Court Opinion

ID: 9493426
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:07:41.590987+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:49.793822
License: Public Domain

NATHANIEL R. JONES, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
While I concur generally in the Court’s well-reasoned analysis, I thought it necessary to underscore that juror questioning is permissible only in the most rare and compelling of circumstances. Moreover, even on those extraordinary occasions when the practice is allowable, it must be narrowly tailored to achieve legitimate juridical objectives in a way that does not prejudice the defendant’s right to a fair trial. See United States v. Bush, 47 F.3d 511, 515 (2d Cir.1995) (providing that juror questioning should be “strongly discourage[d]”); United States v. Cassiere, 4 F.3d 1006, 1018 (1st Cir.1993) (“[Juror questioning] should be reserved for exceptional situations, and should not become the routine, even in complex cases.”); United States v. Lewin, 900 F.2d 145, 147 (8th Cir.1990) (“[The court] does not condone the practice of inviting juror questions.”); DeBenedetto by DeBenedetto v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 754 F.2d 512, 516 (4th Cir.1985) (holding that because “the practice of juror questioning is fraught with dangers which can undermine the orderly progress of the trial,” it should be used only in “compelling circumstances”). Even if a defendant shows that a district court improperly allowed juror questioning, however, the defendant must also show that the practice prejudiced his right to a fair trial. See DeBenedetto, 754 F.2d at 517. In the context of due process challenges to the fairness of a trial, prejudice .analysis generally requires a defendant to demonstrate that the purported constitutional violation affected the trial’s outcome. See United States v. Rogers, 118 F.3d 466, 475 (6th Cir.1997); United States v. Presser, 844 F.2d 1275, 1281 (6th Cir.1988).
While the defendants in this case have not demonstrated that the allowance of juror questioning prejudiced their right to a fair trial, it nevertheless is apparent that the district court erred in permitting the practice at all. Without forewarning the parties, the district court announced on the opening day of trial that juror questioning would be allowed. Neither in this initial announcement, nor at any other point in the trial, did the district court specifically state the reasons that justified juror questioning. The facts involved here are anything but complex. The government’s case consisted entirely of witness testimony and simple forensics evidence, and the defendants’ alibis were simply that they were somewhere else at the time of the crime. Perhaps implicitly conceding the point, the government does not even allege a compelling reason for juror questioning; rather, it argues that the district court employed sufficient safeguards to protect the defendants from prejudice and that the actual questions asked were innocuous.1 See U.S. Br. at 15. However, this approach obscures the necessity of a predicate justification for the practice to render it constitutionally permissible. See United States v. Ajmal, 67 F.3d 12, 15 (2d Cir.1995) (“Regardless of the procedures adopted by the district court to vet juror questions, there must be ample justification for *467adopting the disfavored practice in the first instance. To hold otherwise would sanction juror questioning of witnesses in any circumstance, so long as appropriate prophylactic measures are adopted.”). That the practice may find favor with jurors is an insufficient justification for allowing it.
In addition to failing to articulate, on the record, a sufficiently compelling rationale for allowing juror questioning, the district court’s prophylactic measures did not adequately protect the integrity of the fact-finding process. At the close of each witness’ testimony, the district court specifically asked the jury whether it had any questions for the respective witness. On those unusual occasions when juror questioning is appropriate, district courts should refrain from inviting or encouraging jurors to ask questions. Such solicitation of juror questions is apt to promote questioning beyond legally appropriate bounds and to thereby compromise the defendant’s right to due process. See United States v. Douglas, 81 F.3d at 324, 326 (2d Cir.1996) (“[Inviting juror questions] risks an undue extent of questioning and might even cause some jurors to feel that they are not fulfilling their responsibilities unless they ask questions.”); Ajmal, 67 F.3d at 14-15 (rejecting the practice of establishing at the outset of trial that juror questions would be allowed and the practice of inviting jurors to ask questions at the end of each witness’s testimony). Further, while the court did instruct the jury that it should ignore questions asked by lawyers for which objections were sustained, see J.A. at 807, it did not specifically emphasize that implications should not be drawn from unasked juror questions. In these various ways, the district court failed to use sufficiently rigorous prophylactic measures to protect the due process interests of the defendants. However, I underscore that the allowance of juror questioning, in the first instance, was not legally appropriate in this case.
Despite the district court’s improvident allowance of juror questioning, the defendants’ inability to demonstrate prejudice requires that we affirm their convictions. A variety of witnesses, including Wurster, Reidmiller, Hembree, and Schweinzger, attested to Ward’s and Collins’ involvement in the robbery. Reidmiller and Schweinz-ger testified that Ward confessed that he had robbed the Cardinal State bank, and other witnesses attested to Ward’s and Collins’ activities in preparation for the robbery. In short, notwithstanding the district court’s erroneous permission of juror questioning, the defendants have not demonstrated that this error changed the outcome of their trial. See Rogers, 118 F.3d at 475; Presser, 844 F.2d at 1281. It is on this basis that I concur in the majority’s judgment that the defendants have not demonstrated a violation of their due process right to a fair trial.
Outside of the above areas of disagreement, I concur in all aspects of the majority opinion.

. The government, like the majority, also attempts to make the unavailing comparison that the district court itself has wide discretion to question witnesses. See U.S. Br. at 17. However, one surely cannot compare questioning by a court officer uniquely empowered to discern and declare the' law with questioning by a jury of laypersons. See De-Benedetto, 754 F.2d at 516 ("One simply cannot compare the questioning by the trial judge — who is trained in the law and instructed to ‘see that justice is done’ — with the questioning by members of the jury — who are untutored in the law, and instructed to sit as a neutral fact-finding body.”).