Court Opinion

ID: 9458465
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:52:40.906394+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:46.491912
License: Public Domain

STEVENS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The question for us to decide is whether the trial judge abused his discretion in concluding that the article was not sufficiently prejudicial to require a new trial. Since the jury had already arrived at its verdict, it was too late to take remedial steps. The fact that improper matter was considered by the jury was established; hence there was nothing to be accomplished by an investigation unless the judge questioned the veracity of the affidavit.1 The issue presented to him was whether, on the special facts of this case, a new trial should be held.2 *1066Necessarily his decision reflected an evaluation of the newspaper story in the context of the entire trial.
The record here is cold, but it contains substantial support for the decision made by the trial judge while his recollection of the demeanor of witnesses, the voir dire, and the persuasive impact of testimony and argument, remained vivid.
Defendant’s guilt is starkly apparent. Moreover, the substance of the news story was brought to the jury’s attention by defense counsel. On cross-examination Dr. Pope acknowledged that similar referrals from other personal injury lawyers provided him with his major source of income and that he saw between 30 and 40 patients per day. He evaded defense counsel’s question about “a number of other indictments.” The record developed by defendant thus indicated, if it did not explicitly describe, the existence of wide-spread insurance padding by Dr. Pope and lawyers other than defendant which had resulted in the return of several indictments.
The theory of the defense was that defendant was not a participant in the scheme, or, more narrowly, that the specific charges against him had not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. This defense, though not contradicted by the news story, may well have been prejudiced by the estimate that insurance padding amounted to $3,000,000. I find it difficult to assess the extent of the prejudice; I am persuaded, however, that the probability of significant prejudice is not plain enough to warrant disagreement with the contemporaneous evaluation made by an experienced trial judge. Indeed, even disagreement with a discretionary ruling would not establish error.
Almost every jury trial requires some compromise with standards of absolute perfection; such deviations must be tolerated if the jury system is to function effectively.3 In my opinion the trial judge did not abuse his discretion in concluding that the deviation reflected by this record was within permissible limits.

. See United States v. McKinney, 429 F.2d 1019, 1030-1031 (5th Cir. 1970).

. “The trial judge has a large discretion in ruling on the issue of prejudice resulting from the reading by jurors of news articles concerning the trial. Holt v. United States, 218 U.S. 245, 251, 31 S.Ct. 2, 6, 54 L.Ed. 1021. Generalizations beyond that statement are not profitable, because each case must turn on its special facts.” Marshall v. United States, 360 U.S. 310, 312, 79 S.Ct. 1171, 1173, 3 L.Ed.2d 1250 (1959).

. “On the other hand, it would be impracticable to impose the counsel of absolute perfection that no verdict shall stand, unless every juror has been entirely without bias, and has based his vote only upon the evidence he has heard in court. It is doubtful whether more than one in a hundred verdicts would stand such a test; and although absolute justice may require as much, the impossibility of achieving it has induced judges to take a middle course, for they have recognized that the institution could not otherwise survive; they would become Penelopes, forever engaged in unraveling the webs they wove. Like much else in human affairs, its defects are so deeply enmeshed in the system that wholly to disentangle them would quite kill it.” Jorgensen v. York Ice & Machinery Corp., 160 F.2d 432, 435 (2d Cir. 1947).