Court Opinion

ID: 9460782
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:00:24.311612+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:46.959437
License: Public Domain

WILKEY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
This is a simple little case of robbery on the streets, in which I must regretfully part company with my two esteemed colleagues in their action in remanding the case to the trial court.
If action in this case were all that was at stake, I would not take the trouble to record this dissent. But unfortunately, the action of the majority here is all too symptomatic of actions frequently taken by this court, in remanding cases for reconsideration by the trial court — cases which in any fair and well-ordered system of justice would long ago have reached the stage of finality. This unfortunate tendency to remand, remand, to retry, retry, seems to be prompted by the belief that an appellate court, with the benefit of perfect hindsight, has the duty to correct every error or omission that was made by defense trial counsel. All too frequently, not until the defense has had every opportunity, originally and on remand, to exhaust every possible defense which the very able and experienced minds on this court can retrospectively conceive, is this court willing to affirm a conviction. I most respectfully submit that this misconceives the role of an appellate tribunal, substitutes appellate judgment and action for not only that of the trial judge, but even for that of defense counsel.
Now to the particularities of Mr. Butler’s case.
First, as to the missing record of the urine analysis, which may or may not have been made the day after the arrest, I suggest that my colleagues have reversed the burden of proof as to a showing of existence and, perhaps most im*1010portant, relevancy. The majority opinion states, “To determine whether the test was made, as to which the record is not clear, and, if made, its possible bearing upon the defense of lack of specific intent, a remand is required, the full scope of which depends upon those determinations.” (P. 1008)
Each of these two questions should have been fully developed by defense counsel in the record of the hearing on the defense’s subpoena for the urine test and in the trial itself. The defense strategy was to show a lack of specific intent because of intoxication at the time of the offense. The burden of producing evidence, and of establishing the relevance of the evidence, is clearly on the party advocating the defense.
There is absolutely nothing to be done on remand which could not have been done in the hearing on the motion or during the trial itself. There is no new knowledge subsequently acquired by the defense, there are no new witnesses to be examined, there is absolutely nothing on which the trial judge is to conduct an inquiry on this remand, which he would not have already done, if defense counsel had called the witnesses and asked the right questions at trial.
This is perfectly illustrated by the three possible results of such a remand hearing now outlined in the majority opinion: (1) finding that no analysis of the urine was ever made; (2) finding the test was made but, since it was made from a sample taken the day after the offense, it could not possibly show defendant’s state of intoxication or sobriety at the time of the offense the day before; or (3) finding both that the test was made, and that its results might be relevant and material to the question of the defendant’s intoxication defense. (Majority Opinion, p. 1007)
Considering (1), if no test was ever made, why did the defense not pursue the matter intelligently enough and far enough to establish this one way or another in the record at trial? Does the defense not bear the burden of proving that a test was made? The defense undertook the burden of showing that the defendant did give a sample of the urine; it logically should have gone further and shown that a test was made or in the process established the contrary.
As to (2), the defense has never stated the provable scientific fact, or proffered the testimony of any physician, or said that it would obtain the testimony of any expert to show that a urine analysis made of a sample taken the day after the offense would be probative of the defendant’s condition the day before. I submit that the relevance of the possible evidence is a key question that should have been examined — on the initiative of the defense — in the trial court. If a test was made, but is completely non-probative, the judge should not admit the evidence. The defense has not yet told either the trial court or this court that expert testimony will establish that a test made the following day would be probative of the condition of the defendant the preceding day. Since the defendant offered no proof of relevance, I see no ground for a remand to inquire into the existence of that evidence.
Consider a simple example exaggerated for clarity. If on hearing on the subpoena or at trial below the defendant had claimed the Government had taken from him the keys to his apartment and lost them, and that the defendant wished to offer them in evidence, the first inquiry of the trial judge no doubt would have been, “What relevance does this have to the charge of a street robbery?” The trial judge would have pointed out that until the relevance had been explained to him, he was not about to conduct any lengthy inquiry as to the whereabouts of the keys, because even if located and produced in court, he would have to be shown the relevance before the keys were admitted in evidence; and if they could not be produced in court, he certainly was not going to impose sanctions on the Government for misplacing property of the defendant, property which did not constitute evidence in the case at bar.
*1011And so it is here. The first task of the trial judge on remand, it appears to me, will be to hear at least one expert witness as to whether the urine sample taken the day after the offense could possibly shed any light on the condition of intoxication or sobriety of the defendant at the time of the crime. Until it is established that the evidence, if located, will be relevant, I do not think the judge should waste much time trying to find it. And certainly, if the expert testimony shows that the so-called evidence could not be relevant, then the judge should impose no sanctions on the Government, as my colleagues agree.
" All in all, everything to be done on this remand could have been and should have been done at the initiative of the defense at either the hearing on the subpoena or at the trial itself.
Secondly, as to the third alternative of my colleagues (p. 1007) and the sanctions to be applied against the Government, if the evidence is missing through fault of the Government and could be material to the charge. The majority opinion suggests “The possibility of a sanction of setting aside the robbery conviction and entering a judgment of conviction of simple assault ... as an. alternative to a hearing on remand, . . .” (Pp. 1007, 1008) This offers an easy way out for the prosecution and the trial judge. I voice the hope that they do not accept it. The jury did not. The jury was properly charged as to the lesser included offense of simple assault. The defense had sought to prove that the defendant was too intoxicated to form the specific intent necessary for a robbery conviction. Therefore, if the jury had entertained any doubts concerning defendant’s guilt of the offense of robbery, it could have reached the “compromise” suggested by the majority of convicting the defendant of simple assault. Nevertheless, with the defendant before it and having heard the evidence, the jury found the defendant guilty of the most serious offense charged.
What we have here is a suggestion by this court to mitigate the two- to six-year sentence imposed on this chronic alcoholic. That is not the function of an appellate tribunal, especially when the trial judge and the jury, both of whom are in a much better position than we to weigh both the guilt and the character of this defendant, had exactly the same compromise available to them and declined to take it.
The jury found the defendant guilty of robbery. The only possible point for reversal which this appellate court has found rests on some “missing evidence,” which may never have existed and, if existed, has never been established (or a proffer made on this question) to be relevant to the charge. I would affirm the jury’s verdict, without any further exploration of matters which the defense properly should have explored in the first instance, and without accepting any compromise reduction of a fully supported conviction to a lesser included offense.