Court Opinion

ID: 9488848
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:57:17.999311+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:08.431798
License: Public Domain

RALPH B. GUY, Jr., Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Because I believe the result in this case is controlled by the Supreme Court’s decision in Britt v. North Carolina, 404 U.S. 226, 92 S.Ct. 431, 30 L.Ed.2d 400 (1971), I respectfully dissent.
Britt involved, as does the case at bar, a retrial after a mistrial due to a hung jury. Petitioner requested a free transcript of his first trial and the request was denied. The second trial resulted in a conviction, and on appeal the conviction was affirmed. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and also affirmed.
In affirming, the Court made it clear that it was not retreating from its holding in Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12, 76 S.Ct. 585, 100 L.Ed. 891 (1956), where the Court held that indigent defendants must be provided with the basic tools of an adequate defense when those tools are available for a price to other defendants. Failure to so provide would be a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee. When a transcript is at issue, the Court also clearly indicated that no showing of any particularized need was required. It would “ordinarily be assumed that a transcript of a prior mistrial would be valuable to the defendant. ... “ 404 U.S. at 228, 92 S.Ct. at 434.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Court did allow for an exception to furnishing a “free transcript.” If “alternative devices” were available that would fulfill the same functions as a transcript, the refusal to provide a transcript would not be an error requiring reversal. Indeed, in Britt, the Court based its affirmance on the fact that “the reporter would at any time have read back to counsel his notes of the mistrial, well in advance of the second trial, if counsel had simply made an informal request.” Id. at 229, 92 S.Ct. at 435. It was also significant that the defendant’s lawyer and the court reporter were the same in both trials.
Since Britt sets the standard by which what occurred here is measured, Riggins attempts to distinguish Britt. Petitioner first argues that the interval between his trials was longer than the one month interval in Britt. Although this is factually correct, I do not find it a significant distinction. Riggins was involved in two prior trials and the span of time encompassing all three trials was only five months. As was the case in Britt, the defense counsel and the reporter were the same in all three cases. Furthermore, the witness, deemed key by the defendant, testified in all three trials.
The petitioner next argues that in Britt the Court noted that petitioner “conceded that he had available an informal alternative which appears to be substantially equivalent to a transcript.” Id. at 230, 92 S.Ct. at 435. Petitioner, as did the magistrate judge and the district judge, misconstrues this quote. Riggins would read the quote as if the defense counsel conceded not only the alternative, but also its adequacy. I disagree with this interpretation. In my view, the observation that the alternative was “substantially *739equivalent to a transcript” is that of the Court.
The facts here would appear to be much stronger in favor of respondent than was true in Britt. In Britt, the mere availability of the alternative was deemed adequate. Here, with the aid of a most cooperative and willing court reporter, counsel actually availed himself of the alternative of listening to the tapes of the earlier trial and taking notes.
Petitioner’s final attempt to distinguish Britt sets forth his best argument. After Riggins was convicted in his third trial, he did get a free transcript of all three trials for purposes of appeal. Counsel now argues that when he compared the three transcripts, he saw discrepancies in the testimony of certain witnesses, which he either did not note initially in his review of the tapes or did not remember at the third trial.
Riggins’ defense counsel testified at the evidentiary hearing conducted in the district court, but, due to the long passage of time, he had virtually no helpful memory. Petitioner relies upon the appellate brief filed in the state court that sets forth the alleged discrepancies.
My reaction to this line of argument is twofold. First, defense counsel, having heard all of the witnesses testify on two previous occasions, did challenge witnesses in the third trial and attempted to impeach them by referencing their prior testimony. Whether the failure to make additional challenges was trial strategy or an impediment imposed by not having a written transcript, no one will ever know. It is clear from defense counsel’s testimony at the evidentia-ry hearing, however, that he enjoyed some success in his impeachment efforts.
Q. And you were able to hear their testimony at the earlier trials?
A. Uh-huh, yes.
Q. Did you need to go back and listen to any of those at any time?
A. I think I made the decision to rely upon my notes from taking the tapes in order to make it a — make the proceeding flow. In other words, they were making a statement at the third trial, and I — and I just simply made the observation that they were under oath on three — on three different occasions, and did you not say this on one occasion, and this on the second occasion, and now you’re saying this. And I think in almost — in most of the situations, the witness somewhat admitted that the story had changed a little bit, their memory had gotten clearer with the passage of time.
Q. And so — so you were indeed able to confront them with discrepancies in their testimony?
A. Yes, ma’am.
Q. Did you ever ask at any time if a limited portion of the record could be transcribed based on your — your notes selecting short portions of the record.
A. I don’t believe I did, no.
Second, defense counsel never asked to have any portions of an earlier tape played or verbatim testimony read back by the court reporter during the third trial.
Petitioner further argues that in Britt the defense counsel never availed himself of the opportunity to have the reporter read back the testimony of the first trial, so the court just presumed this would have been an acceptable alternative. Riggins, in effect, argues that he has rebutted any such presumption because his counsel did hear the earlier tapes, and then did secure a transcript and found the latter to be superior to the former. I have no doubt that having the written transcript would have been better, and authorizing the furnishing of earlier transcripts would be the better practice. But, in Britt, the Court did not require that the alternative be equal, but only “substantially equivalent.”
Nonetheless, taking petitioner’s argument at face value, I have reviewed the discrepancies relied upon in his appellate brief filed in the state court as did the state court. I find none of them to have been significant enough to have changed the outcome of the trial if pointed out to the jury during the trial. For the most part, the alleged discrepancies involve the type of minor variances in testimony that one would expect from witnesses testifying a considerable period of time after the murder took place. For example, one of *740the investigating officers, who took a statement from Riggins, gave three different dates as the date on which the statement was taken. Two of the dates given were obvious errors, as they preceded the date of the murder. I find little significance in this type of discrepancy. Also, there is no attempt to show the relevance of the precise date the inculpatory statement was made.
Particular attention was paid to the testimony of Erskine Moore, since his was accomplice testimony, and he was the only witness with a possible motivation to lie. The discrepancies pointed out in Moore’s testimony, however, are all relatively insignificant. For example, at the first trial, “Mr. Moore testified that he arrived at the Lincoln County Fair between 6:30 and 7:00 p.m. on September 14,1977. The defendant, two others and he left there between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m.”
At the second trial, Moore testified, “he got with the defendant and two others between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. on September 14, 1977. All four rode to the vicinity of Chapman residence between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m.”
At the third trial, Moore testified that “all four met at the Lincoln County Fairgrounds between 6:30 and 7:00 p.m. on September 14, 1977, and that they left there between 7:00 and 7:45 p.m.”
Given that it was established that the murder took place close to 9:30 p.m., these variances in arrival and departure time appear to be the normal lapses in memory that one might expect in recalling a past event. Indeed, if Moore had intended to falsely implicate the defendant, the likelihood is his version of what occurred would have had the consistency that comes with contrived testimony.
Although petitioner cites to cases from other circuits giving at least superficial support to his arguments, I find the cases relied upon distinguishable. For example, the magistrate judge and the petitioner both place heavy reliance on United States v. Jonas, 540 F.2d 566 (7th Cir.1976). In Jonas, the court found that the trial court’s refusal to grant a transcript of a prior trial was error even though the trial judge pointed out that his trial notes and the tapes of the first trial were available. To reach this conclusion, however, the court had to distinguish Britt, which “[b]oth sides ... acknowledged [was] the key case_” Id. at 569. In an attempt to do so, the court makes much of the fact that defendant was not represented by the same counsel at both trials. Also, the tapes were available “only ... during court hours, in the office of the court reporter....” Id. at 570.
Unlike Jonas, the facts in our case track Britt. We have the same cast of characters in all three trials and the court reporter went to great lengths to make herself available, including a 12-hour Saturday session at her house during which she served lunch to defense counsel.
It is clear that the court in Jonas did not like the result reached in Britt and relied “primarily on [its] language rather than its narrow holding.” Id. at 571. Judge Cummings dissented on the grounds that he could not distinguish Britt. It is significant that Jonas involved a federal prosecution and the court was, in part, interpreting a federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3006A(e)(1), which indicates the type of services to be made available without charge to an indigent defendant.
Whether the Britt holding is a good one or a bad one is, of course, a question on which reasonable minds might differ. I am unable, however, to find any significant factual distinctions in the case at bar that would mandate a departure from Britt’s holding and analysis.