Court Opinion

ID: 9473883
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:42:31.919079+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:47.652908
License: Public Domain

STARR, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the judgment:
I concur in today’s judgment that Mr. Daniels was not unfairly prejudiced by the District Court’s failure to sever Count 3 from the remaining charges. Additionally, I wholeheartedly agree with the court’s refusal to embrace a bright line rule mandating severance whenever one count requiring proof of a prior felony conviction is joined with other charges for trial. The court’s opinion leaves me, however, with several concerns which I shall briefly outline.
(D
While refusing to adopt appellant’s proposed bright line rule of automatic severance, the court clearly views our supervisory powers as sufficiently broad to permit such a result. I am troubled by the proposition that the inherent supervisory powers of the federal courts permit Courts of Appeals to sit as roving supervisors of the federal trial bench, shaping rules to meet felt needs of one sort or another as they arise, even where a specific rule of procedure expressly controls the issue. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 14 speaks authoritatively to the trial courts’ broad discretion in ruling on severance motions. The notion that this court is empowered to fashion a supervisory rule in an area already governed by a rule promulgated by the Judicial Conference and Congress is, to my mind, unsettling. The Judicial Conference and, ultimately, the Congress itself have occupied this field, as it were, thus counseling restraint in judicially legislating in an area already addressed authoritatively by the judiciary’s policy-making body and the Article I branch.
(2)
In its opinion, the court dwells at length on one factor that trial courts must consider in determining whether severance is justified — prejudice to the defendant. Concededly, this is a valid and important concern. Yet, in admonishing trial courts to “proceed with caution” in allowing otherwise proper joinder of prior felony counts, the court overlooks what seems to me the essence of the severance question, namely, the balancing of prejudice to the defendant against the effective utilization of judicial resources. Joined trials have long been recognized to be of fundamental importance in the orderly administration of justice, particularly in an era beset with crowded court dockets. In weighing the prejudice resulting from joinder against the benefits flowing from it, the expeditious use of scarce judicial resources has been recognized as a “dominant concern.” United States v. Nolan, 700 F.2d 479, 482 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 462 U.S. 1123, 103 S.Ct. 3095, 77 L.Ed.2d 1354 (1983); see also United States v. Lyles, 593 F.2d 182, 191 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 440 U.S. 972, 99 S.Ct. 1537, 59 L.Ed.2d 789 (1979). As the Second Circuit, speaking through Judge (now Chief Judge) Feinberg, aptly stated, “Such a rule [permitting joinder] conserves judicial resources, alleviates the burdens on citizens serving as jurors, and avoids the necessity of having witnesses reiterate testimony in a series of trials.” United States v. Borelli, 435 F.2d 500, 502 (2d Cir.1970). The court’s silence today on these countervailing considerations is odd in light of this circuit’s leading opinion on the severance question, a decision charging courts to “weigh [the] prejudice to the defendant caused by the joinder against the obviously important considerations of economy and expedition in judicial administration.” Drew v. United States, 331 F.2d 85, 88 (D.C.Cir.1964). Thus, while the court understandably emphasizes the need for trial courts to guard scrupulously against prejudice to the defendant, the interests in an orderly and efficient judicial system must also be weighed in the balance.
*1120(3)
The court states that its concern over the joinder of prior felony counts is guided by the Supreme Court’s decision in Spencer v. Texas and this circuit’s decision in Drew. Insofar as the majority would appear to be urging severance in similar eases, I find the assertion unconvincing. Spencer clearly stands for the proposition that severance is not required where multiple counts result in the introduction in evidence of a defendant’s prior conviction. In Spencer, the Court stated that the governmental interest in the orderly administration of justice outweighed the defendant’s right to be free from all prejudice and, equally important, that “[t]he defendant’s interests are protected by limiting instructions, and by the discretion residing with the trial judge to limit or forbid the admission of particularly prejudicial evidence.” 385 U.S. at 561, 87 S.Ct. at 652 (citation omitted) (emphasis added).
I must, by the by, question this court’s “headcounting” of the Spencer Court, insofar as the arithmetic leads to the assertion that “when Justice Stewart’s [concurring] vote is added to those of the four dissenting justices, it appears quite possible that the decision would have gone the other way had the trial been held in a federal court.” Opinion at 1117. First, Justice Stewart’s one-paragraph opinion does not suggest that, legally, a different result should have obtained in that case. His opinion states, instead, the Justice’s own view that joined trials — while legally permissible — are not the optimal method for trying counts involving prior convictions. As Justice Stewart stated: “[I]f the Constitution gave me a roving Commission to impose upon the criminal courts of Texas, my own notions of enlightened policy, I would not join the Court’s opinion____ But the question for decision is not whether we applaud or even whether we personally approve the procedures followed.” 385 U.S. at 569, 87 S.Ct. at 656. We on the Court of Appeals similarly do not sit to fashion optimal methods for the maximization of liberty interests; our job is, rather, to decide whether the procedures utilized below conformed to law. In my view, they clearly did.
(4)
Finally, I am constrained to demur to my brethren’s agnosticism about the efficacy of curative instructions to juries. It is a judicial article of faith that “[a] jury is presumed to follow a trial court’s instructions.” United States v. Jackson, 627 F.2d 1198, 1213 (D.C.Cir.1980); see also Shot-well Mfg. Co. v. United States, 371 U.S. 341, 367, 83 S.Ct. 448, 463, 9 L.Ed.2d 357 (1963). The reason for this basic principle is simple. For all its foibles, the jury system demands that we have faith in the people. For our system to work, we must put aside our skepticism and have faith that the jury will do its duty when it is, as here, repeatedly and properly instructed as to the limited use of certain evidentiary items. To bring all this to home, we need go no further than Spencer itself to be reminded that it is the law, pure and simple, that jury instructions can sufficiently protect a defendant’s interest in being free from undue prejudice. 385 U.S. at 561, 87 S.Ct. at 652.
In sum, Rule 14 and the case law require that trial courts be left free to effectuate the will of Congress and to take whatever steps they deem necessary to minimize prejudice. Severance is only one remedy— and certainly the most extreme — in the federal courts’ remedial arsenal. Judge Hogan, using the tool's at his disposal, assured to the satisfaction of all members of this panel that Mr. Daniels received a fair trial. Our colleagues on the district court bench should similarly be left free to fashion, in their sound discretion, appropriate remedies and thus “provide whatever relief justice requires.” Fed.R.Crim.P. 14. Nothing more can properly be required.