Court Opinion

ID: 9449451
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:12:40.843997+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:50.672445
License: Public Domain

KALODNER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I would affirm the District Court’s denial of the petition for a writ of habeas corpus for the reason that I do not find in the trial record the abuse of due process which the majority discerns. It is becoming increasingly apparent in these habeas corpus cases that the judicial concept of due process, like beauty, “is in the eye of the beholder.”
In the instant case the majority takes the view, for example, that the withholding of the appellant’s written statement to the police in which was recited Diehl’s oral declaration to the same police in his presence “that there was a struggle in the back seat” was a violation of due process because “All of Diehl’s testimony concerned itself with matters preceding the decedent’s getting into the back seat and, accordingly, the jury had nothing before it indicating a struggle which was an area of vital importance to the defendant’s case.” I don’t see how the majority can justify its determination in this respect since in its own statement of Diehl’s testimony it recites that Diehl testified on direct examination that after the appellant had “grabbed the pistol * * * the sheriff grabbed at his arm and said, ‘John, don’t do it.’, to which the appellant replied, ‘Let me go, Jim, or I’ll kill you.’ ” If this statement does not disclose a “struggle” for the murder weapon I don’t know just how one can describe a “struggle”.
*630Moreover, the majority’s statement that “the jury had nothing before it indicating a struggle which was an area of vital importance to the defendant’s case” fails to take into account that (1) the defendant’s sole defense was that of temporary insanity at the time of the shooting and not an accidental shooting in the course of a struggle; (2) that Dr. Walter Lindsay Jacob, appellant’s psychiatric expert in both his direct and cross-examination related a story of a “struggle” at the time of the shooting which had been told to him by the appellant when he examined him in the course of his psychiatric study; and (3) the trial judge in discussing in his charge the testimony relating to the shooting stated “The written statement of the defendant only discloses that they were struggling closely together for the gun.” 1
On direct examination Dr. Jacob testified in relevant part in detailing the “case history” given to him by the appellant :
“All of a sudden I got the crazy idea to grab the gun. The thought entered my mind that I wanted to escape and if I didn’t grab the gun in doing it, they would shoot me * * *
“Then he [appellant] states, with no other thought, he immediately, within a period of, he estimates, no more than ten seconds, he grabbed the gun and holster and the struggle occurred. Then following the struggle — do you want me to give his description of the struggle? I don’t know whether you want it # * *
“By the Court: Go ahead give us his description * * *
“By Mrs. Matson [appellant’s counsel]: Doctor Jacob, before we quit for our dinner recess you were just at the point of describing the struggle which took place in the back seat of Sheriff Lauer’s car, as related to you by the defendant ?
“A. That’s right. One- other point that I’d like to make clear, I am not a stenographer and this is not our conversation verbatim, but merely what I was able to write, down as we were talking.
“Then Mr. Butler continued, stating that he reached over the seat,, grabbed the gun and the holster.. And just as I did, the Sheriff came-over the front seat after me. He punched me twice, grabbed the hand’ —my hand with the gun. I and the-Sheriff both had our hands on the-gun. The Sheriff said to me, ‘Give-me the gun.’ I said, ‘Let me go. I’m only trying to run away.’ We-continued to struggle. He weighed' about 250 pounds. Finally he fell on-the floor on the back, with me on top< of him. He had my hand. We were-still struggling when the gun went: off. I cannot recall consciously pulling the trigger. I’m not sure about, his hands or my hands as to their exact positions.” (emphasis supplied)
The foregoing is dispositive of the majority’s holding that the appellant was.deprived of due process because of its. view that the failure to permit his counsel to examine his statement to the police resulted in the withholding from the jury of “evidence of a struggle in the-back seat of the car.”
Dr. Jacob’s testimony placed before the-jury in graphic manner the appellant’s, own version of the “struggle” between,, the murdered sheriff and the appellant which started on the front seat and end- - ed in the back of the car. Diehl’s version on the witness stand was in substantial accord. He stated on cross- • examination that the sheriff had gone - “over the back seat” and he described how the sheriff was shot while in the-back of the car. It is difficult to understand the majority’s view that Diehl had . lied in his testimony. It is equally difficult to understand the apparent view - *631•of the majority that it was a matter of life-or-death importance whether the struggle was on the front or back seat or the front or rear of the car.
There was in this case no suppression ■of evidence by the state disclosed by after-discovered evidence as appeared in Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963) since there was no critical difference between what Diehl said on the witness stand and what he said in his oral statement to the police.
The fact that Diehl did not use the word “struggle” in describing how the sheriff “grabbed” the appellant’s arm after he had seized the gun and went “over the back seat” in an effort to wrest it loose from the appellant’s hold, although he had done so in his oral statement is absolutely irrelevant.
As the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania pointed out in Commonwealth v. Butler, 405 Pa. 36 at pages 49-50, 173 A.2d 468, at page 475 (1961):
“ * * * the defense to the crime was not accidental killing. It was excusable homicide as a result of insanity. Needless to say, such are miles apart. More importantly, a reading of the record discloses no significant variance as alleged. In Diehl’s statement given immediately after the occurrence, as quoted in the cross-examination of the defendant, he said, ‘The sheriff got into the back seat and there was a struggle while I was trying to get the car stopped on the side of the road.’ During his testimony on the stand, Diehl did not use the word ‘struggle’ but he did say that almost immediately as the defendant gained possession of the gun, the sheriff ‘grabbed him’ and went over the seat before the car was brought to a stop. Certainly, this clearly indicates a struggle took place. But when the fatal shot was fired after the car .had been stopped, Diehl testified that Lauer [the sheriff] was then lying on the floor and the defendant was sitting on the seat on the opposite side of the car. There is nothing in Diehl’s first statement, as disclosed in the record, that is at variance in the slightest degree with this testimony.”
On the score of the “inflammatory and extremely prejudicial statements” made in the New York case which the majority has cited as “an additional substantial ground for reversal” it need only be said that they were offered in evidence without any objection by appellant’s counsel, described by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court as “a thorough, discerning lawyer of extensive experience”; there was no motion to strike after the statements were read; and appellant’s counsel had in fact stated she had “no objections to Mr. Strauss reading the Judge’s remarks providing he [the prosecuting attorney] reads the entire statement including the remarks of the District Attorney.” As the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania noted, 405 Pa. 54, 173 A.2d 477, the New York record contained data relating to the appellant’s “early home life and difficult environment” which his counsel might well have considered helpful to the appellant.

. While the trial judge erred in referring to the “written statement” inasmuch as it had not been introduced in evidence it certainly did not prejudice the appellant.