Court Opinion

ID: 9468885
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:25:56.559004+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:05.853678
License: Public Domain

ALDISERT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.

“Basta!”

This is an Italian exclamation which, freely translated, means “Enough!” I now say “Basta!” on the question of special verdicts in criminal cases. I believe that the issue has sufficiently percolated in our cases for this court to exercise its supervisory power and prohibit special verdicts or special interrogatories in all criminal cases except where specifically requested by the defendant for cause shown.
To support my position I add nothing to the majority’s thorough and dispassionate discussion. My disagreement goes only to the bottom line. The majority are content to remind the trial courts again of our continued displeasure with the use of special verdicts in criminal cases and again to state the reasons for our position. As fairly set forth in the majority opinion, it is a displeasure we forcefully expressed in 1979 and 1980, but its genesis was not recent: Thirty-six years ago Judge Maris observed that special verdicts in criminal cases have become “virtually unknown in federal criminal practice” and that “[n]o provision for them is made in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.” United States v. Noble, 155 F.2d 315, 317 n.4 (3d Cir. 1946).1 It is bottomed on the concept that, in our tradition, a jury may assume power which it has no right to exercise, that although its verdicts may be the result of compromise or mistake, they “cannot be upset by speculation or inquiry into such matters.” Dunn v. United States, 284 U.S. 390, 393-94, 52 S.Ct. 189, 190-91, 76 L.Ed. 356 (1932), quoted in Harris v. Rivera, -U.S. -, - n.15, 102 S.Ct. 460, 464 n.15, 70 L.Ed.2d 530 (1981) (per curiam).
Noting that special interrogatories are disfavored in criminal trials, we carefully stated in United States v. Palmeri, 630 F.2d 192, 202 (3d Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 967, 101 S.Ct. 1484, 67 L.Ed.2d 616 (1981), that this court “has established no per se rule against them.” I adhere essentially to that position, but I now would prohibit their use except when requested by the defendants under certain circumstances; e.g., as suggested in the majority opinion.2
To promulgate such a precept at this time would bid fealty to the common law tradition of developing law; a tradition that *421“creeps from point to point, testing each step”3 and is most characteristically a system built by gradual accretion from the resolution of specific problems. As Justice Holmes noted, the great growth of the common law came about incrementally.4 It is our tradition to fashion a broad precept from a number of rules of decision, in a process characterized by experimentation. Rules of case law are treated not as final truths, “but as working hypotheses, continually retested in those great laboratories of the law, the courts of justice.”5 The common law has been described as a method “of reaching what instinctively seem[s] the right result in a series of cases, and only later (if at all) enunciating the principle that explains the pattern — a sort of connect the dots exercise.”6 For each legal principle that slowly emerges, there is a solid experience from rules of law themselves and from the publicly stated reasons that support them.7
My view is that there has been sufficient experimentation by the district courts with this discredited practice, and we now have the solid experience. We are now in a position to enunciate a controlling principle severely restricting the use of special verdicts and special interrogatories in criminal cases. The majority opinion carefully sets forth the history and the reasons for our disenchantment with a procedure that seeks to catechize a jury and thus infringe upon its power to deliberate freely as the conscience of the community.
What separates the majority and me is that I am less patient than they. They seem to be saying to the district courts, “We will give you more time to heed the repeated warnings of this court.” For me', that time is now.
Accordingly, I dissent and would reverse and order a new trial.

. The present Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure provide for verdicts in Rule 31. There is no explicit rule comparable to Rule 49 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, entitled “Special Verdicts and Interrogatories.” Rule 31(e) merely provides:
Criminal Forfeiture. If the indictment or the information alleges that an interest or property is subject to criminal forfeiture, a special verdict shall be returned as to the extent of the interest or property subject to forfeiture, if any.

. Moreover, where they are specifically required by statute or Supreme Court decision, trial courts must employ special interrogatories or special verdicts. See, e.g., Haupt v. United States, 330 U.S. 631, 641 n.1, 67 S.Ct. 874, 878 n.1, 91 L.Ed. 1145 (1947); Cramer v. United States, 325 U.S. 1, 36 n.45, 65 S.Ct. 918, 935 n.45, 89 L.Ed. 1441 (1945); Fed.R.Crim.P. 31(e); 18 U.S.C. § 1963(c); 21 U.S.C. § 848(a)(2).

. A. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas ch. 2, § 6 (1967).

. Holmes; The Path of the Law, 10 Harv.L.Rev. 457, 468 (1897).

. M. Smith, Jurisprudence 21 (1909).

. Ely, The Supreme Court 1977 Term, Foreword: On Discovering Fundamental Values, 92 Harv.L.Rev. 5, 32 (1978) (citing Amsterdam, Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment, 58 Minn.L.Rev. 349, 351-52 (1974)). See also Arnold, Professor Hart’s Theology, 73 Harv.L.Rev. 1298, 1311-12 (1960); Holmes, Codes and the Arrangement of the Law, 44 Harv.L.Rev. 725, 725 (1931).

. The cases demonstrate wide variations in experiments and experience. Thus, in United States v. Palmeri, 630 F.2d 192 (3d Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 967, 101 S.Ct. 1484, 67 L.Ed.2d 616 (1981), predicate offenses had to be proved in order to convict five defendants under a 23-count RICO indictment. There was no similar complexity in the present case: there were only three counts against a single defendant. See also authorities listed in United States v. Spock, 416 F.2d 165, 182 n.41 (1st Cir. 1969).