Court Opinion

ID: 9455029
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:06:39.832531+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:25.147067
License: Public Domain

WATERMAN, Circuit Judge
(concurring) :
I concur in the result.
I believe that the highly improper admission during the Government’s direct case of evidence of mail thefts prior to the thefts for which Rosse was indicted was, on the facts of this case, harmless error. Rosse’s attorney failed timely to object to the admission of this evidence, and all the other evidence in the case fairly shrieked of Rosse’s guilt. If it were not for this overwhelming proof that Rosse was guilty of the crimes charged, I would not join in affirming his conviction. I do not approve of the thrust of my colleaques’ opinion; the Government ought not to be permitted to cure a wrongful admission of prejudicial evidence placed before the jury as part of the Government’s direct case by pointing to its accidental relevancy to some part of the defendant’s direct case. In fact, that relevancy would likely be required, as the majority opinion indicates, for the purpose of rebutting inferences reasonably drawable from the Government’s improperly introduced evidence. This process of justifying the Government’s action is a bootstrap operation of a type that I, in the normal case, could not approve, irrespective of whether there might be an accidental relevancy later discernible.