Court Opinion

ID: 9447838
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:45:39.135771+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:12.545792
License: Public Domain

HASTIE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting)
I think the defendant Giordano should have been acquitted and that this court should now require his acquittal. He was convicted on counts five and seven of the indictment. In my view there was insufficient evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt his guilt on either count. Count five is a substantive charge of unlawful failure to register certain firearms with the Secretary of the Treasury. I find no evidence whatever that Giordano had any such connection with the possession or transportation of the firearms here in question as to make it his duty to register them. Indeed, the opinion of this court does not discuss this count but rather supports Giordano’s conviction of conspiracy under count seven.
The entire proof thought to support the conspiracy charge against Giordano consists of evidence that he purchased some burlap bags; that a friend who worked for Carlucci made the purchase for him; that later these bags, no longer in the possession of Giordano, were used as wrappings for a shipment of contraband firearms; and that his explanation of the purchase to an investigator shortly after the event differed in some particulars from the account he gave later on the witness stand. It was not proved that Giordano ever knew or intended that the bags were to be used to wrap guns. Beyond that, the prosecution did not even attempt to show that he knew the guns were stolen, unregistered or untaxed, or that there was to be an interstate or foreign shipment of contraband. Yet, only if he was aware of the gun-running scheme and some illegal aspect of it, could he be properly convicted as a member of the conspiracy to commit particular offenses as charged. For, as Judge Learned Hand has reminded us: “While one may * * * be guilty of running past a traffic light of whose existence one is ignorant, one cannot be guilty of conspiring to run past such a light, for one cannot agree to run past a light unless one supposes that there is a light to run past.” United States v. Crimmins, 2 Cir., 1941, 123 F.2d 271, 273. I think Giordano has been convicted'of conspiring to commit various substantive crimes with no evidence whatever of his awareness that these crimes were contemplated, much less, that his activity in connection with a quantity of burlap bags would facilitate these crimes.
The worst that can properly be found in this regard is that Giordano’s conflicting statements about the bags show apprehension or even belief that the bags had become involved in some wrongdoing. But that is far short of demonstrating that he acquired or disposed of them intending that they be used in any of the crimes charged in this indictment. In my view this conviction must have been based upon speculation by the jury about the connection of Giordano with the conspiracy charged. Therefore, it should not stand.
The case of the defendant Hanna is different. He was the truck driver who transported the stolen goods to the airport. He is charged in several counts. In count three he is charged with the substantive offense of possession of property of the United States knowing it to have been stolen. Cf. Rayborn v. United States, 6 Cir., 1956, 234 F.2d 368. Unquestionably he did for a time have a truck load of stolen guns in his possession. He never offered any exculpatory explanation of this. Accordingly, a jury could properly infer guilty knowledge from his unexplained possession of the *698stolen articles. Cf. United States v. Allegrucci, 3 Cir., 1958, 258 F.2d 70. For this reason I think Hanna is not entitled to acquittal as a matter of law.
Quite apart from questions as to the sufficiency of the evidence concerning the participation of particular individuals in the crimes charged, the appellants contend that the district court erred in its disposition of their request that a mistrial be declared because of the jury’s exposure to information highly prejudicial to the appellants which was published in daily newspapers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania while this trial was in progress there.
The case 'was tried to a jury for more than three weeks. During this period the jury was not sequestered. Its members were entirely at large from the end of each trial day until the beginning of the next. During the first week of the trial derogatory articles about the defendants appeared, conspicuously placed and headlined, in local daily newspapers. The articles contained a substantial amount of material prejudicial to the defendants which was not and, in large part, could not have been put in evidence at the trial. As to this there is no dispute. The newspaper stories stated that all of the defendants were connected with a “gambling combine” in New Kensington, that one of them also operated a gambling concession in Plavana, and that the purpose of their attempted exportation of guns was to protect gambling franchises in Cuba.
On June 21st, a few days after these derogatory articles were published, counsel brought the publications to the attention of the trial judge who thereupon questioned the assembled jurors about the matter in open court. The judge first asked the jury whether any of them had read newspaper accounts of the trial. Juror No. 8 replied, “I have”. The court then asked: “Are you the only one that has?” At this point jurors No. 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12 and two alternates all raised their hands, signifying that they too had read newspaper accounts of the trial. This, of course, was in violation of the instructions the court had given the jury. Then one of the jurors addressed the court as follows: “I would like to qualify my answer, that in reading the newspaper I have noticed the headlines, just noticed them and then just simply paid no further attention, other than those things you just scan quickly as you look at it. I didn’t look at it to remember it”. Thereupon each of the jurors who had admitted l-eadingnewspaper articles modified his admission to conform with what had just been said. One of them observed: “I can say about the same thing. I paid little attention to the accounts in the headlines, knowing it don’t mean nothing to me, what is in the paper. I use my own judgment”. Two jurors then said: “I am the same”. Four others stated: “I have been doing the same”.
The judge then emphasized to the jury the importance of deciding solely on the basis of the testimony in court. He also stressed the gross impropriety of newspaper, radio and television reports containing derogatory information about the-defendants on trial. Having thus sought-to minimize the risk of prejudice to the defendants the court denied the defendants’ motion for a mistrial.
It is indisputable that when jurors are-allowed to disperse from day to day during a long much publicized trial there is danger that they will be subjected to improper influences. When derogatory materials about the defendants are published in daily newspapers in communities where the jurors live the likelihood of prejudice to the defendants often becomes so great that corrective action is required. Griffin v. United States, 3 Cir., 1924, 295 F. 437. The problem is to decide when and whether a situation has developed in which a court should not risk any corrective less drastic than a new trial.
Marshall v. United States, 1959, 360 U.S. 310, 79 S.Ct. 1171, 3 L.Ed.2d 1250, is a significant new development of the law in this area. In that case, during a criminal trial some jurors had “read” and others had “scanned” articles preju*699dicial to the defendants. But, examined separately and apart from their fellow jurors, each of them assured the court that he had not been influenced by the articles in question and could put them out of mind in reaching a decision on the evidence. Before the Marshall decision various courts had held that this sort of assurance combined with impressive judicial admonition was enough to make unassailable a decision of the trial judge that the defendants had suffered no serious prejudice from adverse newspaper stories and that there was no sufficient reason for declaring a mistrial. E. g., United States v. Leviton, 2 Cir., 1951, 193 F.2d 848; United States v. Carruthers, 7 Cir., 1945, 152 F.2d 512. But in the Marshall case the Supreme Court, ignoring this older line, said that this kind of “exposure of jurors to information of a character * * * so prejudicial that it could not be directly offered as evidence” was in itself enough to require a new trial. 360 U.S. at page 312, 79 S.Ct. at page 1173. And see the foreshadowing concurrence of Mr. Justice Jackson and Mr. Justice Frankfurter in a somewhat similar, though clearer, situation in Shepherd v. State of Florida, 1951, 341 U.S. 50, 71 S.Ct. 549, 95 L.Ed. 740.
In the present case, if the jurors had adhered to their first admissions of reading newspaper accounts of the trial, the Marshall rule would unquestionably have required that a new trial be ordered. If this case is significantly different from Marshall, the difference must be found in the fact that the jurors so modified their original admissions as to indicate only a minimal contact with or observation of articles published about the trial. Two circumstances deserve special mention in this connection. The judge at no time examined individual jurors out of the presence of their colleagues. Each was in position to be influenced by what his colleagues had said about paying little attention to the articles. Second, even in the general questioning of the entire jury there was no inquiry, much less a searching cross-examination, to obtain any explanation of the jurors’ uniform modification of original admissions in order to adopt what a colleague had been heard to say about merely reading “headlines” and “those things you just scan quickly as you look at it”. On its face this conduct gives the impression of an effort to escape or minimize possible criticism of their reading about the trial rather than a genuine recollection that admissions made only minutes earlier were mistaken. In these circumstances I think that the change of position by the jurors does not to any really significant extent diminish the great likelihood of prejudice disclosed when on first inquiry so many of them admitted that, contrary to the court’s earlier admonition, they had read newspaper accounts of the trial. And because I read the Marshall case as meaning that very substantial risk of prejudice in all the circumstances, rather than clear affirmative demonstration of prejudice in fact, is enough to require a mistrial when jurors have been exposed to inadmissible and derogatory publications about a person on trial, I think the Marshall rule strongly supports the appellants’ demand for a new trial here.
Finally, even in the absence of direct evidence that jurors have read the publications in question, early decisions in this circuit have taken the position that there is a strong logical inference that jurors permitted to separate during a trial have seen or learned of derogatory material about the defendants which has appeared conspicuously during the trial on the front page of a local daily paper. In Meyer v. Cadwalader, C.C.E.D.Pa.1891, 49 F. 32, 36, Circuit Judge Acheson said:
“It is idle to say that there is no direct evidence to show that the jury read these articles. They appeared in the daily issues of leading journals, and were scattered broadcast over the community. The jury separated at the close of each session of the court, and it is incredible that, going out into the community, they did not see and read these newspaper publications.”
*700In Griffin v. United States, 3 Cir., 1924, 295 F. 437, the only evidence that a single derogatory front page newspaper story about the defendant had come to the attention of the jury was testimony that one juror had been seen with a copy of that paper in his possession. The court held that a new trial should have been granted.
These uncompromising rulings of our predecessors in this circuit are old. The Supreme Court ruling in the Marshall case is very new. In sum they provide what to me are convincing reasons for directing a new trial in the circumstances of the present case.
The judgment should be reversed and the cause remanded for dismissal as to Giordano and new trials in the cases of the other appellants.
BIGGS, Chief Judge, and KALOD-NER, Circuit Judge, concur in the views expressed in this dissenting opinion.