Court Opinion

ID: 9462465
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:41:34.748952+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:36.175167
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the affirmance of Cantu’s conviction and in the portions of the majority opinion which reason to that conclusion. However, because I believe that in the circumstances of this case sufficient objection was made to the introduction of Arteaga’s 1961 conviction at the trial below and that its introduction was not harmless error, I must dissent from affirmance of his conviction. Accordingly, I express no opinion on the other issues raised by Arteaga and reached by the majority.
The majority concedes that two of the four prerequisites for admissibility of a prior offense — nonremoteness and need for the evidence outweighing its potential for prejudice — are absent in the case at bar. See majority opinion at 1198-1199; United States v. Urdiales, 523 F.2d 1245 (5th Cir. 1975); United States v. Miller, 500 F.2d 751 (5th Cir. 1974). However, United States v. Fendley, 522 F.2d 181, 185-86 (5th Cir. 1975), is said to “preclude our review of appellant’s claim” because Arteaga’s counsel, like Fendley’s, failed to make known the grounds of his objection as required by Fed.R.Civ.P. 51. I do not believe, however, that Fendley either articulates a legal rule or describes a situation so substantially identical to the facts before us that we are bound by that decision.1
Rule 51 analysis must proceed on a case-by-case basis. The language required to “make known” the ground for the action desired by counsel necessarily will vary with the facts and arguments presented to the court preceding the objection in question. Our cases and those of other circuits reject the proposition that counsel must always articulate objections in any fixed or certain style. See Jackson v. United States, 250 F.2d 897 (5th Cir. 1958); United States v. Semensohn, 421 F.2d 1206, 1209 (2d Cir. 1972); cf. United States v. Indiviglio, 352 F.2d 276 (2d Cir. 1965) (en banc), cert. denied, 383 U.S. 907, 86 S.Ct. 887, 15 L.Ed.2d 663 (1966). The question in each case must be whether the objection expressed its ground or grounds with sufficient specificity to focus the trial judge’s attention on the legal issue involved. In the situation before us, four features not present in Fendley or any other case cited by the majority convince me that defense counsel’s position was adequately expressed.
Fendley’s counsel objected on the ground of hearsay. Of all rules of evidence, hearsay is the most riddled by exception — including the Business Records Act upon which the Government relied in Fendley. He objected on grounds which were not merely imprecise, but clearly incorrect under the Business Records Act. The objection was the same as meritless objections to several preceding exhibits. Finally, Fendley contains no indication that the trial court cut into or dominated the discussion on the objection.
*1201By contrast, counsel for Arteaga did timely object to the introduction of the conviction on the basis of the general rule against admission of evidence of this type, a meritorious objection, as the majority notes. Second, the trial court itself before admitting Arteaga’s prior conviction inquired of government counsel as to its date and received the answer “1961.” Third, earlier in the trial, at the time of the introduction of Cantu’s conviction, the only other time an instance of this type arose during the trial, the trial court itself had asked of Cantu’s counsel whether he was objecting on the ground of remoteness. Finally, the trial court conducted the inquiry into the admissibility of the conviction in such a fashion as to limit severely the amount of discussion by counsel on both sides, to a degree that brings this case perilously close to classification as a “no-opportunity” case. See, e. g., United States v. Huffman, 467 F.2d 189 (6th Cir. 1972). In these circumstances, I cannot concur in an affirmance of Arteaga’s conviction on the grounds that his objection to the unnecessary use of a 1961 conviction lacked specificity.
Trial judges must understand objections to expedite their rulings. Artea-ga’s counsel should have made a clear, precise objection by itemizing the criteria articulated in Miller and Urdíales, supra, and missing from the prosecution’s argument below. But it seems plain to me that even in the absence of such clarity and precision, the trial court received from the combination of defense objections and its own requests sufficient information to have made the proper ruling as to admissibility of a conviction of this vintage. Therefore, I would adopt the functional approach of the Eighth Circuit in United States v. Williams, 484 F.2d 428 (8th Cir. 1973), which asks what the objection, considered in context, reasonably conveyed to the court and what prejudice the ruling carried for the defendant. Such a test does not stop at the literal words used by counsel.
Moreover, I cannot agree with the majority that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt under Kottea-kos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946). The testimony of Justice of the Peace Cerny may provide some link between Castillo’s story and Arteaga, but it lacks the tangibility or the authority of a prior conviction. The introduction of the conviction well may have stilled doubts about the credibility of Castillo’s account of Arteaga’s involvement in the minds of one or more jurors, since an account, specific or general, of a smuggling operation that may sound like the product of a fertile imagination when told about a defendant with no apparent history of crime may acquire an aura of truth if the actor is shown to have a record of prior criminal conviction. Then too, while the jury was informed that Artea-ga had been convicted of a similar offense, they were not told that since 1964 he had not been in custody. If a prior conviction can be both relevant and necessary and at the same time harmless, it seems to me that at least the jury should have been told that Arteaga had “served his time” and been back in society for nine years to still reasonable doubts that the use of the conviction was harmful to Arteaga’s defense. In these circumstances, I cannot say with assurance that Arteaga was convicted because the government proved beyond a reasonable doubt he committed the acts presently charged. I maintain it is likely that he was convicted because he was shown to have been convicted for a similar offense at a time too remote to have had any legal probity for the issues presented below.
I, therefore, respectfully dissent from the affirmance of Arteaga’s conviction.

. To be responsive to the majority’s view, the discussion of the sufficiency of Arteaga’s objection assumes that he had the responsibility to justify the exclusion of the prior conviction rather than that, upon objection, the Government was required to respond to his objection with a proper authentication of the evidence. In fact, the latter is clearly required. See United States v. Miller, supra, 500 F.2d at 761-62 and n.14.