Court Opinion

ID: 9529952
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:55:49.334468+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:27:57.519258
License: Public Domain

Judge LANSING,
concurring.
I write separately to urge restraint in the questioning of witnesses by trial courts during jury trials. It is a practice that is fraught with peril. The judge’s purpose in interjecting questions can be easily misunderstood by the jury, who may ascribe to the *172judge’s intervention a motive, viewpoint or effect far different than that intended by the judge. The mere fact that the court questions a particular witness may be sufficient to elevate the importance of that witness’s testimony in the eyes of the jury. I find wisdom in the advice given in United States v. Barbour, 420 F.2d 1319, 1321 (D.C.Cir.1969) (quoting Billeci v. United States, 184 F.2d 394, 403 (D.C.Cir.1950)): “[T]he judge must remain a ‘disinterested and objective participant in the proceeding,’ and principles both fundamental and indestructible in our criminal law exhort him to hold to a minimum his questioning of witnesses in a jury trial.”
I also caution that our decision should not be understood to hold that a curative instruction will always suffice to correct any error in a court’s interrogation of witnesses. To the contrary, there is potential here for prejudice that no instruction could erase. See, e.g., United States v. Saenz, 134 F.3d 697, 713 (5th Cir.1998); United States v. Tilghman, 134 F.3d 414, 421 (D.C.Cir.1998); Sit-Set, A.G. v. Universal Jet Exchange, Inc., 747 F.2d 921, 926 (4th Cir.1984); United States v. Beaty, 722 F.2d 1090, 1096 (3d Cir.1983).
In short, the wiser course, in my view, is to avoid the many inherent risks by foregoing the Rule 614 prerogative to question witnesses in jury trials except in circumstances of true need and, even then, to proceed with caution.