as proof of the substantive offense, nor even to show intent, but “to account for the surveillance and as explanation of how the government discovered suspects of this type of crime.” In United States v. Tyler, 565 F.2d 160 (4th Cir. 1977), the court approved the admission of a statement by the defendant’s sister-in-law that the defendant had assisted other escaped convicts when the crime for which the defendant was charged was aiding one Brewster in the transportation of a stolen motor vehicle in interstate commerce. Brewster happened to be an escaped convict. In Tyler, the evidence was received for the purpose of showing motive and intent.
In the face of these cases, I do not see how a State court may be forbidden, under constitutional prohibition, to permit the questioning of a defendant about prior acts for impeachment purposes, while a federal court in the same circuit may admit the same evidence as going either to proof of guilt or innocence, or as to motive and intent, a necessary ingredient of guilt, or even to explain the government’s actions. I think we apply a double standard, State and federal, and even in the application of the double standard, I think we apply it wrongly, for error of constitutional dimension to set aside a State conviction necessarily ought to be more grievous than merely error in the admissibility of evidence, all that is necessary to vacate a judgment of conviction in the federal courts.
I would reverse.

. The majority notes that the North Carolina Supreme Court did not discuss the application of the prior acts rule in its opinion, p. 506 n. 4. Nevertheless, unless we are to reverse North Carolina’s highest court on its interpretation of an admittedly constitutional State law, we are bound to agree that the State Supreme Court followed its own decisions and found the requisite good faith.

. As the majority states, p. 506, one of the indictments was dismissed prior to trial. Even were I to agree, which I do not, that the prosecutor unconstitutionally questioned Foster about the acts charged in that particular indictment, I would find any error to have been harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). I am in positive disagreement with the conclusion of the majority on p. 506 as to that indictment, that “This fact alone, sheds doubt on the prosecutor’s good faith.” (Italics added).

. An indictment is not, of course, admissible evidence of guilt. But the indictments unquestionably provided probable cause for any pretrial incarceration of Foster, see Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 95 S.Ct. 854, 43 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975). If Foster could be jailed because of the acts alleged in the indictment, I do not think it unfair that he be questioned about the same acts if permitted by State law.