Court Opinion

ID: 9449185
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 00:00:23.876601+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:45.091124
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially).
Sharing the criticisms made by the Court of the form jury instructions under attack, my only difference is that the criticisms do not go far enough. These charges are not only deficient from a structural standpoint, I think they are positively wrong.
The trial Court here had first charged that:
“A witness is presumed to speak the truth, but this presumption may be outweighed by the manner in which the witness testified, by character of the testimony given, or by contradictory evidence.”
“ * * * If you find the presumption of truthfulness to be outweighed as to any witness, you will give the testimony of that witness such credibility, if any, as you may think it deserves.”
The italicized words presumed or presumption become of critical importance in view of this other instruction which bore directly upon the jury’s function:
“An inference is a deduction or conclusion which reason and common sense lead the jury to draw *796from facts which have been proved. A presumption is an inference which the law requires the jury to make from particular facts in the absence of convincing evidence to the contrary. A presumption continues in effect until overcome or outweighed by evidence to the contrary, but unless so outweighed the jury is bound to find in accordance with the presumption. Unless and until outweighed by evidence to the contrary, the law presumes * * * that a witness speaks the truth * *
This, as the Court points out, is taken verbatim from § 2.04 of the Manual of Jury Instructions and Forms for Federal Criminal Cases by Judge Mathes of California, 27 F.R.D. 39, 51, with a running blend of § 3.01.1
Considering the charge as a whole, which the law exacts of appellate courts and theoretically of juries, it lays down the proposition that as a matter of law, and not as a mere matter of inferences or impressions drawn, a witness speaks the truth unless there is “convincing evidence” to the contrary. It does this because the general instruction states that “a presumption is an inference which the law requires the jury to make from particular facts.” The critical contrast is made even plainer since the general instruction undertook to distinguish between an “inference” and a “presumption.” The jury was told in effect that an inference is a permissive deduction which the jury might draw. In contrast a “presumption” is a positive command of law.
Recasting the instructions on the credibility of a witness, the shorthand symbol “presumed” or “presumption” would make them read substantially as follows:
“The law requires that the jury conclude that a witness speaks the truth ■* * *»
This is more than mere confusion engendered by the loose, inarticulate use of the ambiguous word “presumption” or “presumed” which this Court pointed out in Barfield v. United States, 5 Cir., 1956, 229 F.2d 936 at 939-941. Here “presumption” becomes a mandate of law.
Of course once it becomes a mandate, it is positively wrong. This is so because the truth finding function of a jury in determining the credibility of a particular witness is not a matter which can be committed to a verbalized formula by a Judge or a number of Judges or a Court or a number of Courts. Nor is the matter saved by such weasel-phrases such as “in the absence of convincing evidence to the contrary,” “until outweighed by evidence to the contrary,” etc.
What is truth relates to facts, not legal principles. Who is telling the truth is not a legal question. How the truth is determined is not a legal matter. This is a thing committed to the common sense and good judgment of the jurors based on everyday experiences as human beings in an imperfect society. A moment’s reflection will remind even Judges that in the quest for truth in their affairs off the bench, they believe, they disbelieve, they accept, or they reject the statements of their fellow men in countless situations most frequently by intuitive judgment or impression wholely incapable of an articulate elucidation. The genius of the jury system is to transport this common sense into the machinery of the law. If the law undertakes to prescribe categorically either what' is truth, or who is truthful, or how one goes about ascertaining who or what is truthful, the verdict becomes something less than the reflection of this process of good common sense.
This form charge — as is so as to a number of others contained in the same *797manual 2 — contains positive errors and should not be used. But I agree with the Court that there being no objection to any of these charges here, the error in the setting of this record was not of a kind constituting a plain and harmful error requiring reversal. Ahlstadt v. United States, 5 Cir., 1963, 315 F.2d 62.

. Section 3.01 (p. 67) on credibility:
“ * * * A witness is presumed to speak the truth. But this presumption may be outweighed by the manner in which the witness testifies, by the character of the testimony given, or by contradictory evidence. * * * If you find the presumption of truthfulness to be outweighed as to any witness, you will give the testimony of that witness such credibility, if any, as you may think it deserves.”

. See Huffman v. United States, 5 Cir., 1962, 297 F.2d 754, 759, n. 1 [dissenting opinion].