Court Opinion

ID: 9460269
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:46:05.472776+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:33.081254
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing En Banc
BRIGHT and ROSS, Circuit Judges, separate statement of views on petition for rehearing.
We vote against a rehearing en banc because the circumstances in these cases indicate that the errors in admitting the questioned exhibits were nonprejudicial.
Judge Vogel, writing Sanchez v. United States, 293 F.2d 260, 269 (8th Cir. 1961), aptly states the law that it is error and ordinarily reversible error to receive an exhibit containing “a neat condensation of the government’s whole case against the defendant.” (Emphasis in original.) Id., at 269, quoting from United States v. Ware, 247 F.2d 698, *530700 (7th Cir. 1957). In Sanchez, the prosecution offered a weak case and in addition to improperly introducing the questioned exhibits, also presented hearsay evidence, to which objection had been taken. This court granted a new trial. Here, the government presented strong cases, apparently free of serious trial error except for admitting into evidence and sending to the jury the exhibits which in part recited the alleged facts of each defendant’s sale of drugs to a government informant. That recitation constituted hearsay and the trial court in each ease should have ordered the references to details of the sales transaction removed from the exhibits.
Prosecutors who insist upon introducing a written narrative summary of the facts of sale into evidence in the trial of a narcotics case create a needless risk of injecting prejudicial error into the proceedings.