Court Opinion

ID: 9478511
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:50:54.461875+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:28.216152
License: Public Domain

TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur in the court’s judgment that the petitioner did not receive a fundamentally unfair trial in violation of the due process clause. I write separately because I disagree with the majority’s approach to the petitioner’s due process claim — that the trial judge denied the petitioner a fair trial by not granting him a severance from his co-defendants.
To decide the merits of a petitioner’s claim that the state trial court denied him due process of law by refusing to grant him a severance, a federal habeas court must begin by examining the record of the trial proceedings that took place before the trier of fact — in this instance, the jury. If that record, considered as a whole, does not demonstrate that the petitioner received a fundamentally unfair trial, the habeas court’s inquiry ends, and the petitioner’s claim must be denied. If, however, the record demonstrates the contrary, the ha-beas court must proceed a step further and *1574decide whether the trial judge, rather than some other causative agent — such as failed trial strategy or incompetent counsel — rendered the trial fundamentally unfair. The judge can be held to have denied the petitioner due process if the reviewing court can reasonably conclude that the judge should have granted the petitioner’s motion for severance and that his action in denying the motion rendered the trial unfair.
In determining whether the conduct of the trial judge produced the unfair trial, we look to the portion of the record that was before the judge at the time the defendant presented his motion for severance and ask, “Should the judge, on the basis of the record then before him, have concluded that the movant’s trial must be aborted because the trial has been rendered fundamentally unfair?” If the answer to this question is in the negative, the movant’s due process claim must fail — even though subsequent events, during the course of the trial, may prompt a “Monday morning quarterback” to conclude that the defendant’s trial turned out to be unfair.
The rejection of a severance motion operates to deny the defendant a fair trial only when the rejection occurs after the prejudicial events described in the motion have taken place.1 When the rejection occurs prior to trial, the defendant cannot have been prejudiced by the ruling — in the sense that he received an unfair trial — because the trial has not yet occurred and the court’s ruling is, by definition, provisional; that is, the ruling is inherently subject to reconsideration as the proceedings progress.
In the case before us, petitioner made a pretrial motion for severance on the ground that the defense of a codefendant was antagonistic to his own, but did not renew his motion for severance following the testimony of the codefendant which, for the first time, actually brought the allegedly antagonistic defense before the jury. Under what I submit is the correct approach to this severance/fair trial problem, I would conclude that the trial judge did not deny the petitioner due process because, at the time the court denied his severance motion, no events had occurred that worked an undue prejudice upon him. I am troubled by the majority’s novel suggestion that because the petitioner made a pretrial motion for severance, the trial judge had a duty — imposed by the due process clause — to monitor the progress of his trial and grant him a severance sua sponte if the judge perceived that the petitioner had been irreparably prejudiced by his co-defendant’s testimony.2 The majority seems to overlook that the double jeopardy clause3 grants a defendant the right to a verdict at the hands of the jury that has been sworn to try his case. If the trial judge denies him this right by declaring a mistrial — without the defendant having requested one at that time — the judge will likely have acquitted the defendant of the charge for which he is on trial.
To support its rationale, the majority cites dicta from the Supreme Court’s opinion in Schaffer v. United States, 362 U.S. 511, 516, 80 S.Ct. 945, 948, 4 L.Ed.2d 921 (1960), and our opinion in United States v. Berkowitz, 662 F.2d 1127, 1132 (5th Cir. Unit B Dec. 1981).4 See ante at 1569 n. 5. Upon careful reading, I conclude that these cases do not support the majority’s position.
*1575In Schaffer, the four petitioners were charged in a three count indictment. The first three counts charged the petitioners separately with interstate shipment of stolen goods; the fourth count charged them with conspiracy to commit these substantive offenses. At the conclusion of the government’s case, the court dismissed the conspiracy count, and the petitioners moved for severance on the ground that the substantive counts were so unrelated that to proceed further would work an unfair “spill over” prejudice to the respective petitioners that could not be overcome by curative instructions to the jury. The court denied the petitioners’ motions, and the jury convicted them of the substantive offenses. The court of appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider whether the joinder of petitioners in one indictment had violated Fed.R.Crim. P. 8(b). The Court concluded that their joinder had not been improper. The Court also concluded that their joint trial had not caused them the sort of undue prejudice that should have been remedied by a Fed. R.Crim.P. 14 severance. In reaching this conclusion, the Court did say, as the majority notes, that “the trial judge has a continuing duty at all stages of the trial to grant a severance if prejudice does appear,” 362 U.S. at 516, 80 S.Ct. at 948; the Court did not say, however, that the trial court has a duty to grant severance sua sponte.
Berkowitz similarly provides no support for the majority’s rationale. The defendants in Berkowitz moved for severance at the conclusion of a eodefendant’s testimony which was antagonistic to their defense. 662 F.2d at 1132. The Berkowitz court held that severance was not necessary because insufficient prejudice had been shown. In dicta, the court stated: “The failure to move for severance before trial, of course, is not fatal to appellants’ claims. The district court has a continuing duty to monitor the entire trial for prejudice and to order severance if such prejudice does arise.” Id. As in Schaffer, the procedural background of Berkowitz reveals that the court meant only that severance must be granted upon proper motion when prejudice is shown to have arisen.
Schaffer and Berkowitz therefore do not stand for the proposition that once a defendant moves for severance the court has a continuing duty to grant a severance sua sponte whenever prejudice seems to appear during the course of the trial. Rather, as the Ninth Circuit has explained:
Motions' to sever must be timely made and properly maintained, or the right to severance will be deemed waived. To preserve the point, the motion to sever must be renewed at the close of all evidence.... Premature motions to sever not diligently pursued as the prejudicial evidence unfolds cannot serve as insurance against an adverse verdict.
United States v. Kaplan, 554 F.2d 958, 965-66 (9th Cir.1977) (citations omitted) (emphasis added). See also United States v. Benz, 740 F.2d 903, 913 (11th Cir.1984). In the instant ease, petitioner did not renew his motion for severance after the allegedly prejudicial testimony was given. Were I writing for the majority, I would have confined my inquiry to whether, at the time petitioner made his motion for severance, sufficient prejudice existed to permit us to conclude that the trial court’s denial of the motion must be deemed a denial of due process.

. For example, if the prejudicial event described in the motion concerns the admission of evidence, a fair trial is denied after the evidence is either admitted or excluded and the undue harm caused thereby cannot be alleviated.

. The majority states that "[t]he trial judge must monitor the proceedings to insure that no defendant’s rights appear to be prejudiced by a joint trial and should order severance if appropriate, even if no motion is made." Ante at 1569 n. 5 (emphasis added).

. The fifth amendment to the United States Constitution provides that no person shall "be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” This provision is applicable to and binding upon the states through the fourteenth amendment. See Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 23 L.Ed.2d 707 (1969).

. In Stein v. Reynolds Securities, Inc. 667 F.2d 33 (11th Cir.1982), this court adopted as binding precedent all decisions of Unit B of the former Fifth Circuit handed down after September 30, 1981.