Court Opinion

ID: 9640720
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:13:31.490004+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:32.047300
License: Public Domain

NORCROSS, District Judge
(dissenting in part). I concur in the opinion and judgment, except in respect to the matters hereinafter referred to.
I am of the opinion the admission in evidence of the Curtis affidavit was error, so far as the defendant Elmer Gibson was concerned. The instruction given to the jury that the affidavit could only be considered as evidence against the defendant Curtis was not sufficient to remove its damaging effect. While the affidavit is not in the record, it is stated in the briefs that it set forth that Curtis had received large sums of money during the years 1924 and 1925, and that the largest portion of the sums received was given to defendant Elmer Gibson. The affidavit would have no evidentiary value, even against the defendant Curtis, unless the jury could draw some conclusion therefrom, considered with other evidence in the case, that the money referred to was money received by him in pursuance of the alleged conspiracy. That was the only purpose for which it could have been offered and received in evidence.
Counsel for the government considered this evidence of such importance that its admission was stressed with great earnestness, notwithstanding its competency, even as against Curtis, raised new and serious questions for the court to consider. Evidence of an admitted receipt by Curtis of large sums of money, especially when accompanied with the statement that a large portion thereof had been paid over to Gibson, in view of other testimony in the case, did more, in my opinion, than bear somewhat remotely upon the question of the guilt of Curtis. It was the expressed view of both the court and counsel for the government that, if Gibson’s name as used in the affidavit was in some way withheld from the knowledge of the jury, the affidavit would be meaningless.
Counsel for the defendant Gibson is recorded in the record as saying: “Now, although your honor may instruct the jury to absolutely disregard that statement as against him, yet it is before them, * * * and I ask, in the furtherance of justice and in the end that he may have a fair trial, that any reference to my client be deleted.” To this request counsel for the government replied: “We object to the deletion of the affidavit; that it should be admitted in its entirety, in order that the jury may have an understanding of the whole thing. The matter is ad-' missible as a whole, or not at all.”
Counsel for the government further stated : “Before the court reads that affidavit, I would like to submit that the court keep, in mind that this is a conspiracy case, and that a declaration, to be of any evidence against this defendant at all, is to show his connection with some other defendant in this ease; then, if it is deleted, it will rob it of its value, so far as this conspiracy is concerned.” After reading the affidavit, the court stated: “It. is obvious, if deleted, it would be meaningless.”
*25We have for consideration, then, a statement in the form of an affidavit made by one of the alleged conspirators after the termination of the alleged conspiracy concerning his federal income tax return, inadmissible except as against the defendant making the same. We have also for consideration the situation, expressed by counsel for the government, “that a declaration, to be of any evidence against the defendant [Curtis] at all, is to show his connection with some other defendant,” and that, “if it is deleted, it will rob it of its value so far as this conspiracy is concerned.”
The practical effect of admitting the affidavit as against Curtis, and instructing the jury that it could be considered as evidence only against him, and should not be considered as against any of the other defendants, was to tell the jury that they might reach the conclusion from the affidavit, taken in consideration with other testimony in the case, that as to Curtis the money referred to in the affidavit was in fact money received by him for “protection,” and that, to connect him with the alleged conspiracy, he paid the greater or some part of it over to Gibson, but that, as to Gibson himself, they should dismiss from their minds, and not consider, that the affidavit was of any evidentiary weight whatsoever. It was never intended that the liberty of the citizen might be required to rest upon the ability of each of 12 jurymen to so control the processes of his mind as to be able to accomplish what was called upon him to do by the instruction in question.
I think the statements contained in the affidavit of Curtis, in reference to the defendant Gibson, were of such a character that an instruction to the jury not to consider the same as to any of the other defendants would not, as to Gibson, cure the injury that would otherwise follow from the admission in evidence of such affidavit. It is too much to expect that the jury might believe from this piece of evidence that, as to Curtis, he received and paid over to Gibson certain moneys, but as to Gibson no conclusion would follow from the consideration of the affidavit that Gibson received such money from Curtis. As to the defendant Elmer Gibson, I am of opinion that the admission of the Curtis affidavit was prejudicial error.
While not so clear, as in the case of Gibson, that the admission of the Curtis affidavit was prejudicial, the fact that the defendant T. M. Quinn was a deputy sheriff under Gibson renders it at least uncertain whether the same prejudice would not follow, in some degree, at least, as in the case of his superior officer. Several affidavits were filed by Quilín in support of his motion for a new trial. The effect of these affidavits was to show that upon a new trial the defendant Quinn would be able to contradict, if not impeach, the testimony given against him at the trial by one Ed Wagner. Altogether I am of opinion that the defendant Quinn also is entitled to a new trial.