Court Opinion

ID: 9464210
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:27:35.311744+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:30.780022
License: Public Domain

ELY, Circuit Judge
(Dissenting):
I respectfully dissent. The results reached by my Brothers in their respective opinions are not acceptable to me.
HEARSAY
Like Judge Choy, I agree that Freeman, however ill-considered, is controlling here. I do not agree, however, that Burnett’s statement was, in any event, admissible under the “excited utterance” exception to the hearsay rule. Fed.R.Evid. 803(2). In my judgment, the record does not lead to the firm belief that Burnett spoke “under the immediate and uncontrollable domination of the senses . . ..”6 Wigmore, Evidence § 1747 at 195 (Chadbourn rev. 1976). Accordingly, I would reverse under the compulsion of Freeman.
COPELAND ACT
Again, like Judge Choy, I cannot agree with our Brother Duniway’s conclusion that the District Court’s failure to instruct the jury comprehensively in respect to the dismissal of the Copeland Act (Act) count of the indictment resulted in no more than harmless error. Unlike my Brother Choy, however, I cannot conscientiously agree to affirm, even assuming arguendo, that the District Court erred in dismissing the Copeland Act count of the indictment.1 This is especially so because of the prosecutor’s references during his closing argument to the Copeland Act (R.T. 970-71), to Burnett’s statement in respect to the illegality under the Act of the developer-architect relationship (R.T. 970-71, 973-74, 1063-64), and to illegal kickbacks (R.T. 987-88). Thus, I submit that my Brother Duniway’s statement that “only one” possibly prejudicial remark was made by the prosecutor is inaccurate, as well as quite lame. Even if we assume that only one unfair blow was struck, it was a fatal blow.
As Judge Choy emphasizes, the “that’s illegal” portion of Burnett’s testimony was the single most damaging part of the evidence concerning the illegality of the appellants’ conduct and, of course, their alleged *956knowledge thereof. The district judge, acting properly within his discretion, had sternly admonished defense counsel not to utilize the dismissal of the Copeland Act count as a “sword” during closing argument. As the proceedings developed, however, this was a “sword” that defense counsel sorely needed to defend his clients against the prosecutor’s continued offensive use of Burnett’s exclamation that the developer-architect relationship violated the Act. Whether or not the prosecutor intended only to impress the jury with the thought that the appellants had not followed the advice of their attorney, the pivotal consideration is that the jury had no way of knowing whether the Act mentioned by the prosecutor was the basis of the count that had been dismissed. To me, it is logical to infer that the prosecutor’s reference to the Act during closing argument, after the trial judge had mentioned that certain aspects of the indictment had been dismissed, would lead the jury to believe that the Copeland Act count of the indictment remained in force. I find nothing in the eventual instructions to the jury to dispel such a notion. Moreover, I do not consider defense counsel’s two references to the Act (R.T. 998, 1046-47) to be an adequate substitute for proper jury instructions. The remarks of an advocate do not bind the jury, but the court’s instructions do, strictly and literally. It is entirely conceivable, therefore, that the conviction eventually rested upon an offense no longer charged.
I cannot say that the prosecutor spoke with malice, either when he referred to the Act, or when he repeatedly emphasized Burnett’s expletive. On the other hand, I have found no precedent allowing a prosecutor to comment, during his summation, on a previously dismissed count of an indictment. To permit his doing so, particularly when defense counsel has been so sternly warned not to refer to it, seems to me to be thoroughly wrong. The prosecutor’s improper comment on the Act, fortified and emphasized by subsequent references to Burnett’s inadmissable damaging statement and to the kickbacks, grievously prejudiced the defendants and, in my opinion, could not possibly have been cured by any instruction to the jury. The appellants, in fairness, should be tried anew.
I would reverse.

. Judge Choy insinuates that the offense charged under the Copeland Act was erroneously dismissed and that, hence, the appellants are in no position to complain about those remarks of the prosecutor that were pertinent only to that Act. As I see it, this approach is not only illogical, but also it is contrary to the most basic traditional concept of an orderly trial. Even if a trial judge issues erroneous rulings, ethical trial counsel are obliged to abide by those rulings. The approach taken by my Brother Choy, if adopted, could lead to intolerable consequences. It would encourage an attorney, believing that the trial court had erred (e. g., in dismissing a charge based upon a specific statute, as here), to defy the judge by uttering forbidden comments in the hope that an appellate court would hold that the trial court’s basic ruling was erroneous and, for that reason, forgive, or hold harmless, the attorney for conduct that would otherwise be prejudicial to the accused and contemptuous of the court.