Court Opinion

ID: 9651447
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:19:38.064973+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:33.810767
License: Public Domain

FRANK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I do not agree with the ruling concerning the refusal of the trial court to require the government to permit defendant’s counsel to inspect Sebold’s report. To make my position clear, I must first state certain of the facts more fully than does the majority opinion.
Sebold, the government’s chief witness, testified that on June 10, 1941, he had made a written report to the Federal Bureau of Investigation on his activities during that day, including his conversations with the defendant to which Sebold testified. He also testified that he had read over that report the day before he took the witness-stand to testify concerning those conversations. Defendant’s counsel asked the District Attorney to produce that report. In reply to the District Attorney’s question as to the purpose of the demand, defendant’s counsel stated, “For attacking the credibility of the witness.” No ruling was then made. The next day the demand was renewed. The District Attorney then handed the report to the trial judge who said, “I have read the report and I see no reason why the Government should be called upon to produce it, and I can see in the report reasons why it should remain a confidential document.” Defendant’s counsel then stated that he referred “only to that part of the report, of course, which has reference to the meeting or conversation with Ebeling, and no other party.” But his request was nevertheless denied, and an exception was taken. i
I assume, arguendo, that a statement disclosing a crime, made in confidence to a prosecuting officer, is privileged. But, as this court recently held in United States v. Krulewitch, 2 Cir., 145 F.2d 76, 79, the prosecution surrenders that privilege, if any, by calling as a witness the person who made the statement; for, as Judge Learned Hand there said, “It mu'st be a condition of any such privilege that the prosecution — its possessor — shall not adduce testimony touching the subject matter communicated. Indeed, that is a general principle as to all privileged communications. When their possessor *258chooses to bring into the light the transactions to which the communications relate, he may no longer suppress the communications themselves.” Accordingly, we held that the defendant’s counsel must be permitted to inspect such a written statement in order to allow him to attempt to impeach the witness’ testimony.1 True, there the witness had testified that she had made such a statement at variance with her testimony. But I do not think the doctrine of that case rests or should rest on that fact.2
It is also tru'e that in the Krulewitch case, the statement was marked, sealed, and made part of the record on appeal so that we could see for ourselves that the statement did in fact contradict the testimony and that the refusal to admit inspection was therefore error.3 But, especially as here we are dealing with a judgment depriving defendant of his liberty, I think we should suspend decision until the district court certifies the statement to us 4 so that we can ascertain whether or not it contained matter which properly could have been used for impeachment purposes, i.e., whether the trial judge abused his discretion.
The flexible procedure recently sanctioned in Addison v. Holly Hill Fruit Products, 322 U.S. 607, 64 S.Ct. 1215, in a review of a mere administrative regulation, furnishes an analogy. Surely on review of a judgment which sends a man to jail for five years, the procedure should be at least as flexible. In such circumstances, nothing will be lost and much which is dear to the spirit of our democratic institutions may be gained by making haste slowly. I, for one, could not sleep well if I thought that, out of a desire for unnecessary expedition, I had helped to affirm the conviction of a man who may be innocent.5
It has been suggested that because the Krulewitch doctrine diminishes the value of the privilege on which the government relies, that doctrine should be restricted.6 But I believe that that privilege should be curtailed, for otherwise it gives sustenance to the general notion that the government, in prosecuting a citizen, should be zealously protected by the courts from disclosing to him evidence which it has gathered in preparing for trial and which may aid him in convincing a jury of his innocence. That notion is at variance with the basic principles of our form of government. Thus the Canon of Ethics of the American Bar Association states: “The primary duty of a lawyer engaged in a public prosecution is not to convict bu't to see that justice is done. The suppression of facts * * * capable of establishing the innocence of the accused is highly reprehensible.” As the Wisconsin Supreme Court has said, “The district attorney is a quasi judicial officer. * * * ‘A prosecutor should act not as a partisan eager to convict, but as an officer of the court, whose duty it is to aid in arriving at the truth in every case.’ * * * ‘His object, like that of the court, should be simply justice. * * * ’ ”7 Said the Supreme Cou'rt,8 “The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the *259servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer.” He should not try and no court should, I think, assist his efforts, to shut out scrutiny of evidence such as the witness’ statement here, which may turn out to be “pregnant with importance in ascertaining the truth.”9
The privilege on which the government here relies has a far flimsier foundation than that which the government unsuccessfully asserted in United States v. Andol-schek, 2 Cir., 142 F.2d 503, 506; for the privilege there asserted was based upon a valid Treasury regulation, authorized by statute, providing that reports to the Treasury by its employees are not to be produced in court without the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury. There we said (per Judge Learned Hand) : “While we must accept it as lawful for a department of the government to suppress documents, even when they will help determine controversies between third persons, we cannot agree that this should include their suppression in a criminal prosecution, founded upon those very dealings to which the documents relate, and whose criminality they will, or may, tend to exculpate. So far as they directly touch the criminal dealings, the prosecution necessarily ends any confidential character the documents may possess; it must be conducted in the open, and will lay bare their subject matter. The government mu'st choose; either it must leave the transactions in the obscurity from which a trial will draw them, or it must expose them fully. Nor does it seem to us possible to draw any line between documents whose contents bear directly upon the criminal transactions, and those which may be only indirectly relevant. Not only would such a distinction be extremely difficult to apply in practice, but the same reasons which forbid suppression in one case forbid it in the other, though not, perhaps, quite so imperatively. We hold that the regulation should have been read not to exclude the reports here in question. We cannot of course know, as the record stands, how prejudicial the exclusion may have been, but that uncertainty alone requires a new trial; for it does not affirmatively appear that the error was insubstantial within the meaning of 28 U.S. C.A. § 391.” The considerations which in Andolschek induced us to hold that the privilege had been waived have an even more pronounced cogency here.
Nothing I have said should be taken as even suggesting that here the District Attorney acted unethically: he did not object to the examination of the witness’ report by defendant’s counsel but handed the report to the trial judge who denied the request for examination. Nor do I mean that the trial judge acted unethically. I do mean that he and my colleagues have adopted a rule which is, I think, incompatible with the principles underlying the authorities from which I have quoted.

 Of course, the statement could not be used until after the witness was asked whether he had not stated what it purported to declare and given an opportunity to admit that he had. But, as we said in Krulewitch, “since the accused could not ask” the witness the “necessary questions in preparation for admission of the statement, it was proper for him to demand inspection, and the refusal was erroneous.”

 Cf. Heard v. United States, 8 Cir., 255 F. 829, 832.

 See also United States v. Cohen, 2 Cir., 145 F.2d 82.

 It should, of course, be sealed.

 See Borchard, Convicting The Innocent (1932).

 Cf. the dissenting opinion in United States v. Krulewitch, supra.

 O’Neil v. State, 189 Wis. 259, 207 N. W. 280, 281.

 Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88, 55 S.Ct. 629, 633, 79 L.Ed. 1314. See also, e.g., Baker v. United States, 8 Cir., 115 F.2d 533, 543; Pell v. State, 97 Fla. 650, 122 So. 110, 111; Hillen v. People, 59 Colo. 280, 149 P. 250, 253; People v. Fielding, 158 N.Y. 542, 547, 53 N.E. 497, 46 L.R.A. 641, 70 Am.St. Rep. 495; Commonwealth v. Nicely (Appeal of Nicely), 130 Pa. 261, 18 A. 737, 738; Brower v. State, 26 Okl. Cr. 49, 221 P. 1050, 1051; 18 C.J. 1296, 1315-1316; 27 C.J.S., District and Prosecuting Attorneys, § 14, pp. 369, 404-405; 23 C.J.S., Criminal Law, § 1081, pp. 519-520.

 United States v. Krulewitch, supra.