Court Opinion

ID: 9476724
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:03:33.892546+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:28.364370
License: Public Domain

KEARSE, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the affirmance of the judgment of conviction but write separately to emphasize that the district court’s supplemental instruction to the jury clearly did contain error that should be avoided.
As Judge Van Graafeiland’s opinion notes, the trial judge’s supplemental instruction on intimidation included a synopsis of two appellate court opinions in which threats of violence were held sufficient to constitute intimidation. Thus, after giving the jury instruction as to the legal standards with regard to proof of intimidation, *326the court described the cases to the jury in this way:
Now, all I have further on that that doesn’t disturb that law at all but we have a decision out of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit which is the higher court that — the highest court in this Circuit in which we sit and that sits in New York City and there, and I read this quickly from the part of the decision which is United States versus Lawrence reported in 618 Fed 2d 986, and this is at page 987, the judge there, Judge L[u]mbard, of the Circuit Court of Appeals said the evidence of intimidation is clear and convincing although Lawrence being the defendant in that case used no force or violence, he said to the bank teller, quote, I don’t want to see you or anyone else get hurt, unquote. He passed a note to the teller demanding money in certain denominations and asked, quote, do you understand what I mean, unquote. Such actions are sufficient to constitute intimidation within the statute.
The trial judge went on to describe at length a similar ruling “by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in other words one in another part of the country.”
Although the court ended its supplemental instruction by stating that the issue was really one for the jury to decide, its use of the Second and Eighth Circuit cases was improper for several reasons. First, informing the jury that a court has found similar evidence sufficient invites the jury, which will ordinarily be respectful of and deferential to the views of a court, to convict because that learned entity has done so. The jury should not be urged to do other than to decide its own view of the facts on the basis of the evidence before it and to apply to those facts the law as instructed by the trial court. Second, the improper invitation to defer to judicial evaluations of similar evidence was underscored when the trial court identified the courts in its illustration as “the highest in this Circuit,” and the (to be inferred) equally high ranking Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Third, the trial court’s use of circuit court decisions as illustrations was totally inapt because the appellate standard of review of the sufficiency of evidence to support a conviction requires that the evidence be viewed in the light most favorable to the government. A jury is not required to view the evidence in this light.
Although I agree with the majority that in the present case the error in the charge on intimidation was harmless, viewed both in light of the charge as a whole and in light of the jury’s finding that the defendant had brandished a gun, which is itself intimidating, I think it important to emphasize that trial courts should simply avoid instructing the jury that other judicial entities have found similar evidence sufficient to convict and especially that appellate courts have found similar evidence sufficient to sustain a conviction on appeal.
MAHONEY, Circuit Judge:
I concur in both Judge Van Graafeiland’s and Judge Kearse’s opinions.