Court Opinion

ID: 9492027
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:30:25.463004+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:04.330403
License: Public Domain

NATHANIEL R. JONES, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree in full with the panel’s well-founded conclusions that manifest necessity for a mistrial existed in this case and that Gantley impliedly consented to the mistrial. I write separately only to emphasize that, in my judgment, the court’s *432decision today is not an abandonment of our usual preference that a district court issue curative instructions when a witness makes an impermissible reference to a polygraph examination before a jury. The district court’s failure to do so, under the facts of this case, was not reversible error.
This court has refused to adopt a per se rule that a. manifest necessity for a mistrial is present simply because a witness utters the words “polygraph evidence.” United States v. Odom, 13 F.3d 949, 957 (6th Cir.1994); United States v. Walton, 908 F.2d 1289, 1293 (6th Cir.1990); United States v. Betancourt, 838 F.2d 168, 175 (6th Cir.1988). Instead, we have repeatedly upheld the use of curative or cautionary instructions to juries explaining that impermissible references to unreliable polygraph examinations are improper and to be disregarded. See United States v. Epley, 52 F.3d 571, 578 & n. 8 (6th Cir.1995); Odom, 13 F.3d at 957; Walton, 908 F.2d at 1294. Granted, we have also found circumstances where not even a curative instruction could “unring [the] bell” of a prejudicial reference to a polygraph examination. See United States v. Murray, 784 F.2d 188, 189 (6th Cir.1986) (curative instruction not enough to remedy experienced FBI agent’s deliberate statement that he had asked defendant to take a polygraph test). However, it cannot be doubted that our precedents strongly favor a curative admonition to the jury when a witness makes an impermissible reference to a polygraph examination.
Based upon the record in this case as artfully reconstructed in the panel opinion, I am of the view that the issuance of curative instructions in this case would have been an exercise in futility. Unlike the above-cited cases, the district judge himself contributed to the tainting of the proceedings. In addition to the inherent prejudice that Gantley’s improper polygraph reference injected into the trial, I believe it very likely that the district court’s subsequent visible outburst seriously impaired Gantley’s standing in the eyes of the jury. Thus, based upon the totality of the circumstances as articulated by the panel opinion, I agree that the district court’s declaring a mistrial was justified by manifest necessity in this case.