Court Opinion

ID: 9466237
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:09:20.495114+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:37.222303
License: Public Domain

KENNEDY, Circuit Judge
(with whom EUGENE A. WRIGHT, SNEED, CHOY and HUG, Circuit Judges, concur), dissenting in part to and concurring in part with en banc opinion:
This court should begin to question whether its attempts to devise new and further refinements for the criminal procedure system serve in any real sense to secure a fair and just trial. I doubt the new procedures concerning rule 609(a)(1) suggested by part IV of the majority opinion will be efficacious; and I fear that the maneuvers required, at least implicitly, by this part of the decision will simply complicate trials without affording real advantages, except to defendants who are looking for ways to manufacture erroneous trial court rulings. I respectfully suggest that both the premises and the conclusions of the court’s arguments in part IV of the opinion are incorrect.
The majority’s analysis is built on the assumption that defendants will be put to an extremely difficult choice unless they are permitted to appeal a ruling that prior convictions are admissible without taking the stand to testify. In my view the evil the majority seeks to avoid is not as serious as the majority thinks it to be. Moreover, the procedures devised merely replace one choice with another, without significantly increasing the fairness to the defendant.
Turning first to the majority’s theory of coercion, analysis shows that any coercive effect will exist only in close cases. If a *1189prior conviction is inadmissible and its erroneous introduction may have affected the outcome, a defendant found guilty will prevail on appeal, so he has no reason to remain silent in reliance upon an adverse ruling. And if introducing the evidence is error yet harmless, then the defendant should take the stand, for to remain silent in reliance on a harmless ruling is pointless. In either of these events, not being able to appeal an advance ruling without taking the stand does not increase the difficulty of the defendant’s decision, and any argument based on coercion is misplaced. If it is objected that in close cases the defendant cannot easily determine admissibility, the answer is that the issue will not be resolved definitively until the final stage on appeal. The uncertainty should be borne by both parties, and it ought not be eliminated from the proceeding merely by the device of an advance ruling by the trial court.
The majority attempts to answer this concern about whether the defendant really felt coerced by requiring a preruling statement from the defendant or his counsel that the defendant intends to testify. However, such statements often will be futile, if not outright charades. Both the Supreme Court and this circuit have recognized that the actual conduct of the trial is a significant, and legitimate, factor in a defendant’s election to testify or remain silent. Brooks v. Tennessee, 406 U.S. 605, 92 S.Ct. 1891, 32 L.Ed.2d 358 (1972); United States v. Phillips, 575 F.2d 1265 (9th Cir. 1978). The defendant may wish to evaluate the prosecution case and defense witnesses before making the decision to claim this privilege. Before this opinion, I should have thought a defendant has the absolute right to do so. Moreover, both the prosecution and the defense are free to change their strategy as the trial goes forth. United States v. Phillips, supra. At the outset of the trial, a defendant in good faith may intend to testify, but it may be quite reasonable for him to change his mind after considering the course taken by the evidence. All of us know a defendant may tell a brave story to his counsel only to succumb to fear once the full weight of the prosecution’s case becomes apparent. In these instances a defendant and his counsel often elect to invoke the self-incrimination privilege despite an earlier plan to testify. Thus, a defendant cannot be bound by any pretrial statement of election; in fact, it would appear to be unconstitutional to do so. See Brooks v. Tennessee, supra. There is absolutely nothing to guarantee the sincerity of such pretrial assurances, and even when statements of election are given in good faith, they may be based on fictional assumptions. Under the court’s holding we will be reviewing preliminary rulings made on speculations that bear little relation to what actually occurred at the trial. If we think that the trial court’s 609(aXl) ruling under these artificial conditions is error, we will be reversing in cases when the defendant would not have taken the stand in any event.
Unfortunately, the illogic of the court’s reasoning on coercion does not end here. There is no reason why a defendant who makes the choice to remain silent after an advance ruling should be positioned better because of the uncertainties resulting from an undeveloped record than a defendant in a case where the trial court finds it necessary to defer decision until the defendant has given his direct testimony. Yet that result follows from the majority’s reasoning.
It is true that the First Circuit, in a recent case reaching the same result as the majority, recognized this anomaly. That court seems to accept it with little hesitation, but the fact that there is precedent does not explain the inconsistency. United States v. Hickey, 596 F.2d 1082 (1st Cir. 1979). The First Circuit noted that if the district court had postponed ruling until it had heard the defendant testify, that would have forced the defendant to “take the stand at his peril.” Nonetheless, the panel concluded that such a course would have been well within the district court’s discretion. If the majority accepts the approach of the First Circuit, then despite its protestations about coercion and putting the defendant to hard choices, it is fully prepared *1190to force the defendant to “take the stand at his peril.”
There is no authority for saying that the defendant has a right to demand this advance ruling or that it is proper for us to require it. Rule 12 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure seems to prohibit that conclusion. Rule 12(b) permits pretrial motions for matters “capable of determination without trial of the general issue.” A sensible interpretation of that rule would exclude from its provisions pretrial motions to suppress prior convictions if an informed decision requires hearing the defendant’s testimony. Assuming such motions come within rule 12(b) as a general matter, rule 12(e) expressly permits a trial court to defer ruling “for good cause.” I should think there is always good cause for deferral if a trial court finds it necessary or appropriate to have the defendant’s testimony before ruling on the admissibility of the conviction.
In an attempt to side-step this dilemma, the majority offers the reminder that advance rulings help both parties to plan. I offer the counter balancing reminder that in close cases the trial court may be well advised to defer ruling on motions to exclude prior convictions until after the defendant has testified on direct. That is the time at which the probative value of the conviction can be balanced against its prejudicial effect with the most care and precision. Without the benefit of the defendant’s actual testimony, the trial court, and this court in reviewing its ruling, can only speculate on that testimony. I find this a hard exercise, even on the simple speculations made in the case before us. Moreover, it seems to me that the majority’s reliance on speculations leads to a further anomaly in its opinion. On the one hand, the majority concludes that erroneous rulings on the admissibility of prior convictions are capable of causing great mischief by coercing the defendant not to testify; yet on the other hand, the majority is perfectly satisfied to have the district court base this important ruling on completely undocumented speculation that the defendant might “palm himself off as a peace-loving member of the American Friends Service Committee.”
In my view the majority concludes too easily that this evidence would have been offered for its bearing on veracity and not to show that the defendant was a bad man who likely committed the act. It is a standard assumption that prior convictions are introduced for the noble purpose, not the forbidden one. Myth or not, perhaps there is absolution for this practice since the theory is sanctified by the Rules of Evidence. However, to mandate the trial court’s decision on this troublesome question prior to the defendant’s testimony means that both the trial court’s ruling and our review will be done in the dark much of the time.
In fairness, the majority has recognized the problems of relying on mere speculation, and its solution to the problem is to require the defendant to outline his testimony in advance. Assuming the constitutionality of this new procedure, an issue as to which I have substantial reservations, the device is a poor one indeed. The result is that the defendant will now be presented with a different, but equally difficult, choice to make. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure do not permit extensive discovery to reveal the defendant’s theory of the case, except for two well defined exceptions requiring notice of an alibi, Fed. R.Crim.P. 12.1 and notice of defense based on mental condition, Fed.R.Crim.P. 12.2. The difficult choice confronting the defendant under the majority view is that if he wishes to exclude a prior conviction, he must be willing to reveal to the judge and the prosecution what his testimony will be before the trial begins.
Aside from the issue of whether this requirement is constitutional and fair to the defendant, the question which troubles me the most is whether the new rule is a sufficient advance over the old practice to justify its added procedural complications. The new procedure does not avoid the difficult choices; it simply presents the defendant with a different decision, perhaps even a more difficult one than he previously had. I do not believe our new rule significantly *1191advances the fairness or integrity of our criminal process or that we have the authority to adopt it.
New Jersey v. Portash, 440 U.S. 450, 99 S.Ct. 1292, 59 L.Ed.2d 501 (1979), cited for the majority, is hardly an endorsement for the result reached here. Writing for the Court, Mr. Justice Stewart made it clear that the constitutional implications of the pretrial ruling were considered only because the state court system had done so. The Court stated, “federal law does not insist that New Jersey was wrong in not requiring Portash to take the witness stand in order to raise its constitutional claim.” Id. at 456, 99 S.Ct. at 1295 (footnote omitted). The question in the case before us is not whether the defendant has penetrated within the zone of a permissible case or controversy under article III; the issue is, rather, what are the most sensible requirements for establishing prejudice where evidence of prior convictions is erroneously ruled admissible in a federal trial. In Por-tash, Mr. Justice Powell, concurring, voiced explicit objection to the practice now sanctioned by our court. He stated:
The preferred method for raising claims such as Portash’s would be for the defendant to take the stand and appeal a subsequent conviction, if — following a claim of immunity — the prosecutor were allowed to use immunized testimony for impeachment. Only in this way may the claim be presented to a reviewing court in a concrete factual context. Moreover, requiring that the claim be presented only by those who have taken the stand will prevent defendants with no real intention of testifying from creating artificial constitutional challenges to their convictions.
Id. at 462, 99 S.Ct. at 1299 (footnote omitted). In dissenting, Mr. Justice Blackmun found the practice so deficient that it did not present anything but a dispute that was “too remote and speculative to enable this Court to adjudicate it.” Id. at 463, 99 S.Ct. at 1299.
In light of these expressions, I am somewhat surprised that our court would permit such a dubious procedure, much less recommend it as a preferred practice for the, trial courts of this circuit. I would affirm the conviction but for reasons quite different from those stated in part IV of the majority opinion.