Court Opinion

ID: 9452972
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:58:25.661331+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:26.463562
License: Public Domain

MOORE, Circuit Judge
(concurring except as herein stated):
I concur in Judge Anderson’s opinion except for that portion which suggests a procedure to be followed with respect to Jencks Act statements. The effect of the “suggestion” in my opinion is not offset by the statement that “The procedure to be followed should be left to the discretion of the trial judge.” For all practical purposes the “suggestion” is a “direction.”
I deem it a mistake for appellate courts to make sweeping procedural suggestions which involve specific fact situations which may arise in the future in various ways and which will call for trial strategy decisions by defense counsel and rulings by the trial judge in the light of then existing circumstances. It is all very well to have whispered side-bar conferences with the court or in the robing room with the jury not present but there are too many current decisions as to what constitutes a “public” trial and what should go on out of the presence of defendant and jury to lay down any such procedural rule as is here suggested.
Furthermore the rather formal procedure suggested wherein defense counsel highlights the statement by some kind of address to court and jury (always subject to danger and possible abuse) will in my judgment merely add to appellate problems in the future. I realize that juries can draw inferences from anything which is heard or observed by them including smirks, grimaces, shrugs, gestures and even sotto voce remarks of defendants, their counsel and prosecutors alike but if documents, whether letters, reports or statements called for and not used, are to be made the subject of demand out of the presence of the jury because of appellate speculation as to what a jury might infer therefrom, this bewildered group may well wonder what is going on and how they figure in the “trial by jury” process of dispensing justice. In short, I would leave the determination of such questions to the discretion of the trial judge on a “when, as and if” they arise basis and in the light of the then existing situation before him.