Court Opinion

ID: 9455816
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:34:23.221276+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:44.970246
License: Public Domain

MARIS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Chief Judge Augelli of the district court in his opinion in this case stated:
“After such testimony [on the issue of voluntariness of the relator’s confession] was concluded, the jury was dismissed from the courtroom, and the judge heard argument, pro and con, on whether petitioner’s statement was voluntary and admissible. He determined that it was. When the jury was returned the judge, in keeping with the teaching of State v. Smith, 32 N.J. 501, 549, 161 A.2d 520 (1960), made no disclosure to the jury of his finding, allowed the statement to be marked in evidence, and permitted it to be read to the jury. In his charge at the close of the case, the judge clearly instructed the jury that it was its function to determine whether the statement was voluntarily given, and that if the jury found to the contrary, it should be disregarded completely and no evidential weight whatsoever should be accorded to its contents.”
I agree with Chief Judge Augelli that the judge at the relator’s trial did decide that the confession was voluntarily given while at the same time submitting that question to the jury de novo, as required by the rule of Jackson v. Denno, 1964, 378 U.S. 368, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908. The judge’s language was: “I think that in the circumstances of this case, that the statement is admissible * * * ” Since the relevancy of the confession needed no argument, the only substantial question of admissibility which was before the judge was its voluntariness “in the circumstances of this case”. I am, therefore, satisfied that when the judge, after argument, ruled the confession admissible he was ruling that he found it to have been voluntarily given. Of course, he followed this ruling, as he was required to do, by a charge submitting the question of voluntariness to the jury de novo.
It should be remembered that Sims v. Georgia, 1967, 385 U.S. 538, 544, 87 S.Ct. 639, 17 L.Ed.2d 593, which held that the trial judge’s finding of voluntariness “must appear from the record with unmistakable clarity” was not decided until more than two years after the relator’s trial and the trial judge did not have the benefit of that decision. Here, I think it sufficiently appears that a finding of voluntariness was made by the trial judge. My brethren do not disagree with the district court, as I do not, that in the totality of the circumstances presented by the record the relator’s statement was not in fact involuntary. But although the trial judge admitted the statement as voluntary they would reverse and remand in order to require the trial judge or some other New Jersey judge to repeat this finding “with unmistakable clarity”. To me this is formalism without meaning. Believing that the trial judge complied in substance with the rule of Jackson v. Denno, I would affirm the order of the district court denying the relator’s application for the writ of habeas corpus.