Court Opinion

ID: 9654012
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 18:01:41.906741+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:04.410213
License: Public Domain

MORTON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
With so much of the foregoing opinion as holds that tho conviction should bo set aside because tho jury was not instructed with sufficient clearness that to warrant a verdiet of guilty the interstate transportation of the woman must have been undertaken Cor tho unlawful purpose specified in the indictment, I agree. As the defendant and the woman were already living together as man and wife before the journey began and made the journey in that relationship, acts of sexual intercourse during it or following it would be much less indicative than in the usual ease under this statute of the guilty purpose necessary for conviction. While the judge correctly stated tho law at the beginning of Ms charge, he did not point out the important distinction just referred to, but on the contrary strongly intimated to the jury, if indeed he did not directly tell them, that acts of sexual intercourse between the defendant and the woman during tho journey or after their arrival in Boston would be a “commission of the offence.”
From tho rest of the opinion I dissent. It is unnecessary to the decision; it is to a considerable extent based on parts of the charge to which no objection was made at the trial and no exception was taken; it ignores facts agreed to by counsel a,t the argument of these exceptions; and it seems to me distinctly unfair to the trial judge.
The judge’s comment on counsel which is criticized should be! read with the additional fact in mind, freely conceded at the argument, that tho judge and the counsel had been on friendly terms since they were students together. It was an obvious pleasantry based, as everybody who heard it understood, on friendly relations between the two. If the counsel thought the joke too rough, or that it bore unfairly against Ms client, he should have said so at the time when the unfairness, if any, could have been corrected. But he made no such objection and took no such exception.
Tho final remark of counsel, “That is almost equivalent to directing a verdict, your Honor,” and the judge’s reply, “That is what I meant to do,” which are referred to in the opinion, were made at the bench during a conference between the counsel and the judge. This was admitted by counsel at the argument. The talk was meant to be “off the record” ; it was not intended for the jury’s ears, and there is nothing to indicate that it was heard by them. If not, it certainly did no harm. Counsel made no objection to the remark at the time and took no exception. Tt was not part of the trial and has no bearing on the questions before us.