Court Opinion

ID: 9462962
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:54:28.472535+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:52.007968
License: Public Domain

EDWARDS, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
Although I agree with the result reached by my colleagues in this case, I do not travel exactly the same route to decision.
It seems to me that all of the facts in this case would point to affirmance of the judgment of conviction if it were not for there being a genuine doubt about the continuing validity of appellant’s waiver of a jury trial after the reversal and remand of the case by the District Court, as detailed in the majority opinion. It is true, of course, that the form which appellant signed states specifically that he consents “to be prosecuted before the Magistrate on the charge herein^ before stated.” On balance I am inclined to agree with my colleagues that signing of such a printed form does not of and by itself necessarily constitute a fully knowledgeable voluntary waiver, not only of a right to a jury trial in the first instance, but also a continuing waiver of any right to a jury trial upon the occasion of any new trial in the same proceeding.
I do not consider the rules and case law cited by the majority opinion to be controlling of the result arrived at. If they were the sole authority relied upon, I would feel *611that Rule 7 of the Magistrates Rules, and Rule 33 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure would tend to counterbalance them in the opposite direction.
The fact, however, that the right to a jury trial is a constitutional right directly applicable in this federal trial and that the waiver relied upon is contained in ambiguous language on a printed form at that, causes me to join in the majority’s result.
A waiver form stating a defendant’s consent to be prosecuted (and in the event of a new trial to be reprosecuted) before the Magistrate could, of course, be easily devised to cure the problem.