Court Opinion

ID: 9469570
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:44:05.812834+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:27.409888
License: Public Domain

GARTH, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
The majority holds that, despite the disclosure to the jury of Joseph’s oral confession through the testimony of witness Edward Ocean, the fact that Joseph’s written statement was inadvertently sent to the jury as an exhibit, constitutes reversible error. This error, together with the improper submission to the jury of the Woods letter, is held by the majority to mandate a reversal of Joseph’s conviction.
While I agree that the jury’s exposure to the Woods letter must result in a new trial for Joseph, I do not agree that the jury’s receipt of Joseph’s written statement would require the same result. Nor would I hold that the district court was correct in admitting Lisa Christiansen’s testimony respecting the gun she saw in Joseph’s car two months before the crimes reviewed here were committed.
*867I.
In my opinion, the written statement which was sent to the jury room together with other exhibits, while error, was nonetheless harmless. Attorney Ocean’s detailed testimony concerning Joseph’s oral confession to having committed the crimes, rendered insignificant any additional harmful impact that Joseph’s written statement could have had on the jury. Joseph’s brief written statement constituted, in my view, merely harmless cumulative evidence and could not independently have influenced the jury’s verdict.
Although as an abstract proposition, not related to the facts of this case, I can agree that “[t]he highly prejudicial nature of a signed confession ... cannot be doubted,” Maj. op. at 864, in reviewing the circumstances of this case, it is clearly evident that Joseph’s written statement added little to Ocean’s damaging testimony. Ocean had testified at length concerning his trip to Antigua during which Joseph admitted his involvement in the crimes at the Reef Condominium. Ocean repeated to the jury in great detail what Joseph had told him about how the crimes were committed.
Ocean testified that Joseph told him that Lorne James and Anthon O’Reilly were involved with Joseph in the Reef crimes. Joseph told Ocean that he was a very good friend of Richard Motta’s and knew the Motta family but that three or four days before the Reef incident he had had a “falling out” with Motta and, as a consequence, Motta was not with Joseph, James, and O’Reilly the night of the crimes.
Joseph told Ocean that, on that night, Joseph had had no money and that Joseph, under threats from James, went with James and' O’Reilly to the Reef Condominium in Joseph’s car. Joseph said the three first drove to James’s residence to pick up “tools” — which Ocean interpreted to mean guns and masks. Joseph claimed that only James and O’Reilly had guns at the time of the crime and that Joseph wore a handkerchief over the lower part of his face. Once at the Reef Condominium, all three entered an apartment inhabited by a lone woman. Joseph admitted raping her under another threat from James while the other two men searched the apartment for money, jewelry, and drugs. The three then proceeded to a second apartment where they tied up and robbed the occupants.
Joseph told Ocean that while making their getaway from the Reef Condominium, Joseph drove past what he thought was a police roadblock, but later lost control of his car and went off the road. The three men then separated. Joseph said he had stayed in St. Croix for two to three weeks after the Reef incident before leaving the island. In all, Ocean’s transcribed testimony covered nearly forty pages.
In contrast, Joseph’s written statement, which is reproduced in the majority opinion at page 863, consisted of four sentences handwritten by Ocean and signed in two places by Joseph. In essence, the statement did no more than reveal that (1) Joseph told Ocean “what happened on February 21 and 22 of 1979” at the Reef Condominium, but without giving any details; (2) that three individuals were involved, but that Motta was not one of them; (3) that a few days before February 22, Joseph and Motta had a misunderstanding; and (4) that Joseph had last seen Motta with other people prior to the Reef incident. The statement, signed by Joseph, was never admitted into evidence, nor were its contents read to the jury. Through inadvertence, however, the statement was included with the other exhibits that were sent to the jury room.
I have gone into some detail in comparing Ocean’s testimony, which has been sustained in this appeal, with the summary statement written by Ocean and signed by Joseph, in order to demonstrate that, compared to Ocean’s in-depth testimony, which related all facets of the crime, Joseph’s statement had little significance. Indeed, the thrust of the statement had to do with Motta’s, rather than with Joseph’s, involvement in the crimes. This emphasis in the statement is completely understandable because Ocean had interviewed Joseph not to gather evidence against Joseph but to exonerate Motta. Yet the majority has attrib*868uted to Joseph’s conclusory statement involving Motta an importance which, if not placed in proper perspective, might seriously affect the manner in which future courts may regard an issue such as the one here presented, as a precedent.
I do not believe that we must give conclusive weight to a writing, without examining in detail and case-by-case the context in which that writing was considered by the jury. As I have earlier conceded, unquestionably a signed confession can be highly prejudicial and can influence a jury greatly, but I do not believe this statement is of that nature. We should not blind ourselves to the reality of a jury’s perceptions in considering a writing such as Joseph’s statement under the circumstances here presented.
There is little question but that I would agree with the majority had Ocean’s testimony as to Joseph’s oral confession been as conclusory as was Joseph’s written statement, and the written statement had been as detailed as Ocean’s recital. In such a case, I could not conceive that the erroneous delivery to the jury of such a writing implicating the defendant could be deemed harmless error. Conversely, however, I cannot conceive that the written statement that the jury saw after hearing all of the testimony as to Joseph’s involvement (giving, of course, regard to Joseph’s denials) could be classified as other than harmless error. Indeed, if the only erroneous submission to the jury had been Joseph’s written statement, I would not have concurred in reversing Joseph’s conviction, for, as I have concluded, that statement without more was harmless error.1
In Schneble v. Florida, 405 U.S. 427, 92 S.Ct. 1056, 31 L.Ed.2d 340 (1972), a policeman testified at the defendant’s trial to statements made by a co-defendant. The co-defendant did not take the stand and thus was not available for cross-examination. The defendant challenged the policeman’s testimony as violative of Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968), in which the Supreme Court held that the admission of a confession of a co-defendant who did not take the stand deprived the defendant of his rights under the sixth amendment’s confrontation clause when that confession implicated the defendant. The Court in Schneble held that, even if Bruton had been violated, the admission of the co-defendant’s statements was harmless error in light of police testimony concerning the defendant’s confession to having committed the crime.
In explaining its holding, the Court noted that “[the defendant’s] confession was minutely detailed and completely consistent with the objective evidence,” while “the allegedly inadmissible statements of [the co-defendant] at most tended to corroborate certain details of [the defendant’s] comprehensive confession.” 405 U.S. at 430-31, 92 S.Ct. at 1059. The Court concluded that “the ‘minds of an average jury’ would not have found the State’s case significantly less persuasive had the testimony as to [the co-defendant’s] admissions been excluded. The admission into evidence of these statements, therefore, was at most harmless error.” Id. at 432, 92 S.Ct. at 1059 (quoting Harrington v. California, 395 U.S. 250, 254, 89 S.Ct. 1726, 1728, 23 L.Ed.2d 284 (1969)). See also Milton v. Wainwright, 407 U.S. 371, 92 S.Ct. 2174, 33 L.Ed.2d 1 (1972) (admission of uncounseled confession harmless *869error in light of three prior admissible confessions by defendant).
The marginal impact of Joseph’s written confession can be contrasted with that of the Woods letter, whose submission to the jury the majority correctly holds not to be harmless error. Unlike the written confession, which merely summarized the testimony already given by Ocean, the Woods letter injected an entirely new element into the case, since Woods did not testify at trial concerning the contacts with Joseph that were the source of her remarks in the letter. The impact the Woods letter had upon the jury is suggested by an affidavit of defense counsel filed in connection with Joseph’s motion for a new trial. In that affidavit, it appears that a juror told defense counsel Joel Holt that “the jury reached its verdict because of certain letters written from Ms. Vera Woods to Shelly Joseph,” and that the juror “was surprised by this evidence because [the jury] had not heard it come in at trial.” App. at 31. Because I believe that the differences between Joseph’s written statement and the Woods letter are dramatic, I would not, as the majority does, lump the statement and the Woods letter together for purposes of a harmless-error analysis.
II.
Over objection, the district court permitted Lisa Christiansen to testify that she saw a gun under the front seat of Joseph’s ear around Christmas, 1978, approximately two months before the crimes were committed. Christiansen, however, could not identify either of the guns used in the crimes as being the gun she had seen in Joseph’s car. The district court ruled that the testimony was admissible under Fed.R.Evid. 404(b) to show that Joseph had the opportunity to commit the rape and robberies, since he had access to a gun and a gun was used in the crimes.
The majority, in upholding the court’s ruling, relies on United States v. Robinson, 560 F.2d 507 (2d Cir. 1977) (en banc), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 905, 98 S.Ct. 1451, 55 L.Ed.2d 496 (1978), and United States v. Ravich, 421 F.2d 1196 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 834, 91 S.Ct. 69, 27 L.Ed.2d 66 (1970), in which evidence of the defendants’ gun possession long after the crimes were committed was held to be admissible under Rule 404(b). In both of these cases, however, there was a similarity between the guns admitted into evidence and those used in the crimes. In Robinson, for example, a .38 caliber revolver seized from the defendant ten weeks after a bank robbery, was admitted into evidence after there had been testimony that a .38 caliber gun and a gun that “looked like” a .38 caliber gun were used in the crime. In Ravich, six .38 caliber pistols and .38 caliber ammunition found in the defendants’ possession six weeks after the crime were admitted into evidence after an FBI agent testified to having found a .38 caliber bullet on the floor of the getaway car.
Here, in contrast, no connection was ever established between the gun seen in Joseph’s car and the guns used in the crimes. The majority, in my opinion, has stretched Rule 404(b) too far, to encompass a situation in which “the danger of undue prejudice outweighs the probative value of the evidence.” Fed.R.Evid. 404(b) advisory committee note. Thus, I believe the district court abused its discretion in admitting Christiansen’s testimony.
In light of Ocean’s testimony about Joseph’s oral confession, however, the error in admitting Christiansen’s testimony about the gun was harmless. In this respect I agree with the majority. Ocean’s testimony respecting Joseph’s confession was such devastating evidence of Joseph’s guilt that the tangential evidence that was admitted of Joseph’s gun possession could not independently have affected the verdict. I write separately on this point, however, only because the issue of the admissibility of Christiansen’s testimony may arise again when, as a result of our reversal, Joseph is tried anew. In my view, upon Joseph’s retrial, unless a greater nexus can be established between the gun seen in Joseph’s car and the guns used in the crimes, the district court should exclude the gun testimony which it admitted.
*870III.
As I have indicated, I concur fully in the majority’s reversal of Joseph’s conviction and in its direction that Joseph be tried anew. I write separately only to express my disagreement with the majority’s application of the harmless-error doctrine and with its broad interpretation of admissibility of evidence under Fed.R.Evid. 404(b). These positions taken by the majority, although not necessary to its judgment of reversal, may have unfortunate consequences in future cases in which similar questions may arise.

. I do not understand the majority opinion to hold that the erroneous submission of a written document to the jury where its substance has already been revealed to the jury and where no objection has been made by defense counsel, constitutes constitutional error, even if it permits review under the plain-error doctrine. In the absence of constitutional error, the appropriate standard for determining whether an error is harmless is found not in Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 828, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967) (“harmless beyond a reasonable doubt”), the standard employed by the majority, see Maj. op. at 864-865, but in Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(a). See United States v. Carter, 619 F.2d 293, 295 n.9 (3d Cir. 1980). Rule 52(a) provides: “Any error, defect, irregularity or variance which does not affect substantial rights shall be disregarded.” In my view, the submission of Joseph’s conclusory written statement to the jury did not affect any substantial right once Attorney Ocean had testified. Thus, I would find the error to be harmless.