Court Opinion

ID: 9461376
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:13:06.300401+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:01.887941
License: Public Domain

MacKINNON, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially):
I concur in the foregoing result. From an analysis of the record I con-elude that the evidence of appellant’s guilt on the offenses he was tried on was so strong and persuasive that none of his arguments, or the additional facts he refers to, would ever cause or justify a different verdict. Central to this result is my conclusion from all the evidence in the case that it is clear that appellant knew he was working for the Reelection Committee and not for the government. To my mind all his arguments come to naught when that fact is recognized.
While I approve the interrogation of witnesses by the court to test their veracity, and this is not a new position for me, I do not approve of the court reading to the jury the Sloan testimony taken out of the jury’s presence. And to the extent that some of the testimony so read to the jury tended to show guilt of additional individuals on additional offenses, such conduct, to my mind, is also improper to the extent that such questioning or evidence disclosed or intimated the existence of other crimes not nee*354essary or appropriate to prove the pending indictments. However, a close examination of the above errors does not indicate to my mind that they were sufficiently prejudicial to McCord, in view of his being caught red-handed in the offenses, to support a reversal of the judgment.1 The court in its trial did not violate any of the substantial rights of the parties. It was not a perfect trial, but few trials are, and a perfect trial is not required.2
As for the statement in the majority opinion that officials of the government authorized some of this conduct, I fail to find where the facts in this record support that conclusion even though some of the individuals mentioned in this record had previously been government officials or employees. Certainly no acting government official authorized the unlawful entry into the headquarters at Watergate in his capacity as a government official.
Also, I am not as sure as Judge Bazelon’s opinion asserts (supra, p. 351) that “past lawlessness” will be purged from the government. What he undoubtedly means is that some of those involved in these most recent offenses may be purged. The statute of limitations undoubtedly protects many others from retribution for prior misconduct of a similar nature.3

. 28 U.S.C. § 2111 provides:
On the hearing of any appeal or writ of certiorari in any case, the court shall give judgment after an examination of the record without regard to errors or defects which do not affect the substantial rights of the parties. (Added May 24, 1949, c. 139, § 110, 63 Stat. 105.)

. In Lutwak v. United States, 344 U.S. 604, 619-620, 73 S.Ct. 481, 490, 97 L.Ed. 593 (1953), Justice Minton stated:
A defendant is entitled to a fair trial but not a perfect one. This is a proper case for the application of Rule 52(a) of the Federal . Rules of Criminal Procedure.
That rule provides:
(a) Harmless Error. Any error, defect, irregularity or variance which does not affect substantial rights shall be disregarded.

. The 1972 presidential election was not the first to be plagued with political espionage. In an interview granted to James J. Kilpatrick, former President Nixon revealed that J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), had apprised him of certain bugging:
He [President Nixon] recalled how much he had resented it when he learned that his own offices had been bugged in his 1962 gubernatorial campaign. He also remembered 1968 with equal resentment. "There was not only surveillance by the FBI, but bugging by the FBI, and (J. Edgar) Hoover told me that my plane in the last two weeks [of the 1968 presidential campaign] was bugged.”
Washington Star-News, May 16, 1974, § 1, at 1, col. 1. These bugging offenses were not investigated by Congress or prosecuted.