Court Opinion

ID: 9451011
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:02:57.79061+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:31.637771
License: Public Domain

McGOWAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
The petition for rehearing pending complains primarily of our reliance upon Rule 52(b), Fed.R.Crim.P., in our earlier disposition of this appeal. It is urged that appellant’s counsel, at the time appellant’s statement to the police was used to refresh his recollection, was not required to articulate a fresh objection but was, rather, entitled to rely upon an earlier indication of a purpose to object, made in a bench colloquy when appellant first took the stand. Although the transcript continues to show this purpose as having been, to say the least, equivocally pursued, I would not be disposed, in view of the seriousness of the crime charged and the sentence imposed, to reject appellant’s reading of the record. Accordingly, I think it would be appropriate to amend our opinion in the following respects for the purpose of making clear that an affirmance of this conviction need not rest upon an assumed absence of objection at the trial to the use of the statement now urged as error on appeal;
1. In the last paragraph of Part I, two sentences (“Apart from considerations stemming from Mallory, augmented by Walder, we would have no difficulty in finding the prosecutor’s cross-examination proper. There was no objection based on these considerations,3 and since the defendant made the first reference to his statement, we cannot say that this cross-examination was plain error under Rule 52(b), Fed.R.Crim.P., if it was error at all.”) are deleted; and there is substituted therefor — “What we hold is that, on the facts of this record, the court did not allow cross-examination to exceed proper limits.3 ”
2. The following paragraph is added , to Footnote 3:
There was, however, a colloquy at the bench at the time appellant took the stand and before he told his story. At that time defense counsel indicated a purpose to object to any subsequent use of the statement. This colloquy terminated somewhat inconclusively for the reason that the prosecutor, under the urging of the court, said that he did not intend to use the statement *969unless he felt compelled to do so by the nature of appellant’s testimony. Because, however, defense counsel may have thought that his earlier expressions in the bench conference served as continuing objections, we are prepared to assume that the matter was adequately called to the court’s attention within the meaning of Rule 52 (b).
It is also urged in the petition for rehearing that our holding was erroneous because it referred to the circumstance that the first reference to the existence of the written statement came from appellant himself, and the appellant was thereby taken to have opened up the subject for impeachment purposes. There is not, as there could not be, any claim that the jury did not first hear of the statement from the lips of appellant, but it is said that we should not have taken this to be an opening up inasmuch as appellant was craftily maneuvered by the prosecutor into making this first reference. The short answer to all this is that affirmance does not turn upon the fact that it was the appellant who initially spoke of the statement. A close look at the unfolding of the record in this case will show what I mean in this respect.
Reference has already been made to the bench colloquy when appellant first took the stand, which ended with an expression of willingness by the prosecutor to defer to the court’s wishes and not to use the statement at all unless compelled to by something in the forthcoming testimony. Appellant then gave his version of the shooting.1 He then told how the policemen who arrived at the scene would not let him tell what had just happened.2 The moment direct examination was finished, the prosecutor asked to approach the bench, and there said as follows:
(At The Bench:)
Me. Titus : Your Honor, does the Court have the statement? Your Honor, may I refer the Court respectfully to page 2, the first paragraph on page 2 of this statement? The paragraph that I am referring to, Your Honor, which I will not say because the jury may hear it, as Your Honor can see, is directly and totally contradictory to the testimony that he has just given.
I submit, Your Honor, that this has nothing to do with the elements of the offense. It has to do with the defense that he has asserted in this case, not the elements of the crime.
The first two sentences of that paragraph, Your Honor, are most directly contradictory.
The court said it would think about the matter during the noon hour. After the noon recess, the judge addressed himself to the prosecutor’s request to use the statement in cross-examination:
Now, as to the two sentences, Mr. Titus, I assume that you have indicated you are going to stop at the word laughed. I kicked the door open and he — Kelly Miller Griffin— was standing there. I raised the gun and I fired. He stood there and looked at me and laughed.
Me. Titus : That’s right.
TheCoubt: One of the difficulties is that the two sentences are sort of taken out of context, out of the whole statement and this is what bothers me about it.
*970I think I should not permit you to ask about those two sentences, but I would think it would be proper in this connection, as long as you made this proffer, in view of the defendant’s testimony on his theory of self-defense, to ask the defendant whether he made any statement about threats or having his hands in his pockets, approaching that closet door.
I would confine it to that one question if you wish to ask it, and permit that to be asked. In the event that he admits that he didn’t say anything about that in the conversation with the police, that would end it, of course. In the event that he denies it, then I think this statement could be shown to him, not for him to read aloud, but to read to himself those portions to see if it would refresh his memory — read the whole statement, rather, to see if it would refresh his memory. Rather, in case he said he did make a statement, that is what I am trying to say—
Mr. Titus: Yes, Your Honor.
The Court: About it in his conversation, then I would permit him to read to himself the statement.
Mr. Titus : Very well, Your Hon- or. [Emphasis supplied.]
Throughout all this defense counsel was silent, and remained so even as the court made its ruling. Thus, as the cross-examination began, the prosecutor and defense counsel knew that the court had specified exactly what use could be made of the statement. That ruling did not depend upon appellant’s being the first to refer to the statement. It was conditioned, rather, only upon the character of appellant’s response to a question to be asked as to whether appellant had ever made a statement to the police about the threatening move towards him by the decédent. A question of this nature by the prosecutor on cross-examiñation was clearly proper. When appellant indicated that he had made a statement to the police, he was asked if it made reference to these circumstances. When he said he did not remember, he was handed the statement solely to refresh his recollection. This was all squarely within the scope of the court’s earlier ruling as to what it would permit. And I do not think that that ruling was a reversibly arbitrary enlargement of cross-examination.
When the court made its ruling, this was the situation: Appellant had testified to the effect that the decedent was physically threatening him when the fatal shot was fired; and that he had tried to tell his story to the police who came to the scene, who refused to hear it. The officers in question testified to quite a different version of this confrontation, and one which was wholly inconsistent with any refusal by them to permit appellant to tell them what had happened. It is naive to think that the point of appellant’s testimony was not to leave with the jury the inference that he would have given the police a contemporaneous version of what had happened if they had let him do so. The fact was that such a version had been given to the police in writing at the station shortly thereafter. It made no reference to the threats. The prosecutor in effect sought leave to cast doubt upon the credibility of appellant's testimony that he had been denied an opportunity to speak, and thereby to combat the inference which appellant had affirmatively imported into the case by testimony in conflict with that of the police. That leave was granted by the court under carefully limited conditions.
A defendant is, of course, free to deny all the elements of the crime charged without being contradicted by statements illegally obtained from him, but, as Waider contemplates, this freedom does not extend to taking a misleading advantage of the prosecution’s normal inability to make any use of such statements, at least in respect of matters bearing upon the credibility of testimony other than a direct denial of guilt.3 On *971the whole record before us, I do not believe that the highly restricted use of appellant’s statement permitted by the trial court was an abuse of his discretion in the conduct of the trial resulting in such unfairness to appellant as to require any affirmative response to the petition for rehearing other than that contemplated hereinabove.

. A I had just got to the door, just about to the frame. He was approaching his door. And I told him to stop and he wouldn’t stop, he kept coming. That’s when I brought the gun up and shot him.
Q And will you describe him as he was approaching, what he was doing, if anything?
A Well he had his hands in his pocket as if he had something in it. I didn’t know what he had. I wasn’t going to ask him if he was going to hurt me. I know he had carried a knife.

. A They asked me where was the shooting. I told them it was upstairs. So they ' got me in-between them and carried me upstairs. I asked the officer could I explain to them what happened. They made me sit down in the chair and told me not to say anything.

. Appellant’s testimony might well have led the jury to conclude, erroneously, that his statement to the police actually corroborated the account he had just given *971in open court. The prosecutor’s limited use of that statement was intended to do no more than correct that impression. In effect, it merely deprived appellant of a piece of evidence whose contents had been misrepresented to the jury, and thereby, of course, weakened the credibility of his testimony.
The test under Walder is not whether the Government’s use of the illegally obtained evidence makes it more difficult for the defendant to convince the jury of his defense. Presumably it would not be used if it were not calculated to have just that effect, and to this extent its use may impair the defendant’s ability successfully to deny all the elements of the charge against him. Walder was a prosecution for four illicit transactions in narcotics. After the defendant had testified that he had never sold, possessed, received or transferred narcotics in his life, the prosecutor was permitted to ask the defendant if narcotics had not been illegally seized from his home prior to an earlier prosecution, and, when the defendant denied that they had, to introduce independent evidence of that fact. It would not seem an unreasonable speculation to suppose that this disclosure somewhat undermined the credibility of the defendant’s claim that he had not possessed or sold narcotics on the occasions in question.