Court Opinion

ID: 9444880
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:15:20.258404+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:03.206238
License: Public Domain

VAN OOSTERIIOUT, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I am unable to agree with the majority opinion and therefore dissent. The issues and facts are set out in the majority opinion.
The district attorney in his cross-examination of the defendant on three separate occasions at widely separated intervals asked the defendant in substance whether his wife had been arrested for prostitution on designated dates in 1950. Such questions were objected to as improper impeaching questions and improper cross-examination upon subject matter not covered on direct examination, and on the further ground that the wife’s arrests were not a proper subject of inquiry. The defendant also moved for a mistrial because of the prejudicial questions. The majority, citing adequate supporting authority, correctly concluded that Davis should not have been asked about his wife’s arrests. The majority opinion then goes on to say that Davis first injected the question of arrests into the trial. It is true that Davis on direct examination admitted that he had been arrested many times for intoxication. Mrs. Davis was not a party to this action, nor was she a witness at the trial. There is nothing in defendant’s direct examination which would open the field of cross-examination to include Mrs. Davis’s arrests. The district attorney also on cross-examination over appropriate objections questioned the defendant about his wife’s arrests and conviction for offenses in 1950. The Government by offer of proof which was rejected proposed to show that Mrs. Davis on May 1, 1950, entered a plea of guilty in police court at Minot, North Dakota, to a charge of keeping a house of ill fame in April of 1950 contrary to ordinance of the City of Minot and was sentenced to pay a fine of $45. It is noted that the defendant was a professional baseball player and was so engaged in April 1950 at Hobbs, New *188Mexico. A further offer was made to show that Mrs. Davis was convicted in the Minot police court on a charge of prostitution in July 1950. However, this case was appealed to the State court, and the trial there resulted in an acquittal.
The Mann Act and conspiracy charges involved in the present case arose out of events alleged to have occurred in 1954. The trial court, after repeatedly overruling defendant’s objections to the cross-examination pertaining to his wife’s alleged convictions and arrests, ultimately sustained defendant’s motion to strike all such testimony and, as stated by the majority, advised the jury to disregard such testimony. The following colloquy between defendant's counsel and the court then took place:
“Mr. Tautges: Will Your Honor advise the jury to disregard it?
“The Court: I just said that. I am going to treat this record as is, not as you may hope to prove it.”
It is difficult to comprehend just what idea the court intended to convey by the last sentence quoted and what meaning the jury might give to such a statement. It certainly made less clear the previous statement of the court that the jury should disregard the disputed testimony. At one point while Government counsel was cross-examining the defendant on his wife’s arrests, such attorney had before him the records pertaining to the arrests. The defendant’s counsel objected to Government counsel reading from such records not in evidence. The following discussion then took place:
“The Court: What are those instruments that you have there that prove this thing?
“Mr. Dim: These are police records, Your Honor.
“The Court: Police records. Why don’t you put them in evidence?
“Mr. Dim: I will when the proper time comes, Your Honor.”
The foregoing conversation in the presence of the jury tended to place before the jury and emphasize the testimony pertaining to Mrs. Davis’s 1950 criminal record.
I am convinced that the testimony as to Mrs. Davis’s conviction and arrests in 1950 was improper cross-examination and that the trial court was-right when it ultimately excluded such testimony. It is true, as stated by the majority, that generally the trial court has a large discretion with respect to-the scope of cross-examination of a witness as to collateral matters. However, this discretion is subject to limitation. In Harrold v. Territory of Oklahoma, 8 Cir., 169 F. 47, at pages 51, 52 & 53, a case often quoted and referred to, this court states in part:
“Statements in the opinions of courts are called to our attention to the effect that the limit of cross-examination is discretionary with the trial court, but it is only discretionary without the limits of the right of the party against whom a witness is called to a full and fail-cross-examination of him upon the subjects of his direct examination, and the right of the party in whose behalf he testifies to restrict his cross-examination to the subjects of his direct examination. * * *
“The converse of this rule is equally controlling. The party on whose behalf a witness is called has the right to restrict his cross-examination to the subjects of his direct examination, and a violation of this right is reversible error. * * *
“ * * But the line of demarcation which limits a rightful cross-examination is clear and well defined, and it rests upon the reason to which attention has been called. It is the line between subjects relative to vvhich the witness was examined upon the direct examination and those concerning which he was not required to testify. * * * ”
See also, Gideon v. United States, 8 Cir., 52 F.2d 427, 429; Havener v. United States, 8 Cir., 15 F.2d 503, 506; Tucker v. United States, 8 Cir., 5 F.2d 818, 823; *189Salerno v. United States, 8 Cir., 61 F.2d 419, 423; Lovely v. United States, 4 Cir., 175 F.2d 312, 313. Moreover, even if the reception of the disputed testimony was within the trial court’s discretion, the trial court’s final conclusion was that such testimony should be excluded.
Error was committed in permitting the defendant to be cross-examined as to his wife’s alleged offenses in 1950. As hereinabove stated, the error was repeated a number of times and thus the improper testimony was unduly emphasized. The withdrawal of such testimony in the manner it was here accomplished did not remove the effect of the evidence erroneously received. As stated by Justice Jackson in his concurring opinion in Krulewitch v. United States, 336 U.S. 440, at page 453, 69 S.Ct. 716, at page 723, 93 L.Ed. 790:
“The naive assumption that prejudicial effects can be overcome by instructions to the jury, cf. Blumenthal v. United States, 332 U.S. 539, 559, 68 S.Ct. 248, 257 [92 L.Ed. 154], all practicing lawyers know to be unmitigated fiction.”
The question of whether the error hereinabove discussed is prejudicial is a very close one. I fully agree with the majority that there is ample evidence outside of the disputed cross-examination to sustain the conviction. However, it is usually extremely difficult to determine the effect of specific testimony on a jury. The test to be applied in determining whether the error committed is prejudicial is fully discussed by Justice Rutledge in Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, at page 765, 66 S.Ct. 1239, at page 1248, 90 L.Ed. 1557, where it is stated:
“ * * * But if one cannot say, with fair assurance, after pondering all that happened without stripping the erroneous action from the whole, that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error, it is impossible to conclude that substantial rights were not affected. The inquiry cannot be merely whether there was enough to support the result, apart from the phase affected by the error. It is rather, even so, whether the error itself had substantial influence. If so, or if one is left in grave doubt, the conviction cannot stand.”
See also Echert v. United States, 8 Cir., 188 F.2d 336, 26 A.L.R.2d 752; Krulewitch v. United States, supra.
The crucial witnesses for the Government in this case were Anderson who pleaded guilty to the offenses charged in the present indictment, and two admitted prostitutes, all of whose testimony was squarely contradicted by the defendant. True, there was corroboration by disinterested witnesses as to some of the Government testimony, such as that relating to transportation and phone calls. After examining the entire record as a whole, I am unable to say with certainty that the injection of the wife’s alleged offenses into the record might not substantially affect the verdict. Further, it seems apparent to me that the Government counsel knew, or should have known, that he was going beyond the bounds of proper cross-examination in pressing the questions relative to the wife’s arrests in 1950. In Salerno v. United States, supra, 61 F.2d at page 424, this court said:
“The general rule is that such improper cross-examination constitutes reversible error. * * * When, in the prosecution of a defendant, counsel for the government indulges in unfair and improper cross-examination, the only purpose of which is to degrade the defendant and to prejudice the jury against him, the government, upon appeal, will not ordinarily be heard to say that the methods which were used did not have the effect which they were obviously intended to have. * * * ”
See also Havener v. United States, supra; Echert v. United States, supra; State v. Comes, 245 Iowa 485, 62 N.W. 2d 753, 757.
*190Except to the limited extent herein-above noted that the inadvertent remarks of the trial judge tend to emphasize the testimony improperly received on defendant’s cross-examination, I would agree with the majority that there was nothing in the record to support defendant’s contention that the remarks of the trial court deprived the defendant of a fair trial.
I would reverse the judgment of conviction and remand the case to the District Court for a new trial.