Court Opinion

ID: 9442475
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:49:19.235969+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:06.555230
License: Public Domain

FRANK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
1. There were two chief issues of fact for the jury: (1) Did Marvel Sales Corporation do or fail to do certain acts? (2) Did defendant Platt so conduct himself with reference to that corporation that ■its conduct in effect was his? As to the second issue, the trial judge, after referring to evidence introduced by the government, said: “Now, under these circumstances, I charge you as a matter of law that the defendant cannot shield himself behind the corporation,"1 To this statement defense counsel specifically objected,2 but the judge did nothing to correct it.
“I charge you as a matter of law” are the stereotyped words a trial judge uses to withdraw an issue from a jury’s consideration. Any juryman who had read the Handbook For Petit Jurors (serving in the federal courts) commonly distributed to prospective jurymen, would conclude that it was his sworn duty to decide the case in accordance with the “law.” as “the judge declares it to be.” 3 The prefatory words “under these circumstances” used by the judge here could not weaken, rather they would serve to confirm, the understanding 'by the jurors that the judge’s purpose was to have them take as conclusive his statement that what the corporation did the defendant did, i. e., that the jurors, on this issue, were not to consider the credibility of the witnesses.
My colleagues read the judge’s statement as if he had said, “If you believe the testimony to which I have referred, then I charge you as a matter of law, etc.” But the significant fact is that he omitted that important if-clause. To assume that the jury read in the if-clause, as necessarily *473implied, is to assume that the jurors recognized that the judge’s unconditional statement, literally interpreted, was legally erroneous, and that, so recognizing, the jurors imported the language needed to avoid the error. I see no reason to ascribe such legal acumen to jurymen. Charges no more misleading have frequently been held to constitute reversible error. See, e. g., Bihn v. United States, 328 U.S. 633, 66 S.Ct. 1172, 90 L.Ed. 1485; Bollenbach v. United States, 326 U.S. 607, 612-614, 66 S.Ct. 402, 405, 90 L.Ed. 350; United States v. Crescent-Kelvan Co., 3 Cir., 164 F.2d 582, 588; cf. Sandals v. United States, 6 Cir., 213 F. 569, 576, As the Court said in the Bollenbach case, “A conviction ought not to rest on an equivocal direction to the jury on a basic issue,” adding that it “would transfer to the jury the judge’s function in giving the law” to say “that the lay jury will know enough to disregard the judge’s bad law if in fact he misguides them,”
2. If (as I think) the practical effect of the judge’s statement was to withdraw this issue of fact from the jury, then of course the error was not cured by his further instructions as to burden of proof, intent, and that the “jury are the sole judges of the facts”; those further instructions applied to the fact-issues not withdrawn from the jury. See e. g., Bihn v. United States, 328 U.S. 633, 637, 66 S.Ct. 1172, 90 L.Ed. 1485.
3. The likelihood that the jurors thought that the judge had removed that fact-issue from their consideration is increased by his earlier remark, during the trial, with reference to the money-order deposited in one of the corporation’s bank accounts: “Well, so what? He [the defendant, Platt] got the money on it, didn’t he?” Now there was no proof that Platt did “get the money on it.” The proof showed (a) that both Platt and Schere were empowered to draw on that account and that (b) Platt had drawn on it frequently; but (contrary to my colleagues’ comment) there is not a syllable of proof that Schere had not also so drawn on that account. The judge’s remark, however, in effect told the jury that whatever funds were received by the corporation must be regarded as having been received ¡by Platt, regardless of who withdrew those funds — in other words, that Platt and the corporation were to be deemed identical.4 The charge that “as a matter of law, etc.” may well have rubbed that idea into the minds of the jurors.

. Emphasis added.

. He said: “Your Honor, the defendant takes exception to that part of the charge which charged the jury as a matter of law that the defendant and the Marvel Sales Corporation were an identity.”

. See A. Handbook For Petit Jurors Serving in the District Courts of the United States, prepared by the Administrative ■ Office of the United States Courts, and published by authorization of the Judicial Conference of Senior Circuit Judges (1943), with a Foreword by former Chief Justice Stone, urging that “every prospective juror should read and reflect upon its advice.”
The Handbook says (pp. 1, 11, 14, 20): “The jury’s duty is to determine the facts of the case, and, in doing so, the jurors must apply the law of the cáseas the judge declares it to be * * *. The jury’s oath is to decide the case ‘upon the law and the evidence.’ The law is what tho judge declares the law-to be * * *. The last word the jury-hears before it retires to consider its. verdict will be tho law. That is as it should be. The last admonition to the jury should be a reminder of the juror’s solemn oath, to decide the case according to the law and the evidence * * *. The jurors are not responsible for the law and it is their duty, as it is the duty of the judge, to make their decision on the basis of the law as it is. This law will be explained to them by the judge in his instructions.”

. There was no proof as to how much of the corporation’s stock the defendant owned.