Court Opinion

ID: 9445116
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:19:59.973591+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:07.782686
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing
WOODBURY, Circuit Judge.
The appellant has petitioned for rehearing on the ground that his assertions of error in the trial court’s charge to the jury must have been overlooked because they were not mentioned anywhere in this court’s opinion. This is not so. Judge Hartigan did not have occasion to consider the charge in the view he took of the case and Chief Judge Magruder and I considered the assertions of error only to reject them. One sentence of the charge considered out of context might perhaps be interpreted as an erroneous statement of an applicable principle of law. But considering the sentence in its context, such an interpretation would be so far fetched that we did not think there was any practical probability of misinterpretation by the jury. Furthermore, it does not appear that counsel took exception to the sentence at the conclusion of the charge. Rule 30, Fed.Rules Crim.Proc. 18 U.S. C.A. The charge as a whole impressed us as eminently fair and any possible technical error in it so minor as not to affect substantial rights of the accused. We therefore treated the error, if in fact there was any error at all, as harmless, and disregarded it in accordance with Rule 52(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Error was also pressed on failure of the court to give a certain requested charge, which, while it contained an abstractly correct proposition of law, was so adequately covered in the general charge as to preclude the possibility of prejudice.
The petition for rehearing is denied.