Court Opinion

ID: 9452127
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:30:51.545165+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:04.652271
License: Public Domain

MOORE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part and concurring in part):
The majority, sure that “the evidence apart from Jones’ confession was ample for convictions on all counts if the jury believed Kuhle,” reverses, albeit “with regret,” five convictions after a long multi-defendant trial conducted by the trial judge in a manner “painstaking and adept.” However, this case should serve a far more useful purpose than the mere remand and retrial of five defendants. The result and the opinion itself clearly advises all prosecutors and trial judges, who rely upon previous law in permitting multi-defendant trials in which a confession or a statement of one particular defendant may be offered and which the jury by employing common intelligence might speculate or conclude involved other defendants, that they so rely at their peril. Rule 8 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure permits joinder of offenses and defendants. Rule 14, providing for relief from prejudicial joinder, allows the court to order separate trials of counts or
“grant a severance of defendants or provide whatever other relief justice requires.” 18 U.S.C. § 371 makes it a crime for two or more persons to conspire to commit an offense against the United States. Thus, presumably the law would sanction the joint trial of two or more conspirators. At such a trial, it is moré than conceivable — at least past experience so teaches — that a statement or confession given, of course, under such circumstances as to be admissible, would be offered as evidence of the guilt of the defendant, who, ill-advisedly or non-advisedly or merely from a desire to relieve his conscience, admitted his guilt. Since this defendant would have had more than ordinary difficulty in conspiring with himself his confession will undoubtedly implicate others. Now arises the problem — how to-protect the confrontation rights of the other defendants. Quite obviously, if the other defendants are mentioned by name, no instruction to disregard that which they have heard can be effective to erase this vital information from any normal *228juror’s mind. The common sense approach of Judge Learned Hand1 and Mr. Justice Jackson2 cannot be seriously questioned. Faced with the dilemma of no conspiracy trials or exclusion of perfectly admissible testimony against the confessing defendant, the trial judges have had to resort to various devices, some even suggested by appellate courts, the success of which can be known only after some other appellate court substitutes its discretion for that, in theory, possessed by the trial court.
The principal3 question on appeal centers around Jones’ confession. Because of its admission in evidence, the majority reverse. For all practical purposes, the decision must of necessity seriously affect all future multi-defendant trials. Up to the present time, this court has accepted the assumption that “[ujnless we proceed on the basis that the jury will follow the court’s instructions where those instructions are clear and the circumstances are such that the jury can reasonably be expected to follow them, the jury system makes little sense.” Delli Paoli v. United States, 352 U.S. 232, 242, 77 S.Ct. 294, 300, 1 L.Ed.2d 278 (1957). The very nature of our method of developing facts by the examination of witnesses requires this assumption. All witnesses cannot testify simultaneously. Each tells of the facts known to him — facts which frequently are quite fragmentary. Into what part these pieces will fit in the mosaic picture the prosecutor or the defense is creating cannot be known until the picture is completed. Thus, testimony must be accepted subject to connection or to motion to strike if some future witness does not supply a connecting link. Yet the jury has heard the testimony which has reached, and made a permanent impression on, the jury mind. And so has the damaging answer unexpectedly given which is dealt with by “Strike it out; the jury will disregard the answer.” Rarely in a trial of any duration are there not countless incidents which require and receive such court instruction and admonition.
Turning to the particular situation which faced the trial judge here, I find a quite uncomplicated series of post office burglaries in which various combinations of the defendants participated. The period of time during which the robberies occurred was short (January-June 1964) but during this period six post offices were robbed. The only problem for the jury was which defendants, if any, participated in which robbery. On January 25, 1964 Bozza and Kuhle using MulhearnJones-Pizzo tools robbed the Morganville, N. J. post office; January 28, 1964 Bozza and Kuhle (same tools), Middletown, N. J.; February 17, 1964, Bozza, Kuhle and Williams (same tools), Woodbridge, N. J.; March 12, 1964, Bozza, Kuhle and Williams (same tools), Keyport, N. J.; June 3, 1964, Bozza, Kuhle and Jones (Guarnieri’s tools), Paramus, N. J.; and June 23,1964, Kuhle, Mulhearn and Jones (Guarnieri’s tools), Hillsdale, N. J. To dispose of the stolen stamps, many trips were made from the New Jersey area to New York (S.D.N.Y.), Brooklyn and Astoria (E.D.N.Y.). The brevity of the jury’s deliberation (3% hours) would seem to attest the lack of complexity. Bozza (five times) and Kuhle (six times) were the active participants, joined by Williams (twice), Jones (twice) and Mulhearn (once).
*229The trial proceeded in orderly course until it became necessary for the prosecution to introduce against Jones a written confession by him, given to a postal inspector which implicated the other defendants as to two of the six robberies, Paramus and Hillsdale. At this point, counsel for the implicated defendants moved for a severance. All that the trial judge had to guide him in ruling upon this motion was the law, particularly as revealed by the cases in this Circuit. Being (as the majority conceded) “painstaking and adept in his conduct of this difficult trial,” he must have known that Judge Learned Hand in a philosophical and possibly quixotic mood had commented unfavorably upon the admission of a co-defendant’s statement “under the recognized subterfuge of an instruction to the jury to confine its use to him” and had intimated that “if we were to re-frame the law of evidence” the statement might better be kept out. Nash v. United States, 54 F.2d 1006 (2 Cir. 1932). The importance of the opinion and unanimous decision is that the judgment of conviction was affirmed and that the admission of the implicating statement was not held to be reversible error. The opening sentence of the opinion is “The guilt of the defendant is so plain that only some serious blunder in the conduct of the trial should result in a reversal.” In other words, although Judge Hand was philosophizing as to a jury’s mental gymnastics, he and his colleagues — Swan and A. N. Hand, C.J.J. — actually decided that “the rules ought to be observed so far as they can * *
The next question for the trial judge would have been: how best to protect the other defendants and still receive the admissible-against-Jones confession? Delli Paoli indicated that under protective instructions even the names of the other defendants could be disclosed. However, the trial judge here not only gave instructions “sufficiently clear” (352 U.S. at 239, 77 S.Ct. 294) “as Judge Mishler’s certainly were in this case” (majority) but he followed appellate court suggestion that the names of the other defendants be blanked out.
This Circuit has over the years been surfeited with the multi-defendant ease, thus affording this court ample opportunity to declare itself on the issues vital in this appeal, namely, failure to sever and admission of Jones’ confession.4
The Motion to Sever
The rule as to motions for severance is stated succinctly in Opper v. United States, 348 U.S. 84, 75 S.Ct. 158, 165, 99 L.Ed. 101 (1954):
“It was within the sound discretion of the trial judge as to whether the defendants should be tried together or severally * * *. To say that the jury might have been confused amounts to nothing more than an unfounded speculation that the jurors disregarded clear instructions of the court in arriving at their verdict. Our theory of trial relies upon the ability of a jury to follow instructions.”
In 1959 this court said “To grant or deny such motion lies in the sound discretion of the trial court (citing cases).” United *230States v. Caron, 2 Cir., 266 F.2d 49, 51. However, this principle virtually vanishes if the real discretion is to be that of the reviewing court. The disagreement with the trial court will doubtless be phrased in terms of “abuse of discretion” but in final analysis the appellate court is merely saying, with the advantage of a completed trial record before it, that it would in retrospect have acted otherwise.
The Admission of Jones’ Confession
When Delli Paoli was in this court, Judge Learned Hand stated and answered the problem, thus:
“Unhappily, it is extremely difficult to escape the dilemma that must always arise on such occasions, because on the one hand the declaration should remain unimpaired as against the declarant, and yet it must be in some measure mutilated in favor of the others. At best the solution is especially a matter for the exercise of discretion by the trial judge.”
229 F.2d 319 (1956).
Here the mutilation was carried out to the maximum degree, short of excluding the confession entirely, because all other names were blanked out. In addition, the trial judge’s instructions were so clear and so frequent as to the limited purpose of the Jones’ confession that the only error must be premised upon the assumption that the jury was incapable of following them.
Yet this court as recently as 1965 has accepted as still valid the Supreme Court’s views regarding the jury’s function, namely, that “‘[ujnless we proceed on the basis that the jury will follow the court’s instructions where those instructions are clear and the circumstances are such that the jury can reasonably be expected to follow them, the jury system makes little sense.’ [Delli Paoli v. United States] 352 U.S. at 242, 77 S.Ct. at 300.” United States v. Castellana, 349 F.2d 264, 275 (2d Cir. 1965).
The extent to which we have gone in our jury trust is well illustrated in the decision in United States v. Elgisser, 2 Cir., 334 F.2d 103, 107 (1964) where considerable testimony was admitted in support of the conspiracy count (the subject-to-connection type of proof). The conspiracy count was dismissed by the trial court. Naturally the jury had heard all the evidence — hearsay except for the conspiracy exception — legally admissible only on the conspiracy theory. Nevertheless, this court held that the limiting instructions by the trial court adequately protected the defendants.
Quite apart from the questions of severance and jury instructions, I find myself in disagreement with the majority in certain other fundamentals. I had always thought that it was the jury’s function to decide upon the credibility of witnesses after observing their general demeanor and comportment. The usual charge instructs the jury that mere weight of numbers is not decisive and that one may be believed to the exclusion of the many. The majority, however, more than intimate that the Jones’ confession strongly buttressed the witness Kuhle who gave “the heavily attacked testimony of an accomplice on which the prosecution almost entirely depended for proof of guilt.” To be sure, Kuhle was an accomplice with a criminal record but the trial judge warned the jury to view his testimony in the light of these facts. It is scarcely appropriate for this court to speculate as to the weight the jury gave to each particle of evidence and substitute its own appraisal thereon. If the jury believed Kuhle, as they certainly were entitled to do, and if the majority has “relatively little doubt [the jury] would have [believed him] even without the impressive corroboration which the confession furnished,” the very foundation upon which this court has relied in the past exists upon which to base a holding that the strength of other evidence plus careful instructions are sufficient to negate prejudice.
Of more than ordinary significance in relation to this case is the recent decision of the Supreme Court in Johnson and Cassidy v. State of New Jersey, 384 U.S. 719, 86 S.Ct. 1772, 16 L.Ed.2d 882 (1966). Although the case is publicized largely because of its holding that the princi*231pies announced in Escobedo v. State of Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977 (1964) and Miranda v. State of Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), are to be applied prospectively from the dates of those decisions, other important issues were involved. The defendants had been convicted of first degree murder and were under sentence of death. Their confessions were offered in evidence by the State at their joint trial. As petitioners in the Supreme Court, they argued as one of their points that
“Where Motions for Severance Are Denied, and Three Defendants are Tried Jointly, and the Confessions of Each, Expressly Implicating the Others, Are Admitted into Evidence over Objection, and Where Two of the Confessions Given by One of the Defendants Are Held to be Coerced, Justice Requires that the Other Defendants be Granted a New Trial Free from the Prejudicial Effect of the Coerced Confessions.”
There, as here, pre-trial motions for severance were made and denied. The Supreme Court of New Jersey concluded that separate trials would have created almost insurmountable problems of administration ; that the trial judge gave proper instructions that the confession of one defendant was not binding on the other; and that there was no abuse of discretion in denying the severance. State v. Johnson, 31 N.J. 489, 158 A.2d 11 (1960). In the Supreme Court, petitioners argued that “it is a legal fiction to believe that the jury in this case was able to separate the confessions of each of these defendants and compartmentalize them,” and referred to People v. Aranda, 63 Cal.2d 518, 47 Cal.Rep. 353, 407 P.2d 265 (1965, Traynor, C. J.) criticizing joint trials. The dissent (Mr. Justice Frankfurter writing for four members of the Court) in Delli Paoli was stressed wherein he expresses the opinion that jurors cannot by instructions to disregard erase from their minds that which they have heard. The Supreme Court, however, affirmed the convictions and disposed of these arguments by saying: “Petitioners challenge the validity of their convictions on several other grounds, all of which we have examined with great care, including the claim that their confessions were coerced. We conclude without unnecessary discussion that those grounds which may be tested on this direct review of the judgment of the New Jersey Supreme Court are without merit.” If these arguments be “without merit” in a capital case, they do not support reversible error here.
In Johnson and Cassidy, the Supreme Court in establishing guidelines for future prosecutive procedure at least gave notice so that there would be some opportunity for compliance. However, the majority here elevate as the law of the land, at the time these defendants were tried, the dissenting opinion of Judge Frank in Delli Paoli, 229 F.2d at 322 which opinion was not followed by the majority on the Supreme Court, and the dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court in that case.
By judicial fiat the majority, in effect, repeal the Rule as to severance, change the law as to the trial court’s discretion and cast more than serious doubt on the value of a judge’s instructions. For all practical purposes any confession in any multi-defendant trial becomes unusable or inadmissible. Here the alternative would be thirty-six separate trials (six defendants, six post offices). If the same logic, which elevates dissenting opinions to the status of law, were applied to this case, I would regard the result here with greater equanimity.
I would affirm all convictions except under Count 26 and Count 5 as it relates to Bozza.

. Nash v. United States, 54 F.2d 1006 (2d Cir. 1932); United States v. Delli Paoli, 229 F.2d 319 (2d Cir. 1956).

. Krulewiteh v. United States, 336 U.S. 440, 453, 69 S.Ct. 716, 93 L.Ed. 790 (1949).

. I am not unmindful of, nor do I ignore or minimize the other points dealt with by the majority. With the treatment of the admission of testimony relating to the Fairview Post Office burglary, the cross-examination of Guzzo regarding his prearraignment statements, the search and seizure objections and the appellants’ other contentions covered in the majority opinion under “VII. Other points." I am in agreement. I am also in accord with the majority’s decision with respect to venue as to Count 26 and Count 5 as to Bozza.

. United States v. Kelly, 2 Cir., 349 F.2d 720 (1965).
United States v. Castellana, 2 Cir., 349 F.2d 264 (1965), cert. denied, 383 U.S. 928, 86 S.Ct. 935, 15 L.Ed.2d 847 (1966).
United States v. Brown, 2 Cir., 335 F.2d 170 (1964).
United States v. Houlihan, 2 Cir., 332 F.2d 8, cert. denied, 379 U.S. 828, 85 S.Ct. 56, 13 L.Ed.2d 37 (1964).
United States v. Bentvena, 2 Cir., 319 F.2d 916, cert. denied, 375 U.S. 940, 84 S.Ct. 345, 11 L.Ed.2d 271 (1963).
United States v. Agueci, 2 Cir., 310 F.2d 817, 99 A.L.R.2d 788 (1962), cert. denied, 372 U.S. 959, 83 S.Ct. 1013, 10 L.Ed.2d 11 (1963).
United States v. Manfredi, 2 Cir., 275 F.2d 588, cert. denied, 363 U.S. 828, 80 S.Ct. 1598, 4 L.Ed.2d 1523 (1960).
United States v. Aviles, 2 Cir., 274 F.2d 179 (1959), cert. denied, 362 U.S. 974, 80 S.Ct. 1057, 4 L.Ed.2d 1009 (1960).
United States v. Stromberg, 2 Cir., 268 F.2d 256, cert. denied, 361 U.S. 863, 80 S.Ct. 119, 4 L.Ed.2d 102 (1959).
United States v. Caron, 2 Cir., 266 F.2d 49 (1959).
United States v. Delli Paoli, 2 Cir., 229 F.2d 319 (1956), aff’d, 352 U.S. 232, 77 S.Ct. 294, 1 L.Ed.2d 278 (1957).