Court Opinion

ID: 9497291
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:47:36.578688+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:06.260179
License: Public Domain

FISHER, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I fully concur in the majority opinion, but want to respond specifically to the dissent’s suggestion that our conclusion that there was prejudice results from “law-yering from the bench.”
The dissent seems to forget that this habeas appeal arises from a criminal case in which the constitutional right of the defendant to a fair trial is the issue, not just “litigation” in which someone wins or loses according to his lawyer’s skill, or lack of it. As such, the court’s pursuit of the issue of prejudice with the state’s attorney — charged with upholding the fairness of the criminal justice system in the course of prosecuting defendants — was not law-yering; it was judging.
Prosecutors are subject to constraints and responsibilities that don’t apply to other lawyers. While lawyers representing private parties may — indeed, must — do everything ethically permissible to advance their clients’ interests, lawyers representing the government in criminal cases serve truth and justice first. The prosecutor’s job isn’t just to win, but to win fairly, staying well within the rules. As Justice Douglas once warned, “[t]he function of the prosecutor under the Federal Constitution is not to tack as many skins of victims as possible to the wall. His function is to vindicate the right of people as expressed in the laws and give those accused of crime a fair trial.” Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 648-49, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 40 L.Ed.2d 431 (1974) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
United States v. Kojayan, 8 F.3d 1315, 1323 (9th Cir.1993).
The issue of prejudice was not some hidden, esoteric legal point the parties or the court was unaware of — indeed, the trial judge in the first trial had addressed the highly prejudicial nature of “gang” testimony and precluded the very kind of questioning the state introduced at the second trial. Even had there been no oral argument in this case, the record and written arguments before the court were quite sufficient for us to evaluate the issue of prejudice and any question of waiver. Oral argument — as this court routinely makes clear to counsel — is an opportunity for the court to ask questions, often to give counsel a chance to address a particular judge’s tentative conclusions to clarify or even persuade the judge to change his or her mind. Thus the notion that because defendant’s appointed counsel could not — for whatever reason — identify one fairly obvious instance of possible prejudice (one the initial state trial judge recognized and made part of the record) “should have ended this matter” is just wrong, if by that the dissent means we as judges must have turned a blind eye to the record and common sense.
As Judge Posner put it — himself borrowing from a lawyer’s famous observation — “Judges, by the way, are not wall*1059flowers or potted plants.” Tagatz v. Marquette Univ., 861 F.2d 1040, 1045 (7th Cir.1988). Or as another of his colleagues observed: “[W]hile a judge should never engage in advocacy from the bench, he or she has an obligation to raise legal issues that the parties have overlooked or neglected .... [T]he judge should take an active role, when necessary, to ensure fairness and to conform the proceedings to the law.” Jones v. Page, 76 F.3d 831, 850 (7th Cir.1996). The questions posed to counsel, and the majority opinion which I join, are in furtherance of that proper judicial role.