Court Opinion

ID: 9449325
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:09:33.26445+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:47.873912
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing and for Stay of Mandate
PER CURIAM.
The petitions for rehearing point out two respects in which our opinion of April 25, 1963, was incomplete.
The discussion (p. 472) of the exclusion of testimony by Justice Keogh on the practice of other judges in the Eastern District of New York as to receiving presentence information when he was United States Attorney failed to mention the sustaining of objections to a question addressed to him whether, after his retirement from that post, he had discussed this practice with judges in the Eastern District, and to questions addressed to another state court judge, called as a character witness, whether he had ever spoken to a federal judge before sentencing concerning a man whom he did not represent, and the rejection of an offer to prove that two judges in the Southern District considered it “proper and legal to receive in*486formation concerning the family background, status and economic condition of persons about to be sentenced privately and from sources other than the presentence report or governmental agencies.” But we hold that the trial judge was warranted in excluding such evidence, the two latter items of which were even more remote and more likely to open up collateral issues. As we pointed out, the Government made no claim of impropriety in Justice Keogh’s luncheon conference with Judge Rayfiel (although, on his own testimony, he had no information of substance concerning Moore to impart) unless Keogh was acting for a corrupt motive, and Judge Weinfeld charged that all counsel agreed the jury could not find Keogh guilty unless they were convinced that money was paid to him.
The other item is that our discussion of the alleged interference with the jury by newsmen (pp. 482, 483) omitted a statement by Keogh’s trial counsel that on Friday evening, June 15, after the judge’s instructions to the marshal, “when we went out to dinner, there were cameramen there. I had to ask them to go away, they wouldn’t go away.” This in no way affects the point that there was no evidence of further questioning or other harassment of the jury after the incident on Friday noon.
Save for these corrections, the petitions for rehearing, insofar as they seek action by the panel, are denied. Issuance of the mandate is stayed until the entry of an order on the petitions for rehearing in banc. If such petitions should be granted, the mandate will be further stayed until final determination; if they should be denied, it will be stayed for thirty days from the date of such denial and thereafter if within that time a certificate is received from the clerk of the Supreme Court of the United States as to the filing of a petition for certiorari etc. as provided in Rule 28(c) of this Court.