Court Opinion

ID: 9479057
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:06:56.614392+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:47.948627
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I join only in the majority’s holding that defendants’ joint indictment violated Rule 8(b) and that defendants’ motion to sever should have been granted by the court below. Because I believe, however, that both the joint indictment and the joint trial which followed prejudiced each defendant’s right to a fair trial, I respectfully dissent.
After careful review of the transcript of the proceedings below, I cannot find that the misjoinder was harmless. By trying the two defendants together, the jury heard twice of the “routine” warnings when there was evidence that only Serhan received that warning in Arabic; the jury heard repeatedly of the posters in English and Arabic warning of the currency reporting requirement; the jury was told on three occasions of a joint $25,000 violation when Serhan had $10,135, and Saleh had $15,237.
Moreover, the jury instructions do not save this case. Rather they underscore the general confusion in the District Court’s mind as to the “jointness” of the crime. The District Judge ruled in his response to the defendants’ motion to sever that the two separate and distinct violations charged were “implicitly” part of the same act. Evidence concerning both defendants’ knowledge, i.e., evidence of statements made to each by the customs agents and the defendants’ response, were admitted generally against both defendants. The jury was free to attribute the knowledge and intent of each defendant to the other, as in a conspiracy case.
The prosecution proceeded on a “jointness” theory. Throughout the trial the prosecution tried to show that the knowledge of one defendant could be inferred from the other. The prosecution repeatedly intermingled evidence against the defendants that would not have been admissible in separate trials.
Since both the District Court and the prosecutor were confused in their treatment of the separateness of the two crimes, I am unable to find that the prose-cutorial statements concerning the joint participation of the defendants in a single crime, the intermingling of evidence as it related to the individual defendants, and the inconsistent rulings of the District Court on the motion to sever and on trial motions did not have a “substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury’s verdict.” Lane, 474 U.S. at 449, 106 S.Ct. at 737. It is impossible to say that the jury did not similarly confuse the evidence against one defendant with the evidence against the other. In view of the *540confusion, it is even impossible to say that the jury did not in fact convict the two defendants of a joint crime rather than two separate crimes.
For the foregoing reasons, I dissent.