Court Opinion

ID: 9465241
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:40:12.806528+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:03.561840
License: Public Domain

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge,
concurring dubitante:
I concur on the basis that our holding is only that since the indications were that the two prosecution witnesses who were absent on Thursday would be available on Monday, the judge should have granted the continuance which the prosecutor requested and should not have discharged the jury. Even as so limited this seems to me an exceedingly close ease. It differs from Downum v. United States, 372 U.S. 734, 83 S.Ct. 1033, 10 L.Ed.2d 100 (1963), and Cornero v. United States, 48 F.2d 69 (9 Cir. 1931), which was cited with approval in Downum, in that in those cases the prosecutor had been negligent (see Downum, 372 U.S. at 737, 83 S.Ct. at 1035, and Mr. Justice Clark’s discussion of Cornero, 372 U.S. at 739 n.*, 83 S.Ct. at 1036 n.*), whereas here he did everything humanly possible to assure the presence of the witnesses short of actually having them in the courthouse before impaneling a jury, often a time consuming process in the New York courts, and holding the witnesses in custody — a course which no one could reasonably advocate. The prosecutor initially sought a continuance; he asked for a discharge of the jury only when the court’s refusal of this left him no alternative. Moreover, the court’s refusal to grant a continuance was not solely or, as I read the record, even preponderantly for “the convenience of the jury”; after discharging the jurors, the court directed them to report back to the central jury room, where they would be available for other important duties. Furthermore, while in the luminous hindsight of Crist v. Bretz, 437 U.S. 28, *94998 S.Ct. 2156, 57 L.Ed.2d 24 (1978), and Robinson v. Neil, 409 U.S. 505, 93 S.Ct. 876, 35 L.Ed.2d 29 (1973), we now know that the New York rule with respect to the attachment of jeopardy had been displaced by the combined working of Downum and Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 23 L.Ed.2d 707 (1969), the busy state trial judge can hardly be faulted for lacking such prescience, especially when defense counsel contributed nothing to enlighten him save for noting an unelaborated exception. If a double jeopardy claim had been clearly articulated, the judge might well have acted otherwise. The same Court that decided the cases cited by my brother Mulligan has warned federal courts against being too quick to interfere with a state trial judge’s “rational determination designed to implement a legitimate state policy” when there is “no suggestion that the implementation of that policy” by declaration of a mistrial “could be manipulated so as to prejudice the defendant,” Illinois v. Somerville, 410 U.S. 458, 469, 93 S.Ct. 1066, 1073, 35 L.Ed.2d 425, 434 (1973), and has instructed that the words “manifest necessity” “do not describe a standard that can be applied mechanically or without attention to the particular problem confronting the trial judge”, Arizona v. Washington, 434 U.S. 497, 506, 98 S.Ct. 824, 830, 54 L.Ed.2d 717, 728 (1978), see also id. at 516 fn. 35, 98 S.Ct. at 835 n.35. The especially drastic characteristic of a double jeopardy determination in a case like this, namely, that the defendant is entitled not simply to a new trial but to be relieved of any, requires an appellate court to proceed with caution, particularly when, as here, there is no suggestion of prosecutorial or judicial abuse. I suspect my brothers might feel differently about this case if Mizell were serving the first year of a life sentence for murder rather than being at liberty after having completed his sentence; yet in strict theory the test should be tt.s same. In short I believe we have here gone to the very verge and perhaps beyond it.