Court Opinion

ID: 9462647
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:46:34.522847+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:42.138703
License: Public Domain

REAL, District Judge
(dissenting):
I dissent.
I do not read Gregg v. United States, 394 U.S. 489, 89 S.Ct. 1134, 22 L.Ed.2d 442 (1969), as creating or requiring a per se rule of reversal.
Assuming that the majority’s analysis of the facts is correct, the reasoning fails. The trial judge was not the trier of fact in this case. That was left to a jury determination, so we need not address the majority’s concern that there might be occasion for “injection into the guilt or innocence phase of the trial various kinds of information that would not be admissible as evidence to determine innocence or guilt.” Nor are we concerned that the facts of this case present a concern “to try to avoid convicting or appearing to convict a defendant for being a bad person instead of convicting him solely for committing the crime with which he [is being] charged.” The record discloses nothing that could support these concerns.
The reasoning behind the use of a per se rule in this instance involving former Rule 32(c)(1) bears no relation to the reality of the criminal trial process. There are numerous instances in which a district judge will be informed of the past deeds of a *1114defendant before trial. Facts can come to a judge’s attention in pre-trial proceedings such as motions to suppress, reduction of bail, or for discovery.1 There is no rule that a trial judge must disqualify himself after presiding at these proceedings. To require a per se rule of reversal in the case of a judge reading a pre-sentence report, while not so requiring in the other situations, is logically inconsistent.
The majority notes in support of its decision that “[t]he appearance of fairness is as important as fairness-in-fact in maintaining confidence in the administration of justice in the minds of the public and of the accused . . . ” The use of facile phrases such as this obscures the real impact of the holding. Surely public confidence in our judicial system will not be enhanced by a decision in which a defendant must be retried because of what is conceded to be a vague possibility of prejudice on the part of the district judge. As to the accused’s confidence in the criminal system, it must be noted that it was at his explicit request— after notifying the Court of his proposed guilty plea — that the district judge looked at the report before the guilty plea was to be entered.2 To allow a defendant to engineer his own reversal by requesting such action and later changing his mind can only serve to make the judicial process appear ridiculous in his eyes.
The holding of the majority points up the folly of creating per se rules that act as an insult to the intelligence of lawyers and judges. A careful reading of the record herein discloses that both the appearance of fairness and fairness-in-fact were scrupulously maintained by the trial judge.3 This is a case for the classic application of Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). The fact that the issue upon which the majority would now reverse this conviction — on what can best be described as an insignificant technicality — was not raised in the appeal and was injected by the Court itself after submission of the matter only adds to the persuasion that the error, if any, was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
I would affirm the conviction.

. See Webster v. United States, 330 F.Supp. 1080, 1086 (E.D.Va.1971); United States v. Duhart, 496 F.2d 941, 945-46 (9th Cir. 1974). Facts concerning the defendant would come to the trial judge’s attention if he accepted a guilty plea on some counts and sentenced the defendant on them before trying the other counts, or if the trial judge had sentenced a defendant following conviction and shortly thereafter had to try the same defendant on other charges. Indeed, in the Gregg case itself the trial judge had previously read a comprehensive psychiatric report in determining the defendant’s competence to stand trial. This report, which was three times as long as the pre-sentence report, contained every item which the trial judge adverted to in the presentence report when he sentenced the defendant.

. I cannot distinguish the reports presented to the trial judge in Duhart (supra Note 1) from those given to the trial judge here.

. Perfection is always sought but never attained. Our jurisprudence has recognized this human inability and has consequently required only that a defendant be afforded a fair trial— not a perfect one.