Court Opinion

ID: 9455869
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:36:02.980818+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:46.192365
License: Public Domain

GODBOLD, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
I am not willing to put my sanction on bringing into court the jurors in this case to be interrogated about events said to have occurred in their deliberations more than four years ago.
No judge would quarrel with the policy that the conclusions of the jury should be reached upon only the evidence unaffected by extrinsic facts. The problem is the application of the principle in this case and the broad sweep of the majority’s language which reaches far beyond the factual context presented to us for decision.
Counsel filed an unsworn motion for new trial, one ground of which was his statement that an identified juror had told him the jury discussed that the defendant broke jail before trial and was caught and returned. No affidavit was filed. No hearing was asked. In this court an affidavit is attached to appellant’s brief in which counsel restates what he said in the motion for new trial three years earlier.
The fact alone that a motion says that the jury discussed something not in evidence does not compel the district judge to convene an inquiry and ask if the alleged statement of fact was made in the jury room and, if it was, then interrogate the jurors about possible prejudice. The judicial mind of a district judge is not required to be that undiscriminating in other aspects of the trial process and need not be in this aspect. The district judge’s discretion to deny the motion or to conduct an inquiry should be narrow in range. But this is not to say that he has no discretion and is bound to respond in Pavlovian fashion. Nor, at the appellate level, are we stripped of the power to conclude on this record at this time that the conviction should be affirmed.
There are applicable considerations that give the judge guidance, familiar to him and employed in other contexts without question. At the threshold, how does the allegation come to the judge’s attention? Is it courthouse rumor, a report from a court official, an affidavit of a juror, a sworn motion? Is it first hand or a recital of hearsay? The unsworn motion in this case, with the allegation as one ground, not dignified by request for a hearing or offer of proof, is a slim predicate for mandating an investigation. Richardson v. United States, 360 F.2d 366, 369 (5th Cir. 1969) speaks of a rebuttable presumption of prejudice, but is not authority that a presumption arises from the fact of filing any motion without regard to its form or contents. In Richardson the motion was verified. It alleged a private conversation in the courthouse corridor between a juror and a witness. The content of the conversation is not described in the opinion, so presumably was not stated in the motion either. Thus an investigation was required.
McKinney might contend that the failure of his counsel to verify the motion or submit an affidavit from him*1032self or the juror or call for a hearing presents a question of effectiveness of counsel. If ever raised that is a matter to be adjudicated in a § 2255 proceeding and should not be sub silentio a basis in this direct appeal for shifting the onus to the trial judge.
Next, what is the content of the alleged fact — how harmful is it likely to have been in its impact on the jury? The trained judicial mind can recognize the difference between the extrinsic fact that the defendant is an Episcopalian, or a member of the country club, and the extrinsic fact that he committed rape last week. In this instance what the jurors are said to have discussed— that McKinney broke jail before trial— under Texas law would have been admissible to prove guilt. Cawley v. State, 310 S.W.2d 340 (Tex.Cr.App.1957). The Supreme Court of the United States is of. the same view. Bird v. United States, 187 U.S. 118, 23 S.Ct. 42, 47 L. Ed. 100 (1902).
The extrinsic fact in this case is not harmful because shocking to the senses. Its content is not so unrelated as to lack probative force as to the offense charged and hence to invite punishment of the defendant because he is, for reasons other than the offense charged, one socially undesirable. It is not part of an invidious barrage of propaganda or a total atmosphere of prejudice. It is something the jurors as members of the community knew and brought to the courthouse within their own minds, not something destructive of the integrity of the trial process, as newspapers taken into the jury room, information furnished by a bailiff, or the private conversation with the witness. It is prejudicial, if at all, because it came to the jury’s attention in an inappropriate way without opportunity by the defendant to seek limiting instructions as to its effect.
Comparison of this case with those on which the majority rely graphically demonstrates the extent to which my associates attenuate a salutary principle. Marshall v. United States, 360 U.S. 310, 79 S.Ct. 1171, 3 L.Ed.2d 1250 (1959), involved a charge of dispensing drugs without a prescription. Two newspapers' physically got before the jurors. They revealed that the defendant had practiced medicine without a license, a matter on which proof had been offered and which the court had held inadmissible. But that was only the beginning. The newspapers revealed the defendant had two previous felony convictions, that while serving a forgery conviction he testified to a state legislative committee studying new drug laws concerning the ease with which he wrote and passed prescriptions for dangerous drugs, and that his wife, who had been arrested with him on drug charges, already had been convicted and sentenced.
In United States v. Milanovich, 303 F. 2d 626 (4th Cir. 1962), the post-trial information presented the judge was held to be “of such a character as to call for investigation.” It was that the prosecutor had supplied to a radio station for which he was attorney assertions that the defendant (charged with larceny) had a long record of arrests for liquor sales and prostitution, and these assertions were broadcast at least three times during the week before the trial.
United States v. Kum Seng Seo, 300 F.2d 623 (3d Cir. 1962), was a heroin case. Immediately before the vote on guilt or innocence a juror circulated among the jurors a clipping of a newspaper story describing the trial in progress. It told that defendant was under $100,000 bail, which was neither in evidence nor admissible, and it stated the heroin was found in her room, an assertion not only not in evidence but contrary to the actual evidence.
In none of these cases did the court consider that content of the extrinsic facts was irrelevant. In each the court considered in careful detail what had been communicated to the jury.
There is not involved in this case any necessity for the court to take therapeutic action to protect the integrity of its *1033own processes, as in the instance of a bailiff who talks to jurors about the defendant, or the prosecutor in Milanovich.
Another factor is the weight of other evidence against the accused. Where other evidence of guilt is overwhelming we recognize the capacity of the trial judge to make judgments about the impact on the jury of extraneous matter improperly brought to its attention, as in the case of improper argument by the prosecutor or the volunteered statement of a witness. At the appellate level we have the power to affirm where the weight of evidence is sufficiently great. Cf. Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1970). The approach of the majority denies to both the district court and this court employment of the Chapman standard of error “harmless beyond all reasonable doubt” until the district court has called the jurors in and questioned them. Three witnesses testified in this trial. Two were the girl friends and traveling companions of appellant and his codefendant Nix. They testified they accompanied McKinney and Nix to the bank and observed them enter and leave. The third witness was Nix, who had pleaded guilty before trial. He took the full blame and sought to exonerate McKinney.
A knee-jerk rule in this matter tends to inhibit discussion in the jury’s deliberations. The easiest course for the juror will be to stay out of the dialogue lest someone say that he revealed an extrinsic fact which might cause him to be called back for post-trial inquiry. Perhaps worse, an automatic rule invites the convicted defendant in every criminal case to engage in a post-trial ransacking of the jurors to see if maybe somebody has said something that wasn’t in evidence, with the sure knowledge that if anything turns up the jury must be questioned.
There is no necessity to remand this case to have the trial judge rule on prejudice, assuming the alleged event occurred, to be followed predictably by another appeal. We are capable of judging whether there is sufficient possibility of prejudice to require reversal.
Bearing on the exercise of discretion by this court, or by the District Judge, I note that the government brief tells us, and we can verify it if we choose, that after' the trial Nix recanted, was indicted for perjury and pleaded guilty thereto.
This conviction should be affirmed and the case laid to rest. I respectfully dissent.