Court Opinion

ID: 9467075
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:37:55.076271+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:08.847608
License: Public Domain

RONEY, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur with Judge Fay’s opinion except as to his remarks about the method of conducting examination of prospective jurors. Regardless of my own predilections concerning voir dire, I have long held the view that appellate courts should affirm or reverse district court judgments in criminal trials, and not advise the district judges on how to exercise discretion vested in them by the statutes and the rules. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 24(a) explicitly gives the district court permission to let the attorneys conduct the examination of prospective jurors or to “itself conduct the examination.” Different trial judges have different ideas about how this discretion should be exercised. The Judges of the Fifth Circuit are not in accord. Lawyers seem generally opposed to the rule which gives such discretion to the trial court. But the rule is there, and assuming its legality, district judges should be able to operate under it without advice from the appellate court. If the district court exceeds the bounds of discretion given it, we should reverse. If not, we should affirm.
If a point on review is close, an opinion suggesting such closeness may tend to set the bounds of the law and assist courts in future trials. Such is not the case with the conduct of voir dire by the court. I see no possibility that this Court will ever reverse a criminal conviction merely because the district court has itself conducted the examination of prospective jurors to the exclusion of the attorneys, assuming compliance with the rest of the rule and the cases decided thereunder. In other councils, we may individually participate in the continuing debate as to the propriety of various methods of voir dire examination, but at this time the appellate court, as such, has no place in that controversy.
Therefore, regardless of my own views about the matter, I decline to join an opinion of the Court which purports to take sides in that debate.