Court Opinion

ID: 9452929
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:57:21.227713+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:25.667854
License: Public Domain

*895BURGER, Circuit Judge
(concurring) :
I concur fully with the result and the reasoning of the majority except for the obiter dictum contained in the final paragraph. I have great difficulty in seeing the wisdom of singling out one of an almost infinite number of subjects which can arise in a criminal trial and of intimating that either the prosecutor or the trial judge may one day be called upon to give legal advice to the defense counsel on that one point. So long as we insist on maintaining all the rigors inherent in the contest aspect of the adversary system, we must be prepared to accept the consequences; one of these consequences is that each of the advocates must be relied upon to try his own case. We have frequently chided trial judges and reversed convictions because it seemed to a particular division of the court that the trial judge had intervened on the side of the prosecution. I fear the potential mischief inherent in affirmatively inviting the trial judge to intervene with suggestions to counsel. For this reason, I am unwilling to join in the caveat which the majority expresses in the final paragraph of the opinion.