Court Opinion

ID: 9491710
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:21:18.085139+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:54.187986
License: Public Domain

LUTTIG, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The district court instructed the jury in this case that it (the court) “did not credit and accept the defendant’s testimony,” that it (the court) believed that the defendant possessed the intent to violate the federal drug laws, and that it (the court) believed that the defendant “was acting illegally as a drug dealer.” As the majority acknowledges, the district court essentially instructed the jury that the defendant was guilty as a matter of law.
Although I confess it was to my surprise, the Supreme Court has held that when the facts are undisputed and satisfy the elements of the crime, it is not necessarily reversible error for a trial court to instruct the jury that in the court’s opinion the defendant is guilty. Horning v. District of Columbia, 254 U.S. 135, 138-39, 41 S.Ct. 53, 65 L.Ed. 185 (1920). See United States v. Murdock, 290 U.S. 389, 394, 54 S.Ct. 223, 78 L.Ed. 381 (1933). However, given the Court’s considerably more recent explication of the doctrine of structural error, I must conclude that these holdings no longer constitute sound precedents.
In particular, in United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 115 S.Ct. 2310, 132 L.Ed.2d 444 (1995), the Court, in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Scalia, left no doubt that it viewed both Homing and Murdock as irreconcilable with the Court’s developing harmless error jurisprudence. Indeed, Justice Scalia characterized the doctrine of those cases — that an instruction that the defendant was guilty as charged could be “harmless error, if error at all” — as “an unfortunate anomaly in light of subsequent cases.” Id. at 520, 115 S.Ct. 2310. Other courts had reached the same conclusion even before Gaudin. See Commonwealth v. McDuffee, *263379 Mass. 353, 398 N.E.2d 463, 468-69 (Mass.1979) (“[S]erious constitutional questions are raised [by Horning ] in light of modern case law.”); United States v. Taylor, 693 F.Supp. 828, 841 n. 25 (N.D.Cal.1988) (agreeing with McDuffee).
It seems to me that the concern expressed in Gaudin applies even where, as here, the trial court instructs the jury that, not withstanding the court’s conclusion of guilt, the jury retains the right to make the final decision. For, as the Court explained in Quercia v. United States, 289 U.S. 466, 53 S.Ct. 698, 77 L.Ed. 1321 (1933), on which Justice Scalia relied in Gaudin, “[t]he influence of the trial judge on the jury is necessarily and properly of great weight and his lightest word or intimation is received with deference, and may prove controlling.” 289 U.S. at 470, 53 S.Ct. 698 (internal quotations omitted). Because of this influence, some errors in jury instructions' — those “likely to remain firmly lodged in the memory of the jury and to excite prejudice” — simply cannot be cured by a statement that the court’s opinions are not binding on the jury. Id, at 472, 53 S.Ct. 698. After Gaudin, an instruction of guilt surely falls into this class.
Because I believe that the Supreme Court, if confronted with the court’s instruction in this case, would, under the reasoning of Gau-din, hold that the district court’s instructional error was structural in character and thus “def[ies] analysis by harmless-error standards,” Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 281-82, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993) (internal quotations omitted), I would reverse the defendant’s conviction and remand for a new trial.