Court Opinion

ID: 9446963
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:22:36.094507+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:51.360976
License: Public Domain

MURRAH, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
In the first place, I would apply the perjury rule for the reasons so well stated by Judge Bazelon in Gold v. United States, 99 U.S.App.D.C. 136, 237 F.2d 764. As in that case, the charge is false swearing, the evidence is indeed indirect and circumstantial, and in my judgment inconclusive. The only reason assigned for the inapplicability of the ancient and accepted perjury rule requiring direct and positive evidence of guilt, is that in cases of this kind, its application would “merely thwart the attainment of the end which Congress sought to accomplish by the enactment of Paragraph 9(h).” See Sells v. United States, 10 Cir., 262 F.2d 815. But there Is nothing in the legislative history of Section 9(h) to indicate that the Congress entertained the view that the perjury rule was inapplicable to prosecutions under Section 1001, as in Section 1621. See Judge Bazelon in the Gold case, Note 17. While feeling myself bound by the pronouncements of my court in the Sells case, I cannot refrain from expressing the hope that such is not the law in cases of this kind.
I would reverse this case and remand it for a new trial for the refusal of the trial court to examine the grand jury evidence in camera, to determine whether the lid of secrecy ought to be lifted in the interest of the proper administration of criminal justice. We know that grand jury testimony may be disclosed only upon a showing of a particularized need, and the burden of showing that need is on the one seeking it. But if the rule is to have any efficacy, its burdens ought not to be insurmountable.
How then may the accused lay a foundation for requisite inconsistency when he does not have access to the testimony or any other means except cross-examination in the hope that something will turn up ? In our case the cross-examination of the prosecuting witnesses disclosed that they had testified in numerous cases of this kind, as well as before the grand jury which had indicted the accused. There were some inconsistencies in the testimony they had given in other open proceedings. But there was no conceivable way of showing a particularized need unless the accused could get the grand jury testimony before the court.
It is for these reasons that we have committed to the trial court the judicial function of determining ex parte wrhether the testimony of the witnesses is substantially consistent. And, the court cannot exercise that important function unless he knows something of the witnesses’ testimony. It would seem therefore that the trial court erroneously and *947prejudicially refused to take a judicial look at the grand jury testimony. Cf. United States v. Spangelet, 2 Cir., 258 F.2d 338. It may be that we would be justified in having the grand jury testimony certified for examination here, as was done in United States v. Lev, 2 Cir., 258 F.2d 9. Unless it is done, I certainly can’t say that it was harmless error to refuse to look at it.
This case is important, not only to the accused here, but as a guiding precedent in other cases. I do not believe we can dispose of the question by simply saying that it was harmless.