Court Opinion

ID: 9454766
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:58:35.178826+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:17.939633
License: Public Domain

SIMPSON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
With deference, I cannot concur in the affirmance of this conviction. “Plain error” occurred in Reed’s trial which deprived him of his liberty without due process of law in violation of his Fifth Amendment rights.
The sole factual question raised by Reed’s defense was his knowledge or lack of knowledge, that he was transporting a stolen automobile. The success of this defense depended almost entirely on the jury’s view of his credibility, and to an extent that of his sole witness, Raymond Eugene Williams. Williams testified that he himself stole the car in question in Indiana and that he had it in his possession for several days before he asked Reed to drive it to Forest, Mississippi. Both Reed and Williams testified that Reed did not know of the stolen character of the vehicle prior to arrival in Mississippi with it. Both testified that the Indiana license plates on the car were taken from a 1958 Pontiac owned by Reed, at Williams’ insistence.
The record shows that Reed was an illiterate twenty-one year old Negro who had gone to the northern Indiana area, near Chicago, Illinois, to find work a few months prior to the trip home to Mississippi in early December, 1966. He had no prior criminal record. Williams was a considerably older Negro with, according to his own testimony, a long arrest record and four or five prior felony convictions.
The government produced three witnesses. The first was the used car manager of Pierce Ford, Inc., Hammond, Indiana, who testified to the disappearance, without permission from anyone to use it, of the car involved, a 1966 yellow Ford Mustang convertible from the used car lot on December 8, 1966. The next government witness was a Mississippi Highway Patrolman, Rudolph Adcox, who testified to going to the home of the defendant’s parents on Highway 21, north of Forest, Mississippi, on January 3, 1967, to investigate a red 1965 Ford Mustang which had been wrecked several days previously in the locality. He related that Reed and Williams drove up in the yellow Mustang and that Reed said the car was his. At Adcox’s request Reed and Williams went to the Forest Police Department Office.
The government’s third and principal witness was a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Richard L. Brock. He testified to going to the Reed residence on January 3 and hearing Reed state that he owned the 1966 yellow Mustang, and to hearing Williams state that Reed owned it but that he, Williams, had co-signed the note for its purchase. Mr. Brock testified to six separate occasions1 when he inter*441viewed Reed in custody. The general purport of Brock’s testimony was that Reed at first claimed to have bought the 1966 yellow Mustang, and to have traded in his 1958 Pontiac as a down payment, with Williams serving as his cosigner on the installment contract for the remaining amount due. When Reed was confronted with information Brock had obtained in Indiana that the plates on the Mustang were issued for Reed’s 1958 Pontiac, Reed changed his story and claimed that Williams had the 1966 yellow Mustang when he first saw it, and that the Pontiac plates were transferred to it at Williams’ insistence before the pair started to Mississippi, with Reed driving the yellow 1966 Mustang and Williams driving the red 1965 Mustang. The latter was the vehicle which was later wrecked, leading to the investigation. The account given by Reed in his later interviews was substantially that which he and Williams related at the trial. Reed said that he told the first story at Williams’ suggestion in an effort to protect Williams.
It was against this backdrop that Reed’s court-appointed counsel called him to the stand as the first defense witness. As soon as he was sworn the trial judge greeted him with the colloquy shown on page 439 of the majority opinion.2
It is my view that from that moment on Reed’s trial was no more than a mockery and a farce. His conviction by the jury was a foregone conclusion.
When Williams, defendant’s sole witness other than himself, was called to the stand, the record shows that the trial judge addressed him as follows:
“RAYMOND EUGENE WILLIAMS called as a witness for and on behalf of Defendant, was sworn and testified as follows:
BY THE COURT:
Let me caution you as I did that other party that this Court doesn’t put up with any perjury. We want the truth out of you and nothing but the truth. That’s what you just swore to do and you know the penalty for telling an untruth in this Court?
BY THE WITNESS:
I think so.
BY THE COURT:
What’s that?
BY THE WITNESS:
I think so.
BY THE COURT:
You don’t care about me telling you what the penalty is ?
BY THE WITNESS:
Tell me if you want to.
BY THE MARSHAL:
Keep you voice up.
BY THE COURT:
What was that?
*442BY THE WITNESS:
Tell me if you want to.
BY THE COURT:
Kind of indifferent about it, are you?
BY THE WITNESS:
It don’t make any difference.
BY THE COURT:
All right.
DIRECT EXAMINATION * * * ”
It should be pointed out that none of the three government witnesses, the used car manager from Indiana, the Mississippi Highway Patrolman, or the F.B.I. special agent, received similar instructions as to the penalty for perjury. If such instructions are to be given by trial judges, they should be dealt out evenhandedly to government and defense witnesses alike.
The reported decisions of this and other courts are replete with directions to trial courts against the expression directly or indirectly by words or conduct in the presence of the jury of an opinion which discriminates or points to the guilt of the accused.3 The jurisprudence emphasizes that the words of the trial judge have great weight with the jury and that there must be absolute impartiality on the part of the judge as to both his conduct and his remarks in the presence of the jury, in appearance as well as in fact.4
In Bollenbach v. United States, 1946, 326 U.S. 607, 612, 66 S.Ct. 402, 405, 90 L.Ed. 350, 354, the Court quoted with approval the statement from Starr (cited in United States v. Link footnote [4]) and noted that “ * * * jurors are ever watchful of the words that fall from him (the trial judge). Particularly in a criminal trial, the judge’s last word is apt to be the decisive word”. The Bol-lenbach court was dealing with a different factual situation from the one- presented here. There the jury was deadlocked and the trial judge attempted a clarification of his previous instructions, which proved to be erroneous. Hence the court’s expression that “the judge’s last word is apt to be the decisive word” was spoken in the sense of time.
In our case the judge’s comments to the defendant and his witness concerning perjury were not “the last word” in the sense of time. Indeed, they were first. I am convinced however that as far as the jury was concerned they were “the last word” regarding the all important issue of Reed’s credibility. That was destroyed before he was permitted to say a word in his defense.
*443The fact that the court-appointed trial counsel failed to object to the procedure is in my judgment without import. It was clearly “plain error” under Rule 52(b), F.R.Crim.P., and as indicated at the outset of this dissent, in my opinion a violation of fundamental Fifth Amendment, due process.5 I would reverse the conviction on this basis.6

. January S, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 11. Reed was read a Miranda-type warning card on each occasion and signed the waiver on the face of the warning statement. Reed could sign his name, but was unable to read the warning for himself. At least the last two occasions were after Reed had had a preliminary hearing and had counsel appointed for him by the Commissioner. Brock stated that he offered to secure Reed’s attorney’s presence on these two occasions but Reed told him that would not be necessary.

. It should be noted that contrary to the judge’s assertion that the penalty for perjury is “at least ten years”, Title 18, U.S.C. Section 1621, the general perjury statute, provides penalty of a “fined not more than $2,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both”.
Reed was sentenced, without the benefit of a pre-sentence investigation or report, as soon as the jury returned its verdict of guilty, to five years confinement, the top limit under the Dyer Act. Title 18, U.S.C., Section 2312. Before imposing sentence the trial judge addressed Reed as follows:
“Pursuant to this verdict of guilty by the jury, the Court adjudges you, Louis Johnnie B. Reed, to be guilty as charged of the offense stated in this indictment. In most of these car cases I usually have verdicts of guilty, I mean pleas of guilty and I don’t get to know the defendants and I usually give them a rather short sentence, but where I come to know a defendant like I know this defendant from the trial of this case and seeing how he tried to lie out of this verdict by his cunning, complete disregard of the instructions of the Court about the effect of perjury in this Court I am going to waive a pre-sentence report and sentence him now. Louis Johnnie B. Reed, do you have any statement you care to make to the Court before sentence is imposed?”
The sentence was under Title 18, U.S.C., Section 4208(a) (2), so that Reed may become eligible for early parole.

. See Bursten v. United States, 5 Cir. 1968, 395 F.2d 976; Papalia v. United States, 5 Cir. 1957, 243 F.2d 437; Zebouni v. United States, 5 Cir. 1955, 226 F.2d 826; Blumberg v. United States, 5 Cir. 1955, 222 F.2d 496; Frantz v. United States, 6 Cir. 1933, 62 F.2d 737.

. See generally 23 C.J.S. Criminal Law § 987, page 996:
“It is error for the trial judge to express, directly or indirectly, by words or by conduct, in the presence of the jurors, an opinion which discriminates against, or points to, the guilt of accused, or to make a statement or conduct himself in such a manner as tends to discredit or prejudice accused with the jury, even though the judge so acts by reason of unrestrained zeal or through inadvertence and not as a result of intentional unfairness. So, the trial judge should make no comments or remarks reflecting on the merits of the defense, or depriving accused of any rights with respect to particular defenses raised. Generally statements made by the judge in the presence of the jury that would constitute error if contained in the instructions, are error.” and the cases cited in support of the text.
See further United States v. Link, 3 Cir. 1953, 202 F.2d 592:
“Trial judges must always keep in mind the possible, if not probable, effect of any statement which they make in the course of a trial or in their instructions to the jury. As was said in Starr v. United States, 1894, 153 U.S. 614, 626, 14 S.Ct. 919, 923, 38 L.Ed. 841:
‘It is obvious that under any system of jury trials the influence of the trial judge on the jury is necessarily and properly of great weight, and that his lightest word or intimation is received with deference, and may prove controlling.’ ”

. I have no quarrel with the holding of Hellman v. United States, 5 Cir. 1964, 339 F.2d 36, 38, cited by the majority as controlling our decision here. I would simply limit Heilman to the circumstances present in that trial. The court’s warning of perjury:
“THE COURT: You are sure you are telling the truth?
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
THE COURT: It is a very serious penalty if you are not.”
came in the middle of defendant’s testimony, after rather incredible statements on his part as to the preparation of and filing of his income tax returns by his brother as his attorney-in-fact.
Additionally, after noting that the court’s “incisive interrogation” of the defendant may well have been overzealous the Heilman court observed that in the context of the whole trial it did not demonstrate the clear showing of prejudice necessary to establish an abuse of the trial judge’s discretion in examining the defendant. The court noted that he had been recalcitrant and his answers evasive and that the record indicated that the trial judge was generally considerate of the defendant and his counsel, and maintained an attitude of fairness and impartiality.
To me, at least, this presents an entirely different situation from that of these two Negroes. Without laboring the point, it should be noted that the trial judge here by frequent interruptions indicated his doubt of the veracity of Reed and Williams at numerous places in the record. An example is the following colloquy during the government attorney’s cross-examination of Reed:
“BY THE COURT:
What part of the statement that the F.B.I. Agent said that you made to him was false?
BY THE WITNESS:
When uh Williams told me uh tell him that the car belongs to me and he co-signed it.
BY THE COURT:
My question was the F.B.I. Agent said and you heard him what he said, I won’t repeat it, but he said he interviewed you several different times. Is any part of the statement that the F.B.I. Agent said you made, false?
BY THE WITNESS:
Yes, sir. At first.
BY THE COURT:
What I mean is is that what you told him? What he said you told him?
BY THE WITNESS :
Yes, sir.
BY THE COURT:
But now what is it you say is the truth?
BY THE WITNESS:
In uh the last time he interviewed me in uh Forest, he told me he wanted the truth and I told him, I say I done got myself in this trouble and I say I’m trying to get myself out. And I told him how I come ’bout getting the car. Told him I borrowed it from Williams and I put my license plates on it.
BY THE COURT:
But what you told him previously was all false?
BY THE WITNESS :
Yes, sir.
BY THE COURT:
Because Williams had told you to tell him a false statement?
BY THE WITNESS:
Yes, sir.
BY THE COURT:
Didn’t you know that it was a felony to answer an F.B.I. Agent falsely?
BY THE WITNESS:
No sir, I hadn’t ever been in trouble or anything. I didn’t know.
BY THE COURT:
All right.”
In this instance, the trial judge is shown incorrectly instructing the defendant (and the jury as well of course) about a non-existent felony: answering an F.B.I. agent falsely.

. I am as disinclined as the majority to engage in criticism of this or any other conscientious, hard working trial judge of this circuit. I was a state trial judge for 11 years and a federal district judge for 16 years. Zebouni, Blumberg and Papalia (supra, footnote [3]) are all cases tried by me in the district court. In the hurly-burly of trial, any judge, no matter how careful, may commit prejudicial error without realizing it. It is certainly not the function of an appellate court to turn every (or any) appeal into a search for error. It is our duty nevertheless to recognize and correct error when it is apparent. I view the situation presented on this appeal as crying out for such correction.