Court Opinion

ID: 9454520
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:48:51.555525+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:09.109754
License: Public Domain

*210FREEDMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting
As I see it the question is whether in the circumstances of this case the failure of the Government, even in good faith, to disclose to the defendant standing trial on a charge of murder the two contradictory statements given by Albert Skeet to the police on November 17 and 19, 1965, amounted to a denial of due process under the doctrine of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963).
We need not, therefore, make our decision within the limited contours of the Jencks Act (18 U.S.C. § 3500) or choose between the competing elements of rigidity and flexibility in its construction. Cf. Palermo v. United States, 360 U.S. 343, 351-53 (1959). Indeed on the earlier appeal in this case in Government of Virgin Islands v. Lovell, 378 F.2d 799, 805 ( 3 Cir. 1967), we exercised our supervisory appellate authority to make the Jencks Act applicable in the Territory of the Virgin Islands as a “gloss” on the rule of Jencks v. United States, 353 U.S. 657 (1957).
•I therefore put aside as peripheral the question whether the Jencks Act itself would apply in the circumstances of this case. Instead, the question for me is whether there was a violation of the guarantee of a fair trial, which is the objective of the exercise of our supervisory power over criminal proceedings.
A key figure on the issue whether the defendant had been at home during the night and early morning hours immediately preceding the murder was a 90 year old man, Albert Skeet, the defendant’s landlord. When the case was called for trial Mr. Skeet was present in the courtroom and the Government intended to call him as a witness. He was suddenly taken ill and fainted in the courtroom and was removed to a hospital, where he remained until after the end of the trial. As a result of Mr. Skeet’s illness the Government read to the jury his testimony at the preliminary hearing.
*211This procedure, which deprived the jury of the opportunity to observe Mr. Skeet and to weigh his credibility from his appearance and demeanor, was imposed on the defendant because of the Government’s necessity. See Government of Virgin Islands v. Aquino, 6 V.I. 395, 378 F.2d 540. In these circumstances it seems to me that the burden was on the Government to inform the defendant of its possession of the two contradictory statements Mr. Skeet had given to the police, in one of which he said that the defendant was at home during the night and early morning of the murder and in the other said the opposite. This is particularly important because Mr. Skeet had said in his testimony at the preliminary hearing that he could not remember having talked to the police about the defendant. . r
The majority believes that the failure of the prosecution to disclose this information was not prejudicial to the-der fendant because Mr. Skeet had already been contradicted at the preliminary hearing. There he had testified on direct examination that defendant had not been at home on the night of the murder. On cross-examination, however, he acknowledged giving a statement to the law clerk of defendant’s counsel that defendant had been at home in bed that night. It is therefore true that a contradiction had already appeared at the preliminary hearing between Mr. Sheet’s direct testimony and his admission on cross-examination.
But there is a profound difference in the effect on the fact finder engaged in determining credibility between a single contradiction and a double one. This is especially true in the present case where the Government’s witness was an aged, undernourished man1 and the contradiction of his sworn testimony on behalf of the Government was pre*212sented in the form of a statement given to the law clerk of defendant’s counsel. It would be relatively easy for a jury to discount such a statement obtained from a sick old man by the partisan advocate of the defendant. But the undisclosed statements, mutually contradictory and made only two days apart, were given to the police. They have in them none of the elements of importunity or the pressure of advocacy on behalf of the defendant. They were presumably the voluntary statements of a citizen given to police officers who had no apparent interest or bias but were attempting to ascertain the truth. I believe it unrealistic to hold that the presentation to the jury of these two mutually contradictory statements to the police was not a matter of paramount importance to the defense in undermining Mr. Skeet’s testimony on direct examination at the preliminary hearing. They stand on a higher level and therefore would have been much more effective than the statement secured by the law clerk.
I think we must view the problem in all the surrounding circumstances. This is not a case where Mr. Skeet testified before the jury. The defense had no opportunity to cross-examine him in the light of what it may have learned from the testimony of the police officers. The defense did not have the advantage of the jury’s observation of Mr. Skeet’s testimony or the manner in which he reacted when he was confronted with his contradictory statement to the law clerk. The new and more serious contradiction embodied in the two statements to the police take on in these circumstances a significance which they might not otherwise have had. When the Government claimed the benefit of the rule of necessity which permitted it to have the advantage of Mr. Skeet’s testimony without producing him on the stand it carried, it seems to me, a corelative burden of disclosing to the defendant the two contradictory statements to the *213police which were of such profound importance in deciding the credibility of Mr. Skeet’s testimony.
I therefore dissent.

 The physician who examined Mr. Skeet after ' he had been taken ill testified that he was badly nourished, emaciated and dehydrated.