Court Opinion

ID: 9452828
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:53:16.016734+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:22.616983
License: Public Domain

ELY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent. The introduction of statements made by the accused would now be constitutionally impermissible. They were admitted over objeetion, and while the appellee suffered whatever disadvantageous interpretation may have been placed upon them, he was effectively deprived of the benefit of portions of the statements which might have operated in his favor. As to them, the opinion of the California appellate court recites, “Appellant’s statements were not a confession. He consistently denied endorsing the forged instrument. At most, his statements connect him with transmitting the check to Kernen, but not with knowledge of the forgery.” Conceding that we may have disagreed with a verdict of acquittal, in the event there had been one, the jury was practically disempowered, by unconstitutional procedures, to accept the appellee’s protestations, made in his statements, of his innocence.1 I hold the view that when it *336was not unlawful to use it, the prosecutor’s most destructive weapon was comment upon a defendant’s failure to testify in exculpation. For that reason I could not say, in any case wherein there is evidence, as here, which might have supported acquittal, that the prosecutor’s unconstitutional comments were “harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” This is particularly true when the illegal comments, set forth in the majority’s footnote 5, were so effectively made.
Moreover, I believe that we, in any event, should have remanded the cause and given the district judge the first opportunity to review his decision. I concede that since the test of Chapman v. State of California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967), had not been announced at the time of the District Court’s decision so that appellant could have asserted a failure to exhaust state remedies, considerations of comity do not now require referral to the California courts. Compare Blair v. People of State of California, 340 F.2d 741 (9th Cir. 1965), followed in United States ex rel. Walker v. Fogliani, 343 F.2d 43 (9th Cir. 1965). At the same time, we, as a reviewing court, should not, I believe, undertake first to determine a problem which, for resolution, requires the consideration of opposing factual, as well as legal, interpretations.
In this case there are additional reasons which should have influenced the majority not to divest the District Court of power to review its judgment. It is conceded that appellee’s statements would have been, under rules recently announced by the Supreme Court in Miranda, unconstitutionally received into evidence. The rules of Miranda had been anticipated and established by the California court in People v. Dorado, 62 Cal.2d 338, 42 Cal.Rptr. 196, 398 P.2d 361 (1964), but the violation of the rules, as they existed under Dorado, was held in ap-pellee’s direct appeal to have been harmless under the California test.
The California court also dismissed as “harmless error” the prosecution’s erroneous introduction into evidence of ap-pellee’s photograph. As to this, the state court wrote, “Nevertheless the photograph had no proper place in the evidence and should not have been admitted. The photograph does, however, clearly convey to the jury the fact of appellant’s prior custody.” I agree with the majority that this particular question is concerned with state law; notwithstanding, it cannot be disregarded in an over-all appraisal of the state court trial in relation to federal requirements.
Upon the foregoing errors were superimposed the most glaring and surely the most devasting, namely, the prosecutor’s repeated comments concerning appellee’s failure to testify and the trial judge’s improper instruction concerning such failure.2
3
Of all this, the district judge wrote, “This court should not and will not treat these cumulative denials of constitutional rights as one would homeopathic drugs, which though harmful when taken in large doses, yet when taken in small doses may produce a salutary effect. The denial of constitutional rights is a dangerous and harmful poison even in doses of homeopathic proportions.” This ex*337pression followed the court’s general conclusion that “The harmless error rule has no application to a denial of constitutional rights, particularly when the denials of such rights are numerous and cumulative as in the instant case.”
I cannot say that the District Court’s conclusion was clearly erroneous, regardless of whether the California test or the new federal test of Chapman is applied to one of the errors, the violation of the rule of Griffin. If it is necessary to review the conclusion in the light of Chapman, then, as I have suggested, the district judge should be afforded the first opportunity for re-examination.
Since the appellee did not allege that the accumulation of errors in the state trial proceeding resulted in a trial so substantially unfair as to violate federal requirements of due process, it is not clear that the District Court has yet directed its specific attention to that issue.3 See Lisenba v. People of State of California, 314 U.S. 219, 62 S.Ct. 280, 86 L.Ed. 166 (1941); Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961); Chavez v. Dickson, 280 F.2d 727 (9th Cir. 1960); Pike v. Dickson, 323 F.2d 856 (9th Cir. 1963).

. Appellee offered no witnesses or direct evidence in his defense. The check in question, payable to one Michael Pittman, was for the sum of $198.26. Appellee’s brother was a customer of the automobile service station operator to whom the check was passed and was indebted to the operator for approximately $110. In exchange for the check, appellee received only about $88 in cash, directing that his brother’s account be paid with the balance. Appellee's counsel argued, in effect, that the open manner in which appellee passed the check to one to whom he was known, together with appellee’s statement of innocence to the arresting *336officers, created, without more, a reasonable doubt as to his client’s guilt.

. The jury was instructed, “As to any evidence or facts against him which the defendant can reasonably be expected to deny or explain because of facts within his knowledge, if he does not testify or if, though he does testify, he fails to deny or explain such evidence, the jury may take that failure into consideration as tending to indicate the truth of such evidence and as indicating that among the inferences that may be reasonably drawn therefrom, those unfavorable to the defendant are the more probable.”

. The record before us does not contain the unpublished opinion of the California appellant court (Crim. No. 4768 in the District Court of Appeal of the State of California, First Appellate District, Division Three). In its “Order for Discharge of the Petitioner,” the District Court included only a portion of the state court’s opinion. The excerpts reveal that the state court held that the two errors of constitutional dimension and the evi-dentiary error relating to the photograph were “harmless.” They do not disclose, and neither does the whole opinion, which I have obtained and examined, that the state court considered other errors which the record suggests and which the District Court did not discuss. For example, the prosecution, although it had exemplars of appellee’s handwriting, introduced two other exemplars over the objection of appellee’s counsel. These were included in two “booking slips” which, while containing examples of appellee’s handwriting, also prejudicially made it known to the jury that the appellee had previously been twice arrested. Under the circumstances, and on balance, the two “booking slips” should not have been admitted.
The prosecutor abused his power in other respects. In his opening statement, while discussing an effort made by appel-lee to obtain employment, he commented, “Because he [appellee] was a lousy truck driver and scared him [the prospective employer], he naturally brought him back and didn’t hire him.” This followed his statement that appellee had “represented” to the prospective employer that he, ap-pellee, “was a truck driver” and “would do * * * a good job.” In the prospective employer’s subsequent testimony about the event, admitted over the objection that it was irrevelant, he testified that appellee’s driving was “unsatisfactory for me,” but he did not testify that appellee’s driving was “lousy” or so reckless that it “scared him.”