Court Opinion

ID: 9446872
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:20:16.790508+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:48.715007
License: Public Domain

MURRAH, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially).
I agree with the trial court and with the many cases from most of the circuits which say that evidence of good character is admissible and should be considered together with other probative evidence as tending to create a reasonable doubt of guilt or, if you please, to augment the presumption of innocence; that the verdict should rest upon “the whole of the evidence” without emphasis on any particular testimony. To me any other instruction tends to confuse rather than *90clarify the purposes for which good character testimony is admitted and is to be considered by the jury.
It is my firm conviction that the requested instruction, based as it was on the Edgington case, is a lifeless and doctrinaire interpretation of what was said in that case, and has the effect of distorting its wholesome philosophy. I agree with Judge Grubb in Le More v. United States, 5 Cir., 253 F. 887; and Judge Hand in Nash v. United States, 2 Cir., 54 F.2d 1006, that nothing said in the Edgington case with reference to good character evidence was intended to announce a rule that good character evidence should be emphasized over other defense evidence. See Kreiner v. United States, 2 Cir., 11 F.2d 722. As Judge Hand said in Nash v. United States, supra [54 F.2d 1007], “Evidence of good character is to be used like any other * * * and the less they [jury] are told about the grounds for its admission, or what they shall do with it, the more likely they are to use it sensibly.”
Evidence of good character may, however, when standing alone, in and of itself create a reasonable doubt of guilt, and that where it does stand alone, the jury should be so instructed. Such seems to me to be the interpretation placed upon Edgington by the dicta in Michelson and it is practical, understandable and sensible. But I am unable to find any good reason for telling a jury that good character alone may be sufficient to generate a reasonable doubt when there is other evidence equally important and equally persuasive. To me, such an instruction in cases of this kind places an emphasis and an importance upon character testimony which was never intended, and which the whole context of the Edgington ease denies.
Indeed, what do we mean when we tell the jury that “good character, when considered with all other evidence, may alone create a reasonable doubt” ? I don’t know what it means, and no one has assayed to explain it. Surely it does not mean that the jury may ignore the other evidence and base its judgment alone upon good character. If it is to be considered with all other evidence, how can it alone be said to create a reasonable doubt? Such refinements are incomprehensible to me, and being so, I cannot expect a lay jury to understand and apply it as the law of the case when considering guilt or innocence. This legalistic nicety violates the common law and constitutional function of the courts to instruct juries on the law of the case in language they can understand and apply as laymen unlearned in the law. It reduces the law to an abstract absurdity, and exposes us to the public charge of subverting the law to our own fanciful ends.
While recognizing the force of those decisions which approve the trial court’s instructions, we apparently reverse the case simply because we have heretofore said that the requested instruction was the law of the Circuit, and that it was reversibly erroneous not to give it in cases of this kind. Believing as I do that the court’s instructions to the jury were both understandable and correct, and that the requested instructions tend to confound and confuse, I should not hesitate to recede from our previous pronouncements. Only the other day we did not feel constrained to follow a precedent of long standing because of our conviction that it could not be “sustained on sound ground”. See Stewart v. United States, 10 Cir., 267 F.2d 378. But, being unable to persuade my brothers, I bow to their conscientious judgment, with the resignation that the requested instruction is the law of this Circuit and doubtless ever shall be. For surely no other trial judge will ever have the audacity to refuse to heed our authoritative admonitions in this regard.
I agree that the proffered testimony of the accountant, bearing upon the good faith belief of the accused with respect to the deductibility of certain items affecting his tax liability, was competent and should have been admitted.