Court Opinion

ID: 9642020
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:46:00.63369+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:42.150737
License: Public Domain

WILBUR, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
With reference to the sole question presented in the briefs and opinion, the first argument of this case last discussed in the opinion by Judge RUDKIN, I am satisfied that the error complained of was not prejudicial, and was cured by the court’s instruction to the jury to disregard the evidence as to the statements of the prosecutrix giving the name of her assailant. Upon the question as to whether or not the jury could return a verdict without agreeing upon the penalty, I am unable to concur in the conclusion of the majority. I concede that the interpretation placed upon the act of Congress therein quoted with relation to the qualification by the jury of their verdict of guilty is more merciful and perhaps more desirable than the interpretation placed thereon by the trial court, which I believe to be the correct interpretation. As the matter is of great importance not only to the defendant but in the administration of the criminal laws of the United Státes, I will briefly state my reason for my conclusion:
The punishment of death for rape was imposed by early legislation of the federal government. Act of March 3, 1825, c. 65, § 4, 4 Stat. 115. In 1897 Congress enacted a law to do away with capital punishment in many cases an dto authorize the jury to avoid the infliction of capital punishment, in the event that it so desired. 29 Stat. 487. This statute, so far as it relates to the appeal under consideration, is quoted in the opinion of Judge RUDKIN. This act is unique in form, in that it does not purport to change the punishment for rape established by law, but, on the contrary, permits the jury to return a qualified verdict by adding the words “without capital punishment” to the verdict of guilty. In that event, the above-mentioned act directs that the court shall sentence the defendant to hard labor for life. 29 Stat. 487, § 1, supra.
Section 5339, Revised Statutes, imposed the punishment of death upon “Every person who commits murder — First. Within any fort, arsenal, dock-yard, magazine, or in any other place or district of country under the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States * * and section 5345 provides that: “Every person who, within any of the places or upon any of the waters specified in section fifty-three hundred and thirty-nine, commits the crime of rape shall suffer death.” Rev. St. U. S. (2d Ed.) 1878, p. 1038.
It will be observed that by the terms of this statute of 1897 the punishment is not fixed by the jury, but is fixed by the law, at death, with power on the part of the jury to ameliorate that punishment, if it should so recommend. In view of the fact that the function of the jury is to determine the facts, and in a criminal case to determine whether or not the evidence is sufficient, under the law, to establish the guilt of the defendant, it must be clear that the right accorded to the jury by the statute of 1897 in a case of this sort was the right or power to restrict tho punishment to life imprisonment, thus giving to its recommendation for mercy the force of a legislative enactment in the particular ease pending before the jury. In order to do this, it is clear, it must act in the only way in which a jury can act under our system, that is, as a unit, and it can only act as a unit when the twelve members agree. While this law has been in effect for thirty-three years, no decisions have been cited in which the question has been raised or decided, and we have found none. In Mississippi, a somewhat similar provision of the law of that state has been construed to require a unanimous agreement of the jury upon the ameliorating punishment, in order to make it effective, and it has there been held that the jury is bound to rectum a verdict as to the guilt of the defendant, even if it eould not agree upon the qualifying recommendation. Fleming v. State, 60 Miss. 434; Green v. State, 55 Miss. 454. In California the jury, by an early enactment (an act to amend section 190, Pen. Code, approved March 28, 1874, Amendments to the Codes, 1873-74, p. 457), was given the dis*522cretion to impose the death penalty or to fix imprisonment for life. By decision shortly thereafter (1874), People v. Welch, 49 Cal. 174, this law was interpreted to be the equivalent of a law vesting in the jury discretion to ameliorate the punishment from death to life imprisonment; the effect of this being that, if the jury agreed upon the guilt of the defendant, but could not agree upon the penalty, they in effect determined that the defendant must suffer the death penalty. This construction is manifest in the decision of People v. French (Cal. Sup.) 7 P. 822 (opinion filed August 29, 1885) and on rehearing 69 Cal. 169, 10 P. 378 (opinion filed March 26, 1886). Over fifty years later, however, the California Supreme Court held that the statute vested in the jury the discretion to fix the punishment at death or life imprisonment, and that a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree, without fixing the punishment either directly or by implication, was insufficient to justify a jtidgment; consequently, where the jury agreed upon the guilt of the defendant, but disagreed as to the penalty, the conviction must be set aside. People v. Hall, 199 Cal. 451, 249 P. 859. So far as these California decisions bear upon the subject, it will be observed that, when the law was construed as conferring discretion upon the jury to ameliorate the punishment, the failure of the jury to agree upon the punishment does not alter their duty to return a verdict of conviction. These decisions would be applicable to the federal statute now under.consideration, which clearly makes the amelioration of the penalty permissive.
In a ease presented to the Supreme Court of the United States shortly after the. enactment of the statute of 1897, it was held that, in submitting to the jury the question as to the penalty to be imposed, the court should not give any instructions to the jury which would in any wise limit the action of the jurors in arriving at their' conclusion. Winston v. United States, 172 U. S. 303, 19 S. Ct. 212, 43 L. Ed. 456. It appears from the opinion in that case that the jury had been instructed, as they were instructed in the case at bar, namely, that, if they could not'agree upon the penalty that should be imposed, they should, nevertheless, return a verdict as to the guilt of the defendant. The only value of the opinion of the Supreme Court upon the question here involved is the fact that, although the record showed that the three juries whose verdicts were involved in the appeal had each been instructed as the jury was instructed in the ease at bar, the Supreme Court did not consider the instruction was so obviously erroneous as to dispose of the ease on that ground, or even to point out such error, but, on the contrary, reversed the ease because of the fact that the instructions of the trial court sought to limit the discretion of the jury in fixing the punishment.
I think that the trial court correctly construed the statute here in question. It might have been more in accordance with mercy and with the ordinary rules concerning the duties of jurors, such as the rule giving tó a defendant the benefit of any reasonable doubt that might arise in the mind of any one juror, to have provided the punishment should be life imprisonment, unless the jury should fix the punishment at death. This would require a unanimous verdict in favor of the death penalty, in order to inflict that penalty. But the legislation is evidently framed with the idea that the punishment for rape shall be death as theretofore provided by Congress, unless all the jury shall agree upon the lesser punishment.