Court Opinion

ID: 9450386
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:44:26.629801+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:16.791002
License: Public Domain

WOODBURY, Chief Judge
(concurring).
I do not believe that the remarks of the United States Attorney at the conclusion of the television program as reported in the press, which is the only evidence we have of what was actually said, were so highly inflammatory and prejudicial that a mistrial is required as a matter of law.
From the newspaper account it would appear that the United States Attorney’s remarks can be characterized as “vigorous” in calling public attention to the prevalence of off track betting, the financial rewards of that illegal activity, the tie-in of bookmaking with “prostitution, extortion, corruption, labor racketeering, shylocking and bootlegging” and in asking for public cooperation in enforcing the law. However, to complete the picture I think it should appear that immediately following these remarks the United States Attorney is reported to have said: “Special federal grand jury hearings on organized crime in Rhode Island have been called * * * not because all those crimes exist in Rhode Island or because crime is rampant or has-reached an ‘uncontrollable pitch’ in this-state.”
Moreover, in this case as in Torrance v. Salzinger, 297 F.2d 902 (C.A. 3, 1962), cert. denied, 369 U.S. 887, 82 S.Ct. 1161, 8 L.Ed.2d 288, no reference was made to the appellant personally in the publicity of which he complains, and that to my mind distinguishes the case at bar from other eases in this circuit such as Delaney v. United States, 199 F.2d 107 (1952); Geagan v. Gavin, 292 F.2d 244 (1961), cert. denied, 370 U.S. 903, 82. S.Ct. 1247, 8 L.Ed.2d 399 (1962), and Gorin v. United States, 313 F.2d 641 (1963), cert. denied, 374 U.S. 829, 83 S.Ct. 1870, 10 L.Ed.2d 1052.
*797Furthermore, betting on horse races, even illegal betting through bookies, is not a crime which arouses great public passion or deep public emotion such as the crimes listed by this court in Geagan v. Gavin, supra, 292 F.2d at page 247. Betting through bookmakers is indeed illegal in Rhode Island and no doubt in a great many other states. But parimutuel betting on horse races at the track is legal in Rhode Island and rather generally elsewhere, at least in this part of the United States. And New Hampshire has even gone so far as to establish a state operated sweepstakes. I cannot believe that adequate instructions, which on the inadequate record before us we assume, could not eradicate from the jurors’ minds any possible prejudice that might have been engendered by the publicity. I vote to affirm.