Court Opinion

ID: 9470287
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:01:34.481525+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:49.332204
License: Public Domain

ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
“Put simply, the right to be tried by a jury of one’s peers finally exacted from the *178king would be meaningless if the king’s judges could call the turn.” United States v. Spook, 416 F.2d 165, 181 (1st Cir.1969) (footnote omitted). In this case the district judge called the turn by instructing the jury that the government had proved an essential and contested element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Because I think that his refusal to submit that issue to the jury violated the defendant’s sixth amendment guarantee of a trial by an impartial jury, I respectfully dissent.
My brothers reach what I consider the wrong result because they define the question improperly. They focus on the distinction between “questions of fact” and “questions of law,” assuming that these are distinct and definitive categories and that every issue can be classified as one or the other. For them, whether a particular piece of paper is a security is a “question of law” and, therefore, the judge may decide it. In effect, the court holds that, despite dispute, the judge may direct a verdict on a “legal” issue.
My view of the case is different. The issue before us is neither the distinction between “fact” and “law” questions nor the correctness of characterizing a particular question as one or the other. It is the respective province of judge and jury in a criminal trial.
The judge’s role in a criminal trial is to instruct the jury about the law and the jury’s function is to render a verdict. While the jury must apply the judge’s instructions to the evidence before it, the sixth amendment guarantee of trial by an impartial jury assures that the jury will not be relegated to deciding only questions that judges think to be factual. The jury in a criminal trial does not answer interrogatories and it does not “find” facts; it decides whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty.
My brothers fail to take into account the different functions of judge and jury. By focusing instead on the elusive distinction between “questions of fact” and “questions of law,” they permit the trial judge to instruct the jury that the defendant committed an essential element of the crime charged.
In the first jury trial conducted in the United States Supreme Court, Chief Justice Jay, after stating that the facts were undisputed and giving the Court’s unanimous opinion about the law, nevertheless reminded the jurors:
[O]n questions of fact, it is the province of the jury, on questions of law, it is the province of the court, to decide. But it must be observed, that by the same law, which recognizes this reasonable distribution of jurisdiction, you have, nevertheless, a right to take upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy.
Georgia v. Brailsford, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 1, 4,1 L.Ed. 483 (1794) (footnotes omitted; civil case).
In 1835, Justice Story, sitting on circuit, affirmed that principle, charging the jury that they “are no more judges of the law in a capital or other criminal case, upon the plea of not guilty, than they are in every civil case .... In each of these cases, their verdict, when general, is necessarily compounded of law and of fact; and includes both. In each they must necessarily determine the law, as well as the fact .... ”
Justice Story continued: “It is the duty of the court to instruct the jury as to the law; and it is the duty of the jury to follow the law, as it is laid down by the court ... If the jury were at liberty to settle the law for themselves ... the law itself would be most uncertain ... [and] in case of error ... the court would not have any right to review the law as it had been settled by the jury.” United States v. Battiste, 24 Fed. Cas. 1042, 1043 (C.C.D.Mass.1835) (No. 14,-545). But, as the quotation shows, the jury rendered the verdict, not the judge. Justice Story recognized that any jury verdict necessarily includes the application of instructions given by the court to the facts in the case.
As a contemporary author explains it: There is considerable misunderstanding in the minds of the general public regard*179ing provisions making a jury the judge of fact and not of law. This misunderstanding is attributable in large part to the inaccuracy of the general rule that juries decide only the facts. This is an inaccurate expression because it leaves the impression that juries are not judges of the law at any time or in any sense. Juries are always judges of the law in the sense that juries must pass on the manner and the extent in which the law expounded by the judge fits the facts brought out in the evidence. This process requires juries to perform the legal function of interpretation and application. In the absence of express authority, however, juries are not judges of the law in determining what principle of law is applicable to the evidence.
S. McCart, Trial by Jury 116-17 (1965) (emphasis in original).
Johnson’s judge became Johnson’s jury. He did not merely instruct the jury on the legal principles applicable to this case. He went further and told the jurors how those principles had to be applied to the facts. He directed a verdict on a crucial issue, whether the government had proved an essential element of the crime charged.
In SEC v. C.M. Joiner Leasing Corp., 820 U.S. 344, 355, 64 S.Ct. 120, 125, 88 L.Ed. 88, 95 (1943), Justice Jackson stated for the Supreme Court: “It would be necessary in any case for any kind of relief to prove that documents being sold were securities under the Act. In some cases it might be done by proving the document itself, which on its face would be a note, a bond, or a share of stock. In others the proof must go outside the instrument .... Where the proof is offered ... in a criminal case, it would have to meet the ... requirement of satisfying the jury beyond a reasonable doubt.” (emphasis added).
Without citing Joiner Leasing we applied its precept in United States v. Roe, 287 F.2d 435 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 368 U.S. 824, 82 S.Ct. 43, 7 L.Ed.2d 29 (1961). That case, I say with respect for my brothers’ unsuccessful effort to circumnavigate it, is indistinguishable from this one. The defendant in Roe was charged with illegal sale and delivery of unregistered securities. See 15 U.S.C. § 77e(a)(l), (2) (1976). He first contended that, as a matter of law, the sale of an entire mineral lease in real property could never constitute the sale of a “security” under the Act. The court rejected this argument on the ground that mineral leases generally could be investment contracts, hence securities. 287 F.2d at 440. The defendant then argued that, even if mineral leases could be “securities,” the particular oil leases involved in his case were not. We agreed with his contention that this question should have been submitted to the jury, stating:
By its very nature, it' is the peculiar facts of the setting which turns [sic] the offer from a mere sale of property into a sale of a security. That means that the ... jury, must determine the issue. More than that, this being a criminal ease ... no fact, not even an undisputed fact, may be determined by the Judge. The plea of not guilty puts all in issue, even the most patent truths. In our federal system, the Trial Court may never instruct a verdict either in whole or in part.
And yet, that is substantially what the Trial Judge did here on the crucial issue of whether these were investment contracts. He instructed them flatly and without equivocation that they were.
Id. at 440 (citations and footnotes omitted).
Roe controls this case. It binds us because it is the law of the circuit; our circuit should adhere to it because, as Joiner Leasing indicates, it is right.
My brothers make no effort to show that the Supreme Court’s statement in Joiner is inapplicable. They avoid Roe on the ground that appellate courts have held that, as a matter of law, such documents as quitclaim deeds and equipment leases are securities. This misses the mark. Those cases simply follow Roe’s first precept, that the court must determine whether it is legally possible for a generic class of documents to fit within the statutory definition of a “se*180curity.”1 They do not hold that a particular document that is within a generic class must be a security or that the court may so instruct the jury.
The appellate decisions interpreting the jury’s province do not, of course, speak with one voice, and my brethren correctly note the disharmony. Some decisions support my understanding. See United States v. Heller, 635 F.2d 848, 856-57 (Em.App.1980) (court could not instruct jury that comparability of outlet had been established as a matter of law); United States v. Benedetto, 558 F.2d 171, 176-77 (3d Cir.1977) (court could not instruct jury that loans were “loanshark loans” as a matter of law); Greenfield v. United States, 341 F.2d 411, 412-13 (D.C.Cir.1964) (per curiam) (court could not instruct jury that pop bottle was dangerous weapon as a matter of law); DeCecco v. United States, 338 F.2d 797, 798 (1st Cir.1964) (court could not instruct jury that defendant had failed to pay wagering tax as a matter of law). Others support the majority’s position. See United States v. Guy, 456 F.2d 1157 (8th Cir.) (obligations of the United States as a matter of law), cert. denied, 409 U.S. 896, 93 S.Ct. 136, 34 L.Ed.2d 153 (1972); United States v. Morris, 451 F.2d 969, 972-73 (8th Cir.1971) (“in federal custody” as a matter of law); United States v. Briddle, 443 F.2d 443, 447 (8th Cir.) (property of the United States as a matter of law), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 942, 92 S.Ct. 291, 30 L.Ed.2d 256 (1971); United States v. Jackson, 436 F.2d 39, 41-42 (9th Cir.1970) (government property as a matter of law), cert. denied, 403 U.S. 906, 91 S.Ct. 2209, 29 L.Ed.2d 682 (1971); United States v. Parisi, 365 F.2d 601 (6th Cir.1966) (bonded warehouse as a matter of law), vacated on other grounds sub nom. O’Brien v. United States, 386 U.S. 345, 87 S.Ct. 1158, 18 L.Ed.2d 94 (1967); Guy v. United States, 336 F.2d 595, 597 (4th Cir.1964) (per curiam) (apparatus was a still as a matter of law). The other cases referred to by the majority, in which the defendant did not contest the court’s taking an issue from the jury on the premise that the question was one of law, prove no more than that we do not note error in the absence of appeal and that appellate courts may indeed err when they pass lightly over an uneontested issue.
Discord in the precedents provides all the more reason to look to principle. In criminal cases, the court simply may not direct a verdict on any disputed issue. The inquiry is not “when does the definition of security, normally a question of law, become so intimately connected with the facts of a criminal case that a jury’s resolution is necessary in order to comply with the Sixth Amendment?” Majority op., at 168. The real question is: when may the judge in a criminal case take a disputed issue from the jury and decide it himself? My answer is categorical: never.
Omitting only its decorative elements, the majority opinion reproduces the document in question, which was literally not worth the paper on which it was printed. Majority op., at 165-166 n. 2. The document purports to be a promise to deliver 17,000 troy ounces (1,416% troy pounds) of gold for an unspecified price. Whether this piece of paper, which auditors refused to accept as having any ascertainable value, was a security was assuredly a more difficult and more controverted question than whether it was transmitted in interstate commerce when Johnson travelled by commercial air*181plane from Dallas, Texas, to California with “the document in hand.” Yet the uncontroverted interstate transportation issue was submitted to the jury, properly I contend, and my brethren apparently agree. The security issue, more elusive, disputed, and turning on the evidence adduced in court and not on definitions in a law book, the majority says not only could but, by necessary inference, must be taken from the jury and decided by the judge. If, indéed, it were appropriate to distinguish questions of law and of fact, the distinction would be: the definition of a security is a matter of law; whether this piece of paper with its elaborately embossed margin and its promise of 1416 pounds of gold is a security is a question of fact.
The jury’s function is “the independent determination of the facts, and the application of the law ... to the facts .. .. ” 2 C. Wright, Federal Practice and Procedure § 485, at 711 (2d ed. 1982) (emphasis added). Therefore, the jury charge should be a statement of the parties’ claims, “the issues of fact that the jury must decide, and the applicable law .... ” Id. (emphasis added).
The trial judge in this case did not confine himself to instructing the jury about applicable legal principles. He usurped the jury’s province on a critical issue and applied the law to the facts as he understood them. What the sovereign is barred from taking from the jury by autocratic command, its judges may not themselves arrogate.
I respectfully dissent.
ON SUGGESTION FOR REHEARING EN BANC
Before CLARK, Chief Judge, BROWN, GEE, RUBIN, REAVLEY, POLITZ, RANDALL, TATE, JOHNSON, WILLIAMS, GARWOOD, JOLLY and HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judges.
BY THE COURT:
A member of the Court in active service having requested a poll on the application for rehearing en bane and a majority of the judges in active service having voted in favor of granting a rehearing en banc,
IT IS ORDERED that the cause shall be reheard by the Court en banc with oral argument on a date hereafter to be fixed. The Clerk will specify a briefing schedule for the filing of supplemental briefs.

. A security is:
[A]ny note, stock certificate, bond, debenture, check, draft, warrant, traveler’s check, letter of credit, warehouse receipt, negotiable bill of lading, evidence of indebtedness, certificate of interest or participation in any profit-sharing agreement, collateral-trust certificate, preorganization certificate or subscription, transferable share, investment contract, voting-trust certificate; certificate of interest in property, tangible or intangible; instrument or document or writing evidenc-
ing ownership of goods, wares, and merchandise, or transferring or assigning any right, title, or interest in or to goods, wares, and merchandise; or, in general, any instrument commonly known as a “security”, or any certificate or interest or participation in, temporary or interim certificate for, receipt for, warrant, or right to subscribe to or purchase any of the foregoing, or any forged, counterfeited, or spurious representation of any of the foregoing.
18 U.S.C. § 2311 (1976).