Court Opinion

ID: 9482584
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:54:56.532333+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:05.341187
License: Public Domain

KENNEDY, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the majority of the panel that we should grant rehearing in this case since the record affirmatively shows that the judge’s comments were not within the jury’s hearing. I write separately because I believe we erred in our earlier holding, since withdrawn, that we would presume the jury overheard a sidebar conference in the absence of evidence to the contrary.
The purpose of a sidebar conference is for counsel and the judge to confer without the jury being privy to what is said. When the jury does hear, it is because the procedure has failed in its purpose and the jury has heard what the court intended it should not. To presume that is what occurred is to presume the district court failed to conduct the sidebar conference as it should be conducted. We do not ordinarily presume error.
I believe our earlier decision in United States v. Smith, 928 F.2d 740 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 112 S.Ct. 159, 116 L.Ed.2d 124 (1991), rejected the proposition advanced by the majority of the panel. In Smith, the trial judge first criticized the defendant’s counsel for his argument in the presence of the jury, and then further criticized him at a sidebar conference. We said:
Further it is evident that, to the extent the trial judge’s comments were otherwise objectionable, they were made in the main at the sidebar and therefore out of hearing of the jury. By the court reporter’s characterization of the event, we have no reason to believe that the statements which occurred at the sidebar were actually heard by the jury and therefore its verdict could only have been improperly influenced, if at all, by the relatively brief colloquy which occurred in its presence.... [T]he comments of the trial judge actually made in the presence of the jury did not rise to that element of reversible error, especially since the record seems to have been singularly free of similar incidents elsewhere in the course of trial.
What defense counsel would have us believe, however, is that the statements made by the trial judge at the sidebar conference were not only improper but were also, to his client’s prejudice, heard by the jury. In that presumption we may not indulge.
Id. at 742-43.
Two other circuits have required the complaining party to establish that disparaging remarks by the trial judge were heard by the jury. See United States v. Block, 755 F.2d 770 (11th Cir.1985); Harris v. United States, 367 F.2d 633, 636 (1st *126Cir.1966), cert. denied, 386 U.S. 915, 87 S.Ct. 862, 17 L.Ed.2d 787 (1967).
The majority acknowledges the usefulness of sidebar conferences. Judges have been using them for years with very few complaints. When there is a problem, the aggrieved party has a remedy — it can raise the issue by a contemporaneous objection and move for a voir dire inquiry, a mistrial or a new trial. The presumption adopted by the majority is contrary to the manner in which error is ordinarily established and addressed.
Yet, if you presume error, although there has been neither a contemporaneous objection nor a motion for mistrial, the party who does not claim the remarks were overheard is required to ask for a voir dire inquiry to establish that the sidebar conference was not heard by the jury. That party may not even know that the opposing party claims the comments were overheard until the issue is raised on appeal. The only certain way to avoid the problem will be to excuse the jury in every instance in which a sidebar conference is needed. Requiring that the jury be removed every time a judge makes a sidebar ruling that the jury should not hear seems to me unwarranted. The jury will be more prejudiced by being excused and speculating what happened in its absence than observing a quiet remark to counsel at the sidebar. We should leave to the trial court’s discretion whether to excuse the jury or conduct a conference at sidebar and should require a party claiming error to establish that error.