Court Opinion

ID: 9456177
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:44:23.742876+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:52.558979
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Circuit Judge
(concurring) :
I concur in the judgment of the Court, but I cannot accept the majority’s view of the case with respect to the testimony of the alleged accomplice, Alphonso Byndon.
The majority refers only to the attempt of the government to introduce extrajudicial statements made by the witness to FBI agents. But the prosecutor’s questioning ranged beyond that narrow issue.
Alphonso Byndon had already been sentenced on his plea of guilty to participation in the robbery. At the appellant’s trial, he admitted his participation in the crime and described how it occurred. Whén asked to name who was with him, the witness stated he would rather not say. There followed a conference at the bench, but no instruction to answer the question was given by the court, the reason for such failure being undisclosed. The government’s attorney then proceeded to ask whether the witness recognized the appellant. An objection by the appellant was sustained. The prosecutor then twice asked if the appellant was with the witness during the robbery, and the witness again refused to name his accomplice. Over defense objection, the witness testified that he had known the appellant for eight years, and that he was a third or fourth cousin of the appellant. Later in the examination, the prosecutor attempted to introduce evidence of statements, incriminating the appellant, made by the witness to FBI agents. The question specifically naming the appellant was objected to, and the court sustained the objection. There were numerous additional instances, however., in which the witness simply answered the prosecutor’s questions by stating that he had not told the agents who his accomplice was because they already knew the accomplice’s identity.
*676It was error for the court to permit the questioning of the witness in this manner. First, the object of the questioning was to get into evidence statements the witness had allegedly made incriminating the appellant. Generally, this is impermissible procedure. On facts similar to the case here, the Sixth Circuit held that it was improper to use extrajudicial statements of a witness who, at trial, gives no testimony involving the defendants in the crime. United States v. Duff, 332 F.2d 702 (6th Cir. 1964). Extrajudicial statements are not evidence. Arnold v. United States, 382 F.2d 4 (9th Cir. 1967); Ellis v. United States, 138 F.2d 612 (8th Cir. 1943). Secondly, the prosecutor’s questioning constituted an improper use of cross-examination to impeach his own witness, without the requisite showing of surprise and necessity to rehabilitate the government’s case. United States v. Miles, 413 F.2d 34 (3rd Cir. 1969); Weaver v. United States, 216 F.2d 23 (9th Cir. 1954); United States v. Block, 88 F.2d 618 (2nd Cir. 1937). Once the witness refused to name his accomplice, the court should have ordered him to answer on pain of contempt, or he should have excused the witness. The questioning which followed, bringing up the appellant's name again and again, allowed the jury to draw inferences of. guilt by innuendo, not by any material evidence.
Even so, I would affirm on the basis of the other evidence. The defense called no witnesses. The government’s evidence that an armed robbery had been committed by two robbers was so strong that the only issue substantially in dispute was the identity of the second robber. Three witnesses testified for the government. One Joseph O. Banks, the secretary-manager of the bank, gave a description of the robbers, although he was unable to identify the appellant. Two other witnesses, Pamela Thomas and Walter Younge, both had ample opportunity to observe the robbers in the course of the robbery, and both positively identified the appellant at trial. This evidence was weighty enough to sustain the appellant’s conviction, even disregarding Byndon’s prejudicial testimony.
Therefore, I join in affirming the judgment of conviction.