Court Opinion

ID: 9450897
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:00:28.242995+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:29.400959
License: Public Domain

JOHNSEN, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
It does not seem to me that this situation calls for a reversal under the Jencks Act. Looking at the proceedings in their whole, I get the conviction that what realistically is involved is a tactical game which has now worked out as appellants’ *237employed, experienced counsel designed and hoped that it might.
The trial was one of two-days duration. It consisted wholly of testimony by Government witnesses. No evidence of any nature was offered on behalf of appellants. Counsel for appellants simply engaged in vigorous and detailed cross-examination. His efforts occupy almost half of the record before us. He did not succeed, however, in shaking any of the material facts to which the witnesses strongly testified.
In the case of three of the witnesses, he began his cross-examination by making a request under the Jencks Act for any statements which they had given, and these were duly produced and turned over to him. In the case of the witness McCullough, however, he did not make any such request, but his strategy was to give the witness a good raking-over and to attempt to belittle his character on the basis of reference to his previous law violations, implication as to what the type of his associations must have been and emphasis of his status as a “stool-pigeon”.
McCullough was on the stand for a whole afternoon. The session concluded with recross-examination, announcement by appellants’ counsel of “no further questions”, and excusal of the witness from the stand. In the colloquy of the following morning when his Jencks Act demand was denied, he conceded that “there is no question but what counsel for defense indicated that he was through with cross-examination at this time”.
But he had come back that morning with what seems to me a designed game. His statement in the record shows that he went into the judge’s chambers and “made an informal demand in chambers about the production, under Title 18, Section 3500, of statements of Mr. McCullough”. The record does not contain the conversation which occurred, but the implication is obvious from what he later did that the court indicated to him, as I believe it naturally could be expected to do in the circumstances, that his request came too late, and that he had waived his right under the Jencks Act as to the witness’s concluded testimony.
Counsel then moved forward to lay his trap. He knew full well from the earlier chamber proceedings that any request by him for the statement of McCullough would be denied. So he did not make that approach, but sought to cover up his tracks by asking leave “to recall Mr. McCullough to the stand for further cross-examination”. The implication of this, in the light of what had occurred in chambers, would be that there were some material matters in the witness’s testimony which had not previously been covered. The Court accordingly permitted the witness to be called back to the stand. In doing so, however, it seems clear that the Court was intending to allow him merely to go into anything which had not been covered, and not to replow the previous day’s terrain.
But counsel had nothing further that he wanted to go over with the witness. He engaged in no cross-examination as to any part of the witness’s testimony. He merely asked the witness whether he had given any written statement (as he would know had been done from the nature of the case, from his experience as a criminal lawyer and from his previous request in chambers) and then made his Jencks Act demand. He knew, of course, that the demand would be refused. He wanted it refused. If he had really wanted to get his hands on McCullough’s statement, he would, of course, have dug up some question which had not been previously covered and then demanded that McCullough’s statement be produced in relation to it. But that was not what he was after. He was only after the reversal which he is now getting here.
I do not believe that we ought to permit this kind of a tactical game to be played in a criminal case. It seems to me that neither the purpose of the Jencks Act nor the interest of justice calls for this reversal.