Court Opinion

ID: 9639461
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:19:02.778984+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:18.881197
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
This is the second 1 criminal case in the writer’s short experience on this court that illustrates the force of his words to the American Bar Association. He gives himself the satisfaction of repeating them here: “He would realize that the economic laws to which both of the deans have referred, inevitably operate so that finally the temptation point is reached and that extra legal sardine boils over into sin. As one of our lawyers said, ‘There is very little doubt as to the choice between stealing and starving.’ ” 57 American Bar Association Reports 685, 687.2
The attorneys, whose personal tragedy we are now considering, have been convicted on the charge that they, as the indictment puts it, did:
“ * * * corruptly endeavor to influence, intimidate and impede * * * witnesses by corrupt promises, offers of inducement, and by other means, and would and did counsel, advise and suggest to * * * witnesses that they testify falsely before * * * Grand Jury with relation to the facts of the matter under inquiry as aforesaid and would and did advise and suggest to * * * witnesses that they should not identify * * * defendants Herbert R. Short and Michael Aluise before * * * Grand Jury as the persons who had in their possession and custody and under their control * * * still set up in the building known as the Garbage Disposal Plant at Absecon Boulevard and North Tennessee Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey, as aforesaid, and falsely to deny before * * * Grand Jury that * * * defendants Herbert R. Short and Michael Aluise had any connection with * * * still.
“ * * * would and did corruptly influence, obstruct, impede and endeavor to influence, obstruct and impede the due administration of justice in the * * * District Court of the United States for the * * * District of New Jersey by hindering * * * Grand Jury in ascertaining the true facts and presenting a false state of facts with relation to the * * * matter under inquiry in the manner more *285fully set forth and described in Paragraph 5 hereof, for the purpose of preventing * * * Grand Jury from obtaining evidence upon which an indictment might be returned against the * * * defendants Herbert R. Short and Michael Aluise for violation of the internal revenue laws as aforesaid.” Indictment, Paragraphs 5 and 6, Appendix to Appellants’ brief, pp. 9, 10.
In other words, those, who both by their solemn oaths of entrance to and by the canons of a learned and honorable profession 3 are bound to uphold justice, come, before us now stigmatized by a jury’s opinion that they betrayed justice. In supplement to this shocking crime the same indictment charges the defendants with defrauding the revenue by conspiracy to operate a still. I can see no good reason for including this last charge in the indictment. It is true that the crime with whose prosecution they corruptly endeavored to interfere is the crime of illicit distilling. However, a more acute perception of the tactics of some practitioners of criminal law might have suggested the wisdom of trying the offenses separately. Furthermore, it was a quite futile gesture. The jury acquitted one defendant, Perlstein, and the court directed the acquittal of the other, Paul.
The majority express no opinion as to the two defendants’ guilt. They feel that the learned trial judge committed errors of law that require the correction of a new trial. It is my opinion that such feeling takes too little account of the modern conception of criminal justice. Professor Wigmore states the matter eloquently in the latest edition of his monumental treatise on evidence. “Secondly, the complaisant sentimentality of judges in criminal cases must cease. Reverence for the Constitution is one thing, and a respect for substantial fairness of procedure is commendable. But the exaltation of technicalities of every sort merely because they are raised on behalf of an accused person is a different and a reprehensible thing. There seems to be a constant neglect of the pitiful cause of the injured victim, and the solid claims of law and order. All the sentiment is thrown to weight the scales for the criminal — that is, not for the mere accused, who may be assumed innocent, but for the man who upon the record plainly appears to be the offender that the jury have pronounced him to be. We have long since passed the period (as a modern judge has pointed out) ‘when it is possible to punish an innocent man; we are now straggling with the problem whether it is any longer possible to punish the guilty.’ ” 1 Wigmore on Evidence, 3d Ed., § 21, p. 375.
The same theory has found its way into the statutes of the United States.4 I shall not discuss the history and background of that salutary enactment as I have already done so — speaking that time for a unanimous court.5
The majority find four errors, two for each defendant, which they deem, as they must, substantially prejudicial. Two of the errors claimed arise from the use of the name of the county treasurer of the home county of the still. Both references, one by a witness and one by the acting attorney general, arq improper. What the witness said is in plain violation of the hearsay rule and therefore incompetent. What the acting attorney general said is irrelevant. It does not follow that the testimony and the question are also prejudicial and so demanding the correction of a reversal.
Appellants’ counsel draws a rather gaudy picture of the aforesaid official. He would have us believe that the gentleman combined his work for the county with other more profitable, if less ethical, ventures. What he would have us believe from his brief and what the jury might have believed from the evidence are quite different things. There was no evidence of these extra-curricular activities offered at the trial. The jury’s permissible judicial notice is, as in our adversary system it should be, strictly limited. To quote again from Professor Wigmore:
“But the scope of this doctrine is narrow ; it is strictly limited to a few matters of elemental experience in human nature, commercial affairs, and everyday life.”
$ * * * $
“Applying the general principle especially in regard to the element of notoriousness, Courts are found noticing from time to time, a varied array of unquestionable facts, ranging throughout the data of commerce, industry, history and natural science.” 9 Wigmore on Evidence, 3d Ed., § 2570, p. 544, § 2580, p. 571 (italics ours).
*286One hopes that a general tendency on the part of county officials to assist criminals is neither as “elemental” nor as “unquestionable” as, for instance, the dangerousness of smoking a pipe in a barn filled with straw.6 Furthermore, nothing was said by anybody about the residence of the members of the jury whose knowledge of Atlantic County matters is argued for. The only actual evidence besmirching the county treasurer is also hearsay. As it emanated from a government witness it cannot be objected to. Its general tenor-was that the latter wanted two of the bootlegging co-conspirators given the facilities of the city garbage dump as a site for the prosecution of their tax saving enterprise.
The testimony improperly admitted amounts, then, to this. The defendant Perlstein has on one occasion visited the office of the treasurer of the county in which he practices law. The defendant Paul has been asked “if he did not want to protect” the same official. The question was held improper by the learned trial judge and was not answered. The jury were entitled to infer that the county treasurer aforesaid regarded the defrauding of the revenue with a tolerant rather than a jaundiced eye and even perhaps that such an attitude on his part deserved the accolade of an indictment for aiding and abetting illicit distilling.
Is this showing of association with and friendliness for such a wicked man “evidence calculated to create prejudice * * by exciting the minds and inflaming iSie passions of the jury.” 7 The writer thinks it is not and for this reason. It may be that as the Latin maxim has it: “Consortio malorum mequoque malum facit”.8 Our law has not gone further than a consideration of what the defendant himself has done. In the European systems and in the Early English practice, particular acts of misconduct were admissible. With the later softening of the criminal law the English courts reverse themselves and excluded the evidence for what Professor Wigmore has termed “reasons of Auxiliary Policy”.9 He says: “It may almost be said that it is because of this indubitable Relevancy of such evidence that it is excluded. It is objectionable, not because it has no appreciable probative value, but because it has too much. The natural and inevitable tendency of the tribunal — whether judge or jury — is to give excessive weight to the vicious record of crime thus exhibited, and either to allow it to bear too strongly on the present charge, or to take the proof of it as justifying a condemnation irrespective of guilt of the present charge.” 1 Wigmore on Evidence, 3d Ed., § 194, p. 646 (italics ours).
The relevancy and the corresponding undue prejudice both emanate from what the defendant has done and not from whom he has been with. Nor can I find any suggestion in any case that the evil companion plays either a relevant or prejudicial part. Inasmuch as the jury would perceive the first, they could not be affected by the second.
The learned trial judge did not permit the reference to the county treasurer’s relations with defendant Paul to go beyond an intimation in a question. The prejudice to him, therefore, if any, is on a different and less extreme footing. There has been much written on misconduct by a prosecuting attorney as ground for reversal. The determining factors seem to be the strength or weakness of the case against the defendant 10 and the measures taken by the trial court to avert the harmful effect.11 Here the majority agree that the case is strong. The trial judge gave no instruction on the point. Counsel could not have been as much concerned at the trial as he is on appeal for no such request to charge was made. As the court had already reprimanded the assistant attorney general it would surely have been acceded to.
A similar attempt to “speculate on error” is manifest in the second ground found by the majority for reversal as to Perlstein. As is common and almost inevitable in conspiracy cases, an admission by one defendant was offered. The court was asked to limit it to him. The time for such protection is when it is most effective, i. e., just before the jury retires. No request of that character appears *287among Perlsteiu’s seven requests.12 So a willing trial judge lias to rely on his memory of a long trial. No such reliance is a part of his duty. It is rather the duty of those whose memories are sharpened by the injury done them. In saying that we prefer to ignore the possibility of what judges have called “a studied effort to get reversible error into the record.” 13
The second ground for a new trial for Paul seems to me to involve a misconception of the rule governing the joinder of criminal causes. The writer, speaking then for a unanimous court, discusses that rule in the other lawyer-defendant case he has already referred to.14 On the authority of that decision the majority reject appellants’ argument for a severance. Having done this, it is difficult for me, at least, to follow their subsequent accession to the demand for a mistrial. The best statement I have found of the reason for the joinder rule appears in the note from the Minnesota Law Review quoted in the Silver-man opinion.15 I repeat part of that quotation here: “Apart from statutory limitations, it is submitted that the only fundamental objection to joinder proceeds from the notion that a jury is likely to use evidence adduced in support of one charge to convict accused of another charge not independently nor adequately proved.” [106 F.2d 753.] Indictment and Information Joinder of Counts — Statutory Joinder of Separate Offenses in Same Indictment, 22 Minnesota Law Review 112, 113 (note).
That the joinder in the case at bar should be so confusing would seem to be utterly impossible. In the usual case the different counts are left to the jury and because of that fact the trial judge is often not inclined to minimize potential prejudice by his charge. Here, however, the learned trial judge did not permit the jury to pass upon the count for illicit distilling and took great pains to clarify their minds about the lack of connection between the two offenses. He said: “ * * * You must not consider whether he 16 was engaged in a* conspiracy to operate the still. I have withdrawn that part of the case from you. That was my responsibility, as I have told you. So far as he is concerned in this case, you are to go solely on the issue as to whether or not he is guilty on the first count for interfering with the administration of justice, and you are not to allow the evidence with relation to the setting up and operation of the still, that is the second count, to influence you with regard to his liability on the first count, that is the obstruction of justice count. You must reach your verdict as to Harry Paul’s guilt of perpetrating an obstruction of justice solely on the evidence which ties him into that count, leaving out, except for the purpose of taking care of an explanation, all that relates to the operation of the still.” Charge of the Court, Appendix to appellants’ brief, pp. 544, 545.
It seems clear, therefore, that the jury thoroughly understood its function and that correspondingly its opinion of the defendant Paul’s guilt arises not from confusion but from conviction.

 United States v. Silverman, 3 Cir., 106 F.2d 750.

 Speech entitled Overcrowding the Bar before the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar of the American Bar Association on October 11, 1932.

 Canons of Professional Ethics, American Bar Association, Canon 15, 62 American Bar Association Reports 1105, 1110.

 28 U.S.G.A. § 391.

 Townsend v. United States, 3 Cir., 106 F.2d 273.

 Lillibridge v. McCann, 117 Mich. 84, 75 N.W. 288, 41 L.R.A. 381, 72 Am.St. Rep. 553.

 22 C.J.S., Criminal Law, § 600, p. 922.

 “The company of wicked men makes me also wicked”, Black Law Dictionary.

 1 Wigmore on Evidence, 3d Ed., §§ 193, 194.

 Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 55 S.Ct. 629, 79 L.Ed. 1314; Fitter v. United States, 2 Cir., 258 F. 567.

 State v. Hayes, 109 W.Va. 296, 153 S.E. 496.

 Appendix to appellants’ brief, p. 584.

 Appeal and Error — Sufficiency of Objections, 38 Texas Law Review 222 ¡(lióte).

 United States v. Silverman, above cited.

 Tiiis note was also cited with approval in a recent opinion of the Second Circuit, United States v. Smith, 112 F.2d 83, 85.

 The defendant PauL