Court Opinion

ID: 9421360
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:57:58.703215+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:29.804068
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
whom Mr. Justice Black, Mr. Justice Douglas, and Mr. Justice Brennan join,
dissenting.
Prosecutions for conspiracy present difficulties and temptations familiar to anyone with experience as a federal prosecutor. The difficulties derive from observance of the rules governing evidence admissible against some but not all defendants in a criminal case. The tempta*247tions derive from the advantages of prosecuting in one trial two or more persons collaborating in a criminal enterprise. One of the most recurring of the difficulties pertains to incriminating declarations by one or more of the defendants that are not admissible against others. The dilemma is usually resolved by admitting such evidence against the declarant but cautioning the jury against its use in determining the guilt of the others. The fact of the matter is that too often such admonition against misuse is intrinsically ineffective in that the effect of such a nonadmissible declaration cannot be wiped from the brains of the jurors. The admonition therefore becomes a futile collocation of words and fails of its purpose as a legal protection to defendants against whom such a declaration should not tell. While enforcing the rule of admitting the declaration solely against a declarant and admonishing the jury not to consider it against other defendants, Judge Learned Hand, in a series of cases, has recognized the psychological feat that this solution of the dilemma demands of juries. He thus stated the problem:
“In effect, however, the rule probably furthers, rather than impedes, the search for truth, and this perhaps excuses the device which satisfies form while it violates substance; that is, the recommendation to the jury of a mental gymnastic which is beyond, not only their powers, but anybody else’s.” Nash v. United States, 54 F. 2d 1006, 1007.
It may well be that where such a declaration only glanc-ingly, as it were, affects a co-defendant who cannot be charged with the admitted declaration, the rule enforced by the Court in this case does too little harm not to leave its application to the discretion of the trial judge. But where the conspirator’s statement is so damning to another against whom it is inadmissible, as is true in this case, *248the difficulty of introducing it against the declarant without inevitable harm to a co-conspirator, the petitioner in this case, is no justification for causing such harm. The Government should not have the windfall of having the jury be influenced by evidence against a defendant which, as a matter of law, they should not consider but which they cannot put out of their minds. After all, the prosecution could use the confession against the confessor and at the same time avoid such weighty unfairness against a defendant who cannot be charged with the declaration by not trying all the co-conspirators in a single trial.
It is no answer to suggest that here the petitioner-defendant’s guilt is amply demonstrated by the uninfected testimony against him. That is the best of reasons for trying him freed from the inevitable unfairness of being affected by testimony not admissible against him. In any event, it is not for an appellate tribunal to know how the jury’s mind would have operated if powerfully improper evidence had not in effect been put in the scale against petitioner.
In substance, I agree with the dissenting opinion of Judge Frank, below, 229 F. 2d 319, 322, and would therefore reverse.