Court Opinion

ID: 9452477
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:41:48.079987+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:13.886598
License: Public Domain

FREEDMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
This is a capital case in which the Commonwealth sought the death penalty from the beginning. In such a case it was essential that appellant’s rights should be carefully safeguarded in the admission of evidence. Appellant had conceded that he had shot Mrs. Boston, and the sole issue in the case was his premeditation in her killing. While evidence of the circumstances involving the *59shooting of Daniel and Russell Boston, the weapon used and the aim of the shots fired at them, was relevant and admissible on the issue of premeditation (Commonwealth v. Wable, 382 Pa. 80, 114 A.2d 334 (1955)), evidence of the resulting death of Daniel Boston had no probative value on that issue. Daniel Boston’s death from his wounds no more established premeditation than Russell Boston’s recovery negated it. It is difficult enough in a case such as this to prevent a passionate feeling from invading the calm which should surround the jury’s deliberation, because of the direct evidence of the crime of which a defendant is accused. It was all the more necessary therefore in order to avoid a complete breakdown of a fair trial that evidence of Daniel’s resulting death, which was completely devoid of probative significance on the issue of premeditation in the killing of Mrs. Boston, should have been excluded. It was highly prejudicial to appellant, for it loaded on the jury the horror at his responsibility for multiple killings. Moreover, the prejudice inherent in the disclosure of Daniel’s death was aggravated here by the numerous references to it at the trial, which could not fail to add to the prejudice against appellant. The Coroner was permitted to testify to his inquest on Daniel’s death, the Deputy Coroner gave testimony regarding the removal of Daniel’s body, a police officer testified that he saw Daniel lying wounded but alive on the landing and that he died on the way to the hospital and an uncle was permitted to state his relationship to Daniel and Daniel’s age at the time of his death. Finally, the Coroner’s pathologist was permitted to give the details of his autopsy on Daniel’s body and the cause of his death.
In these circumstances, I would hold that appellant was denied a fair trial. For the prejudice which he suffered from this evidence necessarily was substantial and its introduction, on any realistic consideration, was fundamentally unfair. It is inconceivable to me that appellant could have had a fair assessment of his defense to the charge of murdering his “common law” wife by a jury which had been informed and was constantly reminded that he had also killed her son. For the jury to segregate the two homicides and to obliterate its knowledge of the death of Daniel in determining appellant’s guilt for the killing of Mrs. Boston would have been impossible. As Chief Judge Biggs wrote for the court en banc in United States ex rel. Scoleri v. Banmiller, 310 F.2d 720, 725 (3 Cir. 1962), cert. denied, 374 U.S. 828, 83 S.Ct. 1866, 10 L.Ed.2d 1051 (1963): “Certainly such a feat of psychological wizardry verges on the impossible even for berobed judges. It is not reasonable to suppose that it could have been accomplished by twelve laymen brought together as a jury.” See also Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 388-389, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908 (1964).
It is true that the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania considered and rejected appellant’s objection that the evidence of the death of Daniel was irrelevant, once on his original appeal from his conviction (Commonwealth v. Ross, 413 Pa. 35, 39-44, 195 A.2d 81 (1963)) and later on his appeal from the denial of his application for habeas corpus. Commonwealth ex rel. Ross v. Maroney, 416 Pa. 86, 89, 204 A.2d 756 (1964). It was of the view that the evidence of Daniel’s death was properly admitted because it was “an essential inseparable part and parcel of relator’s killing of Mrs. Boston and was admissible for that reason” (416 Pa. at 89, 204 A.2d at 757), and was also admissible as “part of a common plan, design, or motive, or as part of the res gestae or as part of a sequence of acts related to the crime or as part of a chain of criminal acts.” (413 Pa. at 40, 195 A.2d at 83) Of course, a federal court has no authority to lay down general rules of evidence for the conduct of state trials. But state court rulings on the admissibility of evidence do not foreclose a federal court’s determination of the constitutional question whether in the light of the surrounding circumstances the admission of evidence in a *60state court trial has deprived a defendant of due process of law.
In the present case it is not necessary to adopt a principle of balancing the prejudicial character of relevant evidence against its probative weight. Compare Burns v. Beto, 371 F.2d 598 (5 Cir. 1966). We are dealing here with evidence utterly lacking in probative value in view of the issues which were contested at the trial. The present case, therefore, is well within the power we have already exercised in reviewing the admissibility of evidence in state court trials in determining the validity of a claim of violation of due process. In United States ex rel. Scoleri v. Banmiller, supra, and United States ex rel. Lowry v. Myers, 364 F.2d 297 (3 Cir. 1966) we held that due process was denied by the admission into evidence of prior unrelated criminal convictions, because they prejudicially affected the determination of guilt even though they were offered only for the secondary purpose of determining penalty. Both Scoleri and Lowry stand for a more expansive rule of federal court review than would be necessary in the present case, for the evidence of prior unrelated criminal convictions in those cases, although offered only for the purpose of fixing penalty, had probative value on the underlying question of guilt. The reason for excluding such evidence, as the Supreme Court said in Michelson v. United States, 335 U.S. 469, 475-476, 69 S.Ct. 213, 93 L.Ed. 168 (1948), was not because it lacked probative value, but because practical experience has taught us that only in this way is it possible to prevent undue prejudice to a defendant. In the present case, the evidence of Daniel’s death lacks even this relation to the issue of premeditation in the killing of Mrs. Boston.
I do not believe that we are foreclosed by Ciucci v. State of Illinois, 356 U.S. 571, 78 S.Ct. 839 (1958), a case which was clouded by other considerations dealings with inflammatory publicity and double jeopardy. There the defendant had committed four murders at the same time and was successively tried for the first and second and then for the third murder in an effort by the prosecutor to secure the death penalty. The prosecutor was successful at the third trial. The per curiam opinion of the majority of the Supreme Court shows that on the appeal it was “undisputed that evidence of the entire occurrence [of the four homicides] was relevant in each of the three prosecutions.” (p. 572, 78 S.Ct. p. 840) Here, on the other hand, there was a specific objection made to the admission of evidence of Daniel Boston’s resulting death, on the ground of its irrelevancy. If Ciucci has any application to the present case it is only in its approval of consecutive separate trials for murders committed in one occurrence. Since appellant therefore can be tried separately for Daniel’s murder great care must be taken not to mingle it with the facts relating to his trial for the killing of Mrs. Boston. Finally, the Illinois procedure under which Ciucci was tried apparently left it to the jury to determine preliminarily whether the death penalty should be imposed 1 and made no provision for the presentation of evidence relating to penalty separate from the evidence relating to guilt, such as Pennsylvania adopted in its Split Verdict Law.2 As in Pennsylvania, prior to the Split Verdict Law, the introduction of such evidence apparently was determined unavoidable in order to afford the jury adequate means of determining the penalty.3
It is not enough that appellant may have been guilty of brutal murders. In such shocking circumstances it is all the more requisite that courts guard against a wave of emotion which would inundate a dispassionate decision by preventing the presentation of inflammatory evi*61dence which is not of probative value on the issue which the jury is to decide. Otherwise the trial of a case such as this would be no- more than an exercise in ritual, leading inevitably to the accused’s doom.
I would hold that the introduction of the evidence relating to Daniel Boston’s death deprived appellant of due process of law, because it was of no probative value to the issue of premeditation in the killing of Mrs. Boston and was so prejudicial that it rendered his trial fundamentally unfair.
FORMAN, Circuit Judge, joins in this dissent.

. Ill.Annot.Stat. ch. 38, § 360, now § 9-1; ch. 38, §§ 390-392, now § 1-7.

. See United States ex rel. Lowry v. Myers, supra, 364 F.2d at 301.