Court Opinion

ID: 9463676
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:12:59.222772+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:13.711884
License: Public Domain

SWYGERT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I cannot agree with the majority that this case is free from reversible error. The due process rights of the defendant were violated by the trial judge’s noncompliance with the requirements of Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908 (1964), and Sims v. Georgia, 385 U.S. 538, 87 S.Ct. 639, 17 L.Ed.2d 593 (1967), when he failed to make a specific ruling on the voluntariness of the defendant’s confession. The Government argues, and the majority seems to agree, that this failure was, at most, merely a technical slip-up and that the judge made a finding of voluntariness which can be inferred from the record as a whole. I can find nothing in the record which would allow an inference that the trial judge ever made such a determination. The majority, citing Sims, says a finding of voluntariness need not be formal or in opinion form. The Court, on the other hand, requires that a finding that a confession is voluntary “must appear from the record with unmistakable clarity.” 385 U.S. at 544, 87 S.Ct. at 643. That the trial judge in the instant case made a decision that defendant’s confession was voluntary is by no means unmistakably clear; the record on that score, is in fact, ambiguous.
In support of its holding that a ruling by the trial judge that the confession was voluntary can be inferred from the record, the majority cites Erving v. Sigler, 453 F.2d 843 (8th Cir. 1972), cert. denied, 406 U.S. 976, 92 S.Ct. 2422, 32 L.Ed.2d 676. In Erving, the trial judge held a separate hearing on the issue of voluntariness. Before the end of the hearing, the defendant’s counsel made a specific motion against the admission of any testimony concerning the proffered confession. The court deferred ruling on the motion until all the evidence relating to the confession was completed. At the end of the hearing, the judge specifically denied all the motions and objections of the defendant to testimony concerning the confession. Thus, although no specific finding of voluntariness in terms was made by the trial judge in Erving, such a finding was readily inferable with “unmistakable clarity” from the record.
The same cannot be said for the record in the instant case in which the circumstances are completely different. Whereas the trial judge in Erving made a ruling at the end of the suppression hearing on specific motions directed against testimony concerning the confession, the judge in the case at bar made no specific decision at the end of the suppression hearing, but indicated at least twice during the trial that he was unsure how to rule on admissibility, and admitted the confession only at the close of the Government’s case-in-chief.
What the majority permits to stand is a loose practice that subverts the holding in Sims. This is especially so when the judge actually demonstrated that he remained unsure on the question of voluntariness after the hearing at which this issue was to be determined and at the time he actually allowed the jury to hear the confession. The jury was permitted to hear evidence referring to the confession at a time when the judge was unsure as to its admissibility. When he later admitted it, there was nothing to indicate what prompted the admis*193sion and how he viewed the jury’s role vis-a-vis the confession. Thus, the possibility that the judge may have used the wrong standard, such as those encountered in Jackson and Sims, is not precluded by the record.
A further problem arises in the instant case from the procedure employed by the trial judge. Jackson declared the right of a defendant to have the issue of voluntariness determined from evidence taken at a separate hearing before the jury hears anything of the confession. Here the district judge indicated, not only that he had not made a decision at the end of the hearing, but that he would wait until he heard further evidence being submitted to the jury during the trial, implying that any forthcoming decision might be based upon the additional testimony. Jackson clearly requires the Government to bear the burden at the suppression hearing of proving the voluntariness of defendant’s confession. Even if the district judge’s remarks could be construed to constitute a decision on the voluntariness issue after he had heard all the testimony of the Government’s case-in-chief, it can hardly be inferred that he found that the Government had borne its burden at the initial hearing.
If we allow a ruling to be inferred in dubious situations such as presented here merely because the trial judge has made no positive indication that the question was left to the jury, there exists the dangerous possibility that a trial judge could shirk his duty to decide the issue of voluntariness of a confession, leaving borderline cases for the jury to decide. Such a dereliction of duty runs counter to the holdings in Jackson v. Denno and Sims v. Georgia.
I would reverse and remand for a new trial.