Court Opinion

ID: 9449174
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 00:00:04.482841+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:44.908253
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(concurring in the result).
We seem generally unwilling to upset convictions when the Jencks Act, 18 U. S.C. § 3500, has not been scrupulously observed by the prosecution and the trial court. This tendency is disturbing. Several doctrinal devices have been developed to this end, such as that enunciated in United States v. Annunziato, 2 Cir., 293 F.2d 373, 382, cert. denied Annunziato v. United States, 368 U.S. 919, 82 S.Ct. 240, 7 L.Ed.2d 134, that it is only “harmless error” not to produce a statement which appears to “corroborate” a witness’s testimony, or in United States v. Simmons, 2 Cir., 281 F.2d 354, 357-358, and the present case that the defense is not entitled to statements relating to purely incidental or collateral aspects of a witness’s testimony, or in United States v. Aviles, 2 Cir., 315 F.2d 186, that the defense is not entitled to statements not sufficiently exact, though to the district judge “probably verbatim,” recitals of the witness’s oral statements. By employing one or more of these doctrinal devices the court is enabled to affirm an appealed conviction. Nevertheless this means that the speculation of the trial court is again being substituted for the judgment of defense counsel in assessing a statement’s worth as an aid to cross-examination. It is *617this very evil which the Supreme Court has continually repudiated. See Scales v. United States, 367 U.S. 203, 258, 81 S.Ct. 1469, 6 L.Ed.2d 782; Palermo v. United States, 360 U.S. 343, 346, 79 S.Ct. 1217, 3 L.Ed.2d 1287; Jencks v. United States, 353 U.S. 657, 668-669, 77 S.Ct. 1007, 1 L.Ed.2d 1103. But these doctrinal devices for achieving affirmance in the face of Jencks Act noncompliances are sufficiently entrenched that exception should not be made in individual cases and correction must come from the Supreme Court. Thus I reluctantly concur in the affirmances here noted. I concur in the reversals of the Harris and Kaminsky convictions and in the opinion so far as it relates to these matters.