Court Opinion

ID: 9450366
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:43:35.658631+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:15.993649
License: Public Domain

Wilbur K. Miller, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
Whether the majority are correct in holding Stitely’s summaries of his interviews with the prospective Government witnesses, Butler and Smith, were producible under the Jencks Act1 depends upon whether the summaries are “statements” as that statutory term is defined in subsection (e) of the Act, which is as follows:
“(e) The term ‘statement’, as used in subsections (b), (c), and (d) of this section in relation to any witness called by the United States, means—
“(1) a written statement made by said witness and signed or otherwise adopted or approved by him; or
“(2) a stenographic, mechanical, electrical, or other recording, or a transcription thereof, which is a substantially verbatim recital of an oral statement made by said witness to an agent of the Government and recorded contemporaneously with the making of such oral statement.”
Admittedly, the summaries are not written statements made by the witnesses and signed or otherwise adopted or approved by them, so they are not “statements” as defined in paragraph (1) of subsection (e). It follows that the Stitley summaries can be held to have been producible only under paragraph (2) of subsection (e); that is, if they are recordings (or transcriptions of recordings) which are “substantially verbatim” recitals of oral statements made by Butler and Smith to Stitely and recorded contemporaneously by him. The majority analyze the Stitely summaries and then hold they are “statements” under paragraph (2), but they do not reproduce them. As I think the structure and language of the summaries show they are not such “statements,” I quote them exactly as they were typed by Mr. Stitely:
“Roy T. Butler res 4013 Clay Pl N.E. Ph 5813471
“Bus Owner of ‘Starlight Grill, 436 L Street N.W.) Ph Ex 38834
“The following is a summary of the witness conversation not read to or by the witness it is not intended to be a substantially verbatim account — ws. [Stitely’s initials.]
“He was working the bar of his Grill at about this time, 10:55 PM. Feb. 9, 1963, and Dft Isaac Williams is a member of a gang that buys whiskey outside and drinks same in the streets and alleys and then comes into the grill and starts trouble and on this occasion he came into the grill starting around 7 PM. and he was in and out and he would not obey the rules and regulations of the grill and he hit an old colored lady several times — she came there to buy and drink wine — and Mr. Butler told him to get out of the place that he did not want him in there and he then said ‘you bad SB you put me out — and he came up to the bar and tore his shirt open and said he was a bad SB. Then at one time he threw a glass of beer on the floor and the bottle too.
“Then customer Charles R. Hicklin came into the place and he sit on the bar stool near the cash register — and Dft Williams just looked at Hicklin — there were no words passed between — and suddenly Dft *292Williams picked up a beer bottle with some beer in it and struck cpl Hicklin on his head with a severe blow and it broke the bottle and then he grabbed the bar stool and started to hit cpl Hicklin with that— and that is went [when] Mr. Butler grabbed his gun and fired one shot thru the mirror just to frighten Dft Williams and then Dft Williams goes back again and hit Hicklin, who was down on the floor, with the bar stool a second time (Bar stool is made of steel and it is detachable — it is still at the grill and available as evidence — it was at this point that Mr. Butler took his pistol and actually shot Dft Williams hitting Williams with the bullet on the left side of his body. Then after Williams got shot he crawled on out of the place on the sidewalk' — and he looked back and said to Mr. Butler you MF I am going to get you.
“Then police came on the scene and took Hicklin to the Hosp — also took Williams to the Hosp.
“Note: Dft Williams has done this sort of thing before in the Grill — he gave Mr. Butler a lot of trouble from time to time.”
“Mrs. Pauline Smith res 613 K Street N.E. Ph 5442081
“Bus Waitress — Starlight Grill, 436 L St N.W.D.C.
“The following is a summary of the witness conversation not read to or by the wit it is not intended to be a substantially verbatim account — ws.
“The substance of her statement or conversation is that she was present working as a waitress and she saw Williams acting up in the grill during the early evening of Feb 9, 1963, and Mr. Butler the owner was there trying to quiet him down and told him to leave on several different occasions — and she saw him hit the old colored lady in the place too. She witnessed all of Williams bad conduct in the place at this time. Then when Hicklin came into the place — there was no words passed between them and she saw Williams pick up the bottle and hit Hicklin over his head with it and the bottle broke — and Williams held the jagged end of the bottle and stabbed and cut Hicklin with same on the side of his head — and when the jagged end of the bottle got too short from using it on Hicklin he,, Williams, picked up the Bar Stool and hit Hicklin who was then down on the floor, and when Williams hit Hicklin a second time with the bar stool Mr. Butler shot him with the pistol. And as Williams was crawling out the door after being shot he looked back and told Mr. Butler he was going to get him.
“Police were notified and responded and took charge of the situation.”
The question is whether summaries such as these, which do not purport to be substantially verbatim recitals of oral statements made by the witnesses and which indeed show by their terms they are not such recitals, are correctly classified by the majority as “statements” within the meaning of paragraph (2) of the statutory definition of that term.
With respect to the summaries, the trial judge made the following findings of fact after the hearing on remand:
“19. The evidence shows that the statements taken by Mr. Stitely were not substantially verbatim, but were merely Mr. Stitely's summary of the witnesses’ accounts of the crime and contained only the substance, essentials and highlights of the account. The statements were written in a third person narrative, and not in the language of witnesses Butler or Smith, except where quotation marks appear. Mr. Stitely never records anything that the witness does not say and never changes the witnesses’ wording where to do so would materially alter the purpose of the witnesses’ statement. It was not the intention of the Clerk to take full detailed statements, but *293only sufficient facts so that the Assistant United States Attorney appearing before the Grand Jury could make an orderly presentation.
“20. The statements of Mr. Butler and Mrs. Smith, as recorded by Mr. Stitely (Exhibits 3 and 4) were read to the witnesses at the hearing before this Court. Each witness testified that his respective statement represented the substance of what he had told Mr. Stitely. Mrs. Smith qualified her testimony by noting that her statement did not contain one item that she recalled she narrated to Mr. Stitely: the fact that Butler had fired a warning shot into the mirror prior to shooting Williams.”
By holding that the summaries are substantially verbatim recitals of the witnesses’ interviews with Stitely, the majority, in effect, say findings 19 and 20 are clearly erroneous, and substitute for them their own contrary findings. I suggest that no amount of analysis by the majority can show the above quoted summaries to be substantially verbatim recitals of the oral statements made to Stitely. My opinion is that the findings of the able and experienced trial judge are not clearly erroneous but clearly correct, and that, therefore, we are bound by them even though some of us would have made different findings from the evidence.
It will be observed that Mr. Stitely noted in each summary that “it is not intended to be a substantially verbatim account,” and appended his initials to the notes. His statement is amply borne out, as I have said, by the summaries themselves. Plainly, they contain simply the substance of the interviews as recorded in Stitely’s language — not that of the witnesses. The presence of the two brief sentences attributed by Stitely to the witness Butler emphasizes the fact that the remainder of the Butler summary — practically all of it — was not verbatim, or even substantially so.
“Verbatim” means “word for word” or “in the same words.” The adverb “substantially,” in the sense it is used in the term “substantially verbatim,” is defined thus:2
3
“4. In all essential characters or features; in regard to everything material; in essentials; to all intents and purposes; in the main.”
So, the statutory term “substantially verbatim” means “word for word in all essentials, in everything material, to all intents and purposes.” I suggest that one who reads the summaries with the foregoing definition in mind will realize immediately that they are not “substantially verbatim” recitals of oral statements made by the prospective witnesses.
That Congress did not intend the Jencks Act definition of the word “statement” to include documents such as are now being considered is shown by the legislative history of the Act. The Senate version of the bill extended the types of statements covered to include “transcriptions or records of oral statements” made by the witness to an agent of the Government. Had the legislation passed in that form, the Stitely summaries probably could be held to have been producible. But the bill did not pass in that form. The House conferees insisted that a document not signed or otherwise adopted or approved by the witness should not be a producible statement unless it were a substantially verbatim recital of an oral statement made by the witness. This appears in the following paragraph of the Conference Report made by the House managers:3
“Another difference discussed by the conferees concerned the provisions of the Senate bill, which extended the types of statements covered by the bill to include ‘transcriptions or records of oral statements’ made by the witness to an *294agent of the Government. To remove any doubt as to the kinds of statements affected by the bill as agreed to by the conferees, a new paragraph ‘e’ was added to the proposed section 3500 of title 18 of the United States Code expressly defining the term ‘statement’.”
So, the Senate definition of the word “statement” was rejected, and the much more restricted definition proposed by the House was included in the statute finally adopted. My colleagues push the Jencks Act much further than Congress intended. They construe it as though the definition of “statement” in the Senate version of the bill had become law. I think it quite clear that the summaries were not producible.
Having held that the District Court erred in refusing to require production of the summaries, the majority further hold that the error was not harmless like that in the Rosenberg case,4 but prejudiced appellant by depriving him “of the right effectively to conduct the defense as contemplated by the Jencks rule.” The majority’s idea that appellant was prejudiced is based solely on their statement that there were discrepancies between the summaries and the testimony of Butler and Smith given at the trial. I suppose they mean that, had the summaries been made available to appellant at the trial, he could have used them effectively in the cross-examination of Butler and Smith for impeachment purposes.
That might have been possible if there actually were discrepancies between the summaries and the testimony of the two witnesses. I have carefully compared the summaries with the trial testimony, and I find no discrepancies between them. To be sure, there are differences: the testimony was quite detailed, for it covers many pages of the reporter’s transcript, while each summary is on a single page. This was recognized by the trial judge in his finding that “Any discrepancies are attributable to the incomplete nature of the statements recorded by Mr. Stitely.”
A discrepancy would not have aided appellant in attempting to impeach Butler and Smith unless it had been more than a mere difference — unless it had amounted to a disagreement, a discordance, or a variance. None such appears here. The majority recite three differences between the summaries and the testimony which they say are “discrepancies”: (a) that the summaries said the appellant struck his victim twice with a bar stool, while the witnesses testified that he struck him only once with the stool; (b) that the summary of Butler’s irterview said appellant arrived at the bar “starting at 7 PM,” while he testified that it was “around about five o’clock”; (c) that Stitely’s summary of Butler’s interview said appellant was a trouble-maker, while Butler testified he had always liked appellant and had no grudge against him. These are points of difference but they are not discrepancies which could have enabled appellant to impeach Butler and Smith on cross-examination. The exact hour of appellant’s arrival at the bar and whether he struck his victim once or twice with the bar stool seem to me to be of little moment. And there is nothing inconsistent between Stitely’s Butler summary that appellant was a troublemaker, and Butler’s testimony that he had no grudge against him.
I find nothing substantial in the summaries which was not in the testimony of Butler and Smith at the trial. Hence, requiring production of the summaries would have given the appellant no information in addition to that which he obtained from the direct examination of the witnesses. That being true, the following language of Mr. Justice Frankfurter in the Rosenberg case, swpra, 360 U.S. at page 371, 79 S.Ct. at page 1234, is particularly applicable here:
“ * * * However, when the very same information was possessed by defendant’s counsel as would have been available were error not committed, it would offend common sense and the fair administration of jus*295tice to order a new trial. There is such a thing as harmless error and this clearly was such. * * * ”
The majority’s quotation from the Clancy case,5 which in turn quotes from the earlier Jencks case, does not help them; for here there was not only no flat contradiction between the summaries and the testimony, but also there was no omission from the summaries of salient facts related at the trial, no “contrast in emphasis upon the same facts,” and no “different order of treatment.” There is simply nothing in the Stitely summaries which would have aided in the cross-examining process of testing the credibility of trial testimony. Moreover, their Clancy quotation is a bit of obiter dictum, for the Supreme Court did not reach the harmless error point in that ease, as its opinion shows, 365 U.S. at page 316, 81 S.Ct. at page 648
“We put to one side Rosenberg v. United States, 360 U.S. 367, 79 S.Ct. 1231, 3 L.Ed.2d 1304, where a failure to produce a document was considered to be harmless error under the particular circumstances of that case. We do not reach the harmless error point because, if applicable, it is relevant only to the report of one of the agents, not to those of the other two. * * * (Emphasis added.)
But here, there was no information in the summaries which had not been obtained by the appellant from the direct testimony of the two witnesses, as I have said. As in the Rosenberg case, the information in the documents withheld was otherwise conveyed to the appellant. Hence, we cannot “put to one side” the Rosenberg case, as the Supreme Court did in the Clancy opinion. The particular circumstances which justified the Rosenberg ruling of harmless error are similar to the circumstances of this case.
On the question whether the appellant was prejudiced because the summaries were not made available to him, District Judge Schweinhaut made these specific findings of fact:
“23. The failure to produce Exhibits 3 and 4 for use of defense counsel during the trial was not prejudicial to defendant.
“24. The witnesses’ statements before Mr. Stitely, the Grand Jury, the petit jury and this Court are not significantly different. Any discrepancies are attributable to the incomplete nature of the statements recorded by Mr. Stitely.
“25. The evidence shows that impeachment of either witnesses Butler’s or Smith’s credibility at trial could not have been accomplished by the use of the statements (Exhibits #3 and 4).”
I think it significant that when the summaries were requested by the defendant at the trial, the judge examined them and said:
“ * * * They are written in summary form. That doesn’t come under the Jencks rule. I looked at them while I had it here, and none are in the first person, don’t purport to be the statement in the language of the witness. The story is the same in substance.”
Then, when counsel insisted that “being in the first person is only one of the criterion [sic],” the trial judge said:
“ * * * Here is what I think I better do, to save time, and it will serve your purpose. I will follow these statements as the witnesses testify. If I find anything inconsistent in this summary, I will let you know before you cross examine.”
Hence, the trial judge was thoroughly familiar with the summaries and testimony and carefully compared them. At the hearing after remand, he again compared the summaries with testimony given by the witnesses on three occasions, and thereupon made the findings quoted above. I suggest that they are correct and controlling.
*296As the majority discern discrepancies which would have made the summaries useful to appellant for impeachment purposes, they are rejecting the quoted findings as clearly erroneous. As I have said, my opinion is that the record shows them to be clearly correct, and so I must dissent on the prejudice point as well as the issue of producibility.
All the findings of fact made by the trial judge and the conclusions of law he drew therefrom, which I think are accurate and correct, should be examined in the consideration of this case. For that reason, I append to this dissent the complete text of the findings and conclusions.
Appendix
Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law
This matter having come before the Court on a remand from the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for further proceedings consistent with their opinion (Williams v. United States, 117 U.S.App.D.C. 206, 328 F.2d 178, decided December 12, 1963), evidence, testimony and argument by counsel having been adduced in open court, the Court makes the following Findings of Fact:
1. The defendant was convicted by a jury of assault with a dangerous weapon (22 D.C.Code 502) and sentenced to imprisonment for a period of two or six years. From that judgment he appealed.
2. The Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the cause for a hearing to determine whether the statements of Roy Thomas Butler and Mrs. Pauline Smith, transcribed by the Grand Jury Clerk should have been produced at trial in accordance with the Jencks Act, 18 U.S.C. 3500, and if so whether failure to so produce was prejudicial to the defendant.
3. A full hearing was held on Friday, January 24, 1964, at which the defendant was present in open court and represented by three able court-appointed counsel. Five witnesses appeared and testified in the following order: (1) Mr. Donald S. Smith, Assistant United States Attorney, (2) Mr. Wilmer R. Stitely, Chief Clerk in the Grand Jury Division of the United States Attorney’s Office, (3) Mr. Roy Thomas Butler, (4) Mrs. Pauline Smith, and (5) Mr. Robert X. Perry, Assistant United States Attorney.
4. Five documents were introduced and admitted into evidence as exhibits: (1) a blank Grand Jury Statement form No. USA-9x-65, (2) a blank Witness Attendance Certificate form No. USA-798, (3) the statement of Roy Thomas Butler, (4) the statement of Pauline Smith, and (5) the Government’s trial folder.
5. When a case is scheduled for presentation to the Grand Jury, all witnesses are ordered to report beforehand to the office of the United States Attorney, Grand Jury Division.
6. There, their statement is taken by the Chief Clerk of the Grand Jury, Mr. Wilmer R. Stitely, or by one of his two assistants.
7. Mr. Alexander L. Stevas, when Assistant United States Attorney in charge of the Grand Jury Division, instructed Mr. Stitely and his assistants to type on the statement, Form No. USA-9x-65, the following: “The following is a summary of the witness’ conversation not read to or by the witness. It is not intended to be a substantially verbatim account,” followed by his initials.
8. The clerk sees all witnesses in one case in a group, but takes their statements individually.
9. Mr. Stitely will usually either type the statement in full after the witness has completed his statement or type a portion of it after the witness has partially completed his statement, completing the statement after the witness has given the remainder. One of these procedures was followed in this case and the witnesses remained in Mr. Stitely’s office until he completed the statement he took from the witnesses.
10. The Assistant United States Attorney uses the statement as transcribed by the clerk to make an orderly presentation of the evidence to be offered through that witness to the Grand Jury.
*29711. The statements are taken by the Grand Jury Clerk for the following reasons:
(a) To aid the Assistant United States Attorney in presenting the ease to the Grand Jury in an orderly fashion;
(b) To enable the indictment writer to properly draft the indictment, without the necessity of requiring the transcription of the Grand Jury testimony;
(c) To enable the Assistant United States Attorney, who is assigned to try the case, to prepare and present it in Court. The statements are, on occasion, used to impeach the witness.
12. Mr. Robert X. Perry presented this case to the Grand Jury (Exhibit 5). Should any inconsistencies, which Mr. Perry deemed material, have come to his attention, he would have corrected them. Mr. Perry made the following corrections, relative to the statements in question:
(a) The symbol for the Greek letter delta was inserted to indicate the defendant in line 8 of the first long paragraph of Mr. Butler’s statement, next to the word “his”.
(b) The abbreviation “MS” was changed to “MF”.
13. In taking the statements it was not Mr. Stitely’s intention to record an account which would be “substantially verbatim.” By “substantially verbatim” he testified that he meant exactly identical.
14. Mr. Stitely has been employed by the United States Attorney’s Office, Grand Jury Division, as a clerk for the past 33 years. He is presently the Chief Clerk and has so been for the last five years. Mr. Stitely is a graduate of the National Law School. His civil service classification is GS-9. His principle duties are the taking of statements of witnesses prior to their testifying before the Grand Jury. Exhibits 3 and 4, in this case, were taken by Mr. Stitely.
15. Mr. Stitely corrected the statement of Mr. Butler (Exhibit 3), by changing the sentence “then at one time he threw a glass of beer on the floor and broke the bottle and glass” to the following: “then at one time he threw a glass of beer on the floor and the bottle too.” These were the only changes made by Mr. Stitely regarding Mr. Butler’s statement, and were made on the typewriter.
16. Where the witness used obscene language, Mr. Stitely used abbreviations.
17. The evidence shows that the statements (Exhibits #3 and 4), taken by Mr. Stitely, were not read to or by Mr. Butler or Mrs. Smith, nor were they seen or signed by either witness, nor in any way adopted or approved by them, prior to trial.
18. The evidence shows that none of the handwritten notations on either statement (Exhibits #3 and 4) were those of either Mr. Butler or Mrs. Smith, but were the notes of Mr. Stitely and Mr. Perry.
19. The evidence shows that the statements taken by Mr. Stitely were not substantially verbatim, but were merely Mr. Stitely’s summary of the witnesses accounts of the crime and contained only the substance, essentials and highlights of the account. 'The statements were written in a third person narrative, and not in the language of witnesses Butler or Smith, except where quotation marks appear. Mr. Stitely never records anything that the witness does not say and never changes the witnesses’ wording where to do so would materially alter the purport of the witnesses’ statement. It was not the intention of the Clerk to take full detailed statements, but only sufficient facts so that the Assistant United States Attorney appearing before the Grand Jury could make an orderly presentation.
20. The statements of Mr. Butler and Mrs. Smith, as recorded by Mr. Stitely (Exhibits #3 and 4) were read to the witnesses at the hearing before this Court. Each witness testified that his respective statement represented the substance of what he had told Mr. Stitely. Mrs. Smith qualified her testimony by noting that her statement did not contain *298one item that she recalled she narrated to Mr. Stitely: the fact that Butler had fired a warning shot into the mirror prior to shooting Williams.
21. The witnesses Smith and Butler testified at the hearing before this Court as to their version of the occurrences on the evening of the alleged crime.
' 22. In this case, the record of the statement which Mrs. Smith gave to Mr. Stitely (Exhibits #3 and 4) recites that it is the “substance” of her testimony.
23. The failure to produce Exhibits 3 and 4 for use of defense counsel during the trial was not prejudicial to defendant.
24. The witnesses statements before Mr. Stitely, the Grand Jury, the petit jury and this Court are not significantly different. Any discrepancies are attributable to the incomplete nature of the statements recorded by Mr. Stitely.
25. The evidence shows that impeachment of either witnesses Butler’s or .Smith’s credibility at trial could not have been accomplished by the use of the statements (Exhibits #3 and 4).
Wherefore, The Court concludes as a matter of law that:
1. The duty of determining whether or not statements are producible under the Jeneks Act rests upon the Court.
2. Neither of the statements was read to or by the witnesses or signed or otherwise adopted by them within the meaning of Subsection (e) (1) of the Jeneks Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3500, and thus were not producible at trial.
3. Both statements were “recorded contemporaneously” with their “making”, however, neither was “a substantially verbatim recital of an oral statement made by” the witness within the meaning of Subsection (e) (2) of the Jeneks Act, and thus were not producible at trial.
4. No pi'ejudice resulted to the defendant as a result of not having the statements at trial (assuming arguendo they were producible).
5. The judgment of conviction and sentence should stand.
/s/ H. A. Schweinhaut, Judge
Feb. 13,1964 Date

. 18 U.S.C. § 3500, 71 Stat. 595 (1957).

. The Oxford English Dictionary, v. X (1933).

. 2 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News, p. 1870 (85th Cong., 1st Sess. 1957).

. Rosenberg v. United States, 360 U.S. 367, 79 S.Ct. 1231, 3 L.Ed.2d 1304 (1959).

. Clancy v. United States, 365 U.S. 312, 81 S.Ct. 645, 5 L.Ed.2d 574 (1961).