Court Opinion

ID: 9449601
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:16:36.791346+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:54.122401
License: Public Domain

EDGERTON, Senior Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
In Shields v. United States, 273 U.S. 583, 47 S.Ct. 478, 71 L.Ed. 787 (1927), a prosecution for conspiracy to violate the Prohibition Act, counsel for Shields and the prosecuting attorney jointly asked the judge in chambers, after the jury retired, to hold the jury in deliberation until it reached a verdict. The jury afterwards sent to the judge in chambers a note saying it found certain defendants guilty and certain others not guilty but was “unable to agree” as to Shields and two others. The judge in chambers then sent the following note to the jury: “The jury will have to find also whether Shields [and the two others] are guilty or not guilty.” 273 U.S. at 584, 47 S.Ct. 478, 71 L.Ed. 787.
Shields was convicted. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the conviction but the Solicitor General found no “satisfactory ground for opposing the petition for a writ of certiorari ...” 273 U.S. at 587, 47 S.Ct. at 479, 71 L.Ed. 787. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed the conviction.
The Supreme Court said: “These communications were not made in open court, and neither the petitioner Shields nor his counsel was present, nor were they advised of them. * * * The joint request to the court * * * did not include any agreement that the court should receive a communication from the jury and answer it without giving the defendant and his counsel an opportunity to be present in court to take such action as they might be advised * * *. Counsel, in making it, necessarily assumed, as they had a right to, that any communication from the jury would be made in open court, and that they must necessarily be offered an opportunity to withdraw the request already preferred, or to vary it. * * * ‘Where a jury has retired to consider of its verdict, and supplementary instructions are required, either because asked for by the jury or for other reasons, they ought to be given either in the presence of counsel or after notice and an opportunity to be present; and written instructions ought not to be sent to the jury without notice to counsel and an opportunity to object.’ If this be true in a civil case, a fortiori is it true in a criminal case. The request made to the court * * * did not justify exception to the rule of orderly conduct of jury trial entitling the defendant, especially in a criminal case, to be present from the time the jury is impaneled until its discharge after rendering the verdict. We reverse the judgment without reference to the other causes of error assigned.” 273 U.S. at 585, 587, 588, 589, 47 S.Ct. at 478, 479, 71 L.Ed. 787.
The judge’s instruction that the jury find Shields either guilty or not guilty may or may not have been erroneous and prejudicial. The Supreme Court did not consider that question. It reversed the conviction not because of what the judge said but because he said it in a note. The Court did not find that his saying it in a note caused prejudice or might have caused prejudice or might have been thought to have caused prejudice. It seems clear to me that this method of saying what he was asked to say made no difference to the accused. Yet it made all the difference to the Supreme Court. As the Supreme Court reversed the conviction of Shields we should reverse the conviction of Walker, because the judge sent the jury a note *438and “without reference to the other causes of error assigned.”
I think the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States also requires us to reverse this conviction. The Amendment says: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial * *.” If this constitutional right is denied, a conviction must be reversed whether or not the denial is prejudicial to the accused.1 Beyond question it is “the settled rule of the federal courts that a showing of prejudice is not necessary for reversal of a conviction not had in public proceedings.” Brennan, J., dissenting, in Levine v. United States, 362 U.S. 610, 627n, 80 S.Ct. 1038, 1048, 4 L.Ed.2d 989 (1960).
Since a charge to the jury is a necessary part of a criminal trial, if the public is excluded from the court room when a charge is given, the right to a public trial is denied and the conviction must be reversed, irrespective of prejudice. People v. Micalizzi, 223 Mich. 580, 194 N.W. 540 (1923). The Sixth Amendment guarantees, in felony cases at least, the right of the accused to be present at “every stage of the trial, inclusive of the empaneling of the jury and the reception of the verdict * * * ” Diaz v. United States, 223 U.S. 442, 455, 32 S.Ct. 250, 253-254, 56 L.Ed. 500 (1912).2 It has been held accordingly that irrespective of prejudice, exclusion of the accused from the court room when a supplemental instruction is given requires reversal. Fina v. United States, 46 F.2d 643, 644 (10th Cir., 1931);3 People v. Beck, 305 Ill. 593, 137 N.E. 454, 456 (1922).
A fortiori a constitutional right is denied if a charge is privately given in a personal visit by the judge to the jury room. Puckett v. Commonwealth, 200 Ky. 509, 255 S.W. 125, 34 A.L.R. 96 (1923).4 A private telephone conversation between the judge and the foreman of the jury violates the constitutional right and requires reversal. State v. Ashley, 121 S.C. 15, 113 S.E. 305, 307 (1922); Raab v. State, 62 Okl. Cr. 361, 371, 71 P.2d 773, 778 (1937) (statute). In State v. Wroth, 15 Wash. 621, 47 P. 106, 107 (1896), the judge, learning from a bailiff that the jury wished to see him, went to the open door of the jury room, returned to the court room, and told counsel that the jury had asked him to repeat his charge on reasonable doubt. Without concerning itself with the terms or possible effect of what, if anything, the judge said to the jury in reply, the Supreme Court of Washington held that there was “such misconduct on the part of the trial judge as requires reversal * * the law does not subject parties litigant to the disadvantage of being required *439to accept the statement of even the judge as to what occurs between himself and the jury at a place where the judge has no right to be, and where litigants cannot be required to attend. It is the lawful right of a party to have his cause tried in open court, with opportunity to be present and heard in .respect to everything transacted.”
In the present case, the judge communicated with the jury in a private note. This violated the rule of the Shields case, supra, and the constitutional right of the accused to a public trial.
Appellate courts are directed to disregard errors which do not affect substantial rights. F.R.Crim.P. Rule 52 (a);5 28 U.S.C. § 2111 (1958). “This applies * * * unless a constitutional right is infringed.” Starr v. United States, 105 U.S.App.D.C. 91, 95, 264 F.2d 377, 381 (in banc, 1958), cert. denied, 359 U.S. 936, 79 S.Ct. 652, 3 L.Ed.2d 639 (1959); Edmonds v. United States, 104 U.S.App.D.C. 144, 150, 260 F.2d 474, 480 (1958) (dissenting opinion). Cf. Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 764-765, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 1247-1248, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946). The “substantial safeguards to those charged with serious crimes cannot be eradicated under the guise of technical departures from the rules.” Russell v. United States, 369 U.S. 749, 763, 82 S.Ct. 1038, 1046-1047, 8 L.Ed.2d 240 (1962); quoting Smith v. United States, 360 U.S. 1, 9, 79 S.Ct. 991, 996-997, 3 L.Ed.2d 1041 (1959). Whatever may be thought of the trial court’s failure to comply with Rule 43 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, we are not required or permitted to disregard the court’s failure to comply with the Sixth Amendment.
This court cites United States v. Compagna, 146 F.2d 524, 528 (2d Cir., 1944), cert. denied, 324 U.S. 867, 65 S.Ct. 912, 89 L.Ed. 1422 (1945). In that case the jury sent the judge a written request to have certain testimony read. The judge “stopped in the jury room” and told them this testimony would be read to them after they returned from lunch. It was read to them. In an opinion by Judge Learned Hand the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed convictions, on the ground that “the informality- — for, at most, it was no more —did not prejudice the accused.” But neither was it an instruction. And the Court of Appeals did not discuss or even mention the constitutional right of the accused to a public trial. As I have shown, it has been held repeatedly that a constitutional right is denied if a judge gives an instruction privately. New if any courts have consciously held the contrary. The trial court’s “obvious error” 6 in the present case is “so fundamental as necessarily to affect the substantial rights of the defendant regardless of the nature 'or propriety of the instruction given” 7 and reversal should follow.

. People v. Hartman, 103 Cal. 242, 37 P. 153, 42 Am.St.R. 108 (1894); Davis v. United States, 247 F. 394, 398-399, 1918C L.R.A. 1164, 1168 (8th Cir., 1917); Tanksley v. United States, 145 F.2d 58, 59, 156 A.L.R. 257, 260 (9th Cir., 1944); United States v. Kobli, 172 F.2d 919, 921 (3d Cir., 1949); People v. Jelke, 308 N. Y. 56, 123 N.E.2d 769, 48 A.L.R.2d 1425 (1954), are illustrative cases.
Similarly, if women are excluded from a jury panel in violation of statute, “reversible error does not depend on a showing of prejudice in an individual case. * * * ‘Such action * * * does not accord to the defendant the type of jury to which the law entitles him.’ ” Ballard v. United States, 329 U.S. 187, 195, 67 S.Ct. 261, 265, 91 L.Ed. 181 (1946).

. The case dealt with a provision of the Philippine Civil Government Act of 1902 but the Supreme Court said: “its substantial equivalent is embodied in the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” Ibid.

. Any implication to the contrary in the recent case of Jones v. United States is dictum since the court said: “The most that can be said for appellant’s contention is that the record does not affirmatively show complete compliance with the-provisions of Rule 43, Fed.Rules of Crim.Proc. * * * ” Jones v. United States, 299 F.2d 661, 662 (10th Cir., 1962), cert. denied, 371 U.S. 864, 83 S.Ct. 123, 9 L.Ed.2d 101 (1962).

. A dictum suggests that if absence of prejudice were affirmatively shown, the conviction need not be reversed. Id., 200 Ky. at 518, 255 S.W. at 129, 34 A.L.R. at 102.

. This rule restates pre-existing law. Act of Feb. 26, 1919, c. 48, 40 Stat. 1181; former 28 U.S.C. § 391 (1946). Notes of Advisory Committee on Rules, 18 U.S.C. Appendix, p. 3439 (1958).

. Jones v. United States, 113 U.S.App.D.C. 352, 356, 308 F.2d 307, 311 (1962).

. Arrington v. Robertson, 114 F.2d 821, 823 (3d Cir., 1940).