Court Opinion

ID: 9452887
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:55:12.784655+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:23.943886
License: Public Domain

J. SKELLY WRIGHT, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
I join the court’s opinion because there is not a scintilla of evidence, other than the four single fingerprints, to support this conviction. Moreover, the Government’s fingerprint expert testified that the fingerprints in question could have been on the jar for several years, and there is no accounting in the record for the custody of the jars during this period. In addition, the only eyewitness in the case, who was made available to the defense by the Government under Brady v. State of Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), testified that the man he saw on the victim’s porch around the time of the crime was not the appellant. Under the circumstances, to affirm the conviction in this case on fingerprint evidence alone without accounting for the custody of the jars would be to adopt a rule of law for use in similar cases which, as the court, points out, would jeopardize the liberty of every person who ever touched anything later found at the scene of a crime.
*598Hyperbole and predictions of gloom and doom, of course, are often the hallmarks of a dissent. The dissent here, however, exceeds normal limits. Its exercise in frustration is particularly difficult to understand since this court today affirms another conviction against Borum under which he will serve from 20 months to five years. Moreover, the dissent is misled by inaccurate record references and unfounded assumptions as to the facts. For example: (1) Throughout the dissent it is assumed that Borum, possibly with confederates, took a 300-pound coin collection from the home of the complaining witness. At page 600 the dissent states: “Since Appellant could hardly have carried 300 pounds of coins alone, the jury could infer that he had several confederates who also left prints.” The fact is that Borum was tried for, but not convicted of, grand larceny based on the alleged theft of the coin collection. No “confederates” were even charged. (2) The dissent argues that Judge Prettyman’s opinion in Hiet v. United States, 124 U.S.App.D.C. 313, 365 F.2d 504 (1966), in which a conviction based on fingerprint evidence was reversed, is irrelevant because “there the fingerprints were in an automobile parked on a public street.” (Emphasis in the dissent.) In Hiet the fingerprints were found on the inside of a vent window of a car whose lock had been broken off. (3) The dissent, as shown in its footnote 7, apparently is influenced by two other Borum eases, one still on appeal (No. 20,270) and the other handed down today (Borum v. United States, No. 20,093, 127 U.S.App.D.C. -, 380 F.2d 590). The records in those cases, of course, are not part of the record in this case. Under familiar principles, consideration of them here is inappropriate and legally impermissible. (4) The dissent states that Borum No. 20,093 “is affirmed today on evidence essentially the same, i.e., fingerprints, which the majority finds insufficient in this appeal.” Unlike this case, in Borum No. 20,093 the evidence shows that Bor-um’s fingerprints could have been left only at the time of the crime. Thus the danger of setting a precedent which could result in the conviction of innocent people on fingerprint evidence alone is avoided.
I share Judge Burger’s enthusiasm for a jury, particularly if it is composed of a random cross section of the people rather than the result of a selection made by jury commissioners. But where under the law the evidence is insufficient to take the case to the jury, the court has a responsibility to act. I join the court in so doing.