Court Opinion

ID: 9471172
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:26:12.810157+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:17.736247
License: Public Domain

GARTH, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority is clearly correct to the extent that it would require a proper charge on character evidence to be given where a correct charge is requested. Our cases surely require no less than this of the trial court. Neither, though, do the cases require more than this.
My disagreement with the majority is that it has extrapolated from various cases a proposition for which they do not stand. The majority holds that when an improper request for charge on character evidence is made and properly denied, the court has a duty, under penalty of constituting plain error, to formulate and deliver a proper charge. I do not read the cases, nor indeed the briefs filed on this appeal,1 to require this result, and I therefore dissent.
1.
In United States v. Frischling, 160 F.2d 370 (3d Cir.1947), this court held that when “specifically requested to do so,” a trial judge must charge the jury that they must consider character evidence with the other evidence, and that character evidence, like other evidence, may generate a reasonable doubt justifying acquittal. Id. at 370-71. We recognized in that case that while the jury should consider character evidence in the same manner as it would consider other evidence, the nature of such evidence creates the possibility that the jury will deem it irrelevant. Thus, the jury must be specially alerted to the weight character evidence may be given in their deliberations. Id. at 371.
This court affirmed the Frischling principle in United States v. Klass, 166 F.2d 373 (3d Cir.1948), in holding that any charge on character evidence must convey the idea *94that the jury is to consider such evidence with all other evidence, and may infer a reasonable doubt from it even though the other evidence is convincing. Id. at 380.
Neither Frischling nor Klass may be read to require that a proper character evidence charge be given in the absence of an adequate request for one. The majority relies for such a proposition on this court’s holding in United States v. Quick, 128 F.2d 832 (3d Cir.1942). In Quick, this court noted that a judge “need not charge in the exact language of a request,” and indeed “is not required, of his own motion, to charge with respect to character evidence,” but that “a request to that end is the legally appropriate and efficient means for inducing pertinent instructions by the court.” Id. at 835. Thus, Quick’s request for a charge created a duty to instruct the jury on the nature and manner of consideration of character evidence and the weight to be given it. Id.
The requested charge in Quick conformed closely to the principle enunciated six years later in Klass, supra. The requested charge read
[i]t is the right of a person charged with crime to have all relevant testimony, including that relating to his good character or reputation, considered by the jury in every case, and if, on such consideration, there exists reasonable doubt of his guilt, even though that doubt be engendered merely by his previous good repute, he is entitled to an acquittal.
Id. Thus, the request for a character evidence charge in Quick stated properly the legal import of character evidence. That the judge need not charge “in the exact language of a request” does not, in the context of this case, mean that the judge must give a proper charge in the absence of a request for one. At most, Quick stands for the proposition that a request for charge that correctly enunciates the principles upon which the jury should consider character evidence imposes a duty upon the trial court to instruct on those principles. Klass and Frischling then refined and articulated these principles. Thus, it cannot be said that these cases impose a duty upon the trial court to give a proper charge in the absence of a request that correctly enunciates the appropriate legal principles.
2.
Graner’s attorney did not object to the charge at trial. See F.R.Crim.P. 30. Failure to preserve objections to the jury charge will not prevent review on appeal where the charge constituted plain error. United States v. Palmeri, 630 F.2d 192 (3d Cir.1980); United States v. Grasso, 437 F.2d 317 (3d Cir.1970); see F.R.Crim.P. 30, 52(b). The majority, however, holds it “plain error” for a court to fail to formulate a correct charge on character evidence when a defendant merely suggests that a character charge of some sort be given. (Maj. op. at 92.) A defendant, under the majority’s holding, need neither formulate a proper request nor object to the judge’s failure to charge, in order to obtain appellate review. The duty thus placed on the district court to formulate a character evidence charge when a charge is “in the air,” is an inordinate requirement, one that does not rise to the level of importance we normally reserve for “plain error.” Error is plain only if review on appeal is necessary to prevent a manifest miscarriage of justice. Palmeri, supra, 630 F.2d at 201; Grasso, supra, 427 F.2d at 319. “It is the rare case in which an improper instruction will justify reversal of a criminal conviction when no objection has been made in the trial court.” Henderson v. Kibbe, 431 U.S. 145, 154, 97 S.Ct. 1730, 1736, 52 L.Ed.2d 203 (1977).
Character evidence is to be considered and weighed like all Other evidence. The charge given did treat character evidence like other evidence in that it did not mention character evidence specifically. (Maj. op. at 91-92.) The jury was not told that character evidence was deserving of less emphasis than other evidence. Moreover, there was compelling evidence for conviction presented by the testimony of Logan. Were the instruction erroneous — for example — in setting out incorrect elements of the offense charged, or of proof necessary to convict, I might have less trouble finding it to be plain error. What this case presents, *95however, is an error — if error it is — of an order of far lesser magnitude. It goes to the degree to which the jury must be expressly dissuaded from its hypothetical tendency to deemphasize certain evidence in its deliberations.
I cannot conclude that the failure to instruct on character evidence amounts to plain error. Indeed, all the authorities discussing this very issue hold otherwise.2 See generally United States v. Clavey, 565 F.2d 111, 118 (7th Cir.1977) (unobjected-to failure to instruct on character evidence not reviewable), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 954, 99 S.Ct. 351, 58 L.Ed.2d 345 (1978); Swingle v. United States, 389 F.2d 220, 222 (10th Cir.1968) (failure to give proper character evidence charge not “fundamental error”).
I do not believe that in circumstances such as are presented here we should erode the plain error rule. We ought not to require district court judges, at the peril of having otherwise-unassailable convictions set aside, to anticipate and to formulate correct instructions for counsel. Indeed, I suspect that the majority itself is fearful of diluting the “plain error” rule for it seeks to restrict its holding to “a narrow exception to the usual practice.” Maj. op. at 92.
The majority endeavors to limit “plain error” to those instances where the defendant (1) gives “notice” to the judge by requesting an incorrect charge on character evidence, and (2) where the case turns on issues of credibility. Id. First, as I have attempted to point out in this dissent, neither this court nor any other court has ever imposed a duty on the district court to formulate a charge that correctly enunciates appropriate legal principles where, in the first instance, the defendant has requested a wholly improper charge. Moreover, we have never required such action from the district court when the defendant has stood by his initial incorrect request, failing thereafter to frame a correct instruction and failing to object when the court properly declines to instruct the jury in accordance with the defendant’s incorrect request.
Second, I fear that the second limiting factor in the majority’s standard, provides no limit at all: rarely, if ever, is the defendant’s credibility not at issue in a criminal trial. The mere plea of “not guilty” which triggers a trial in a criminal cause, ensures that credibility issues abound.
Thus, as I understand the majority opinion, this court for the first time will now be holding that even though an incorrect character evidence charge was requested by the defendant and no corrective charge was substituted when the original charge was properly refused, the district court nevertheless, at its peril, is now required to frame its own instruction. If it does not do so, we will review the charge on the basis of “plain error.” I suggest that this is a remarkable departure from traditional “plain error” jurisprudence, and constitutes the very type of “extravagant protection” condemned by the Supreme Court. Namet v. United States, 373 U.S. 179, 190, 83 S.Ct. 1151, 1156, 10 L.Ed.2d 278 (1962).3 I cannot *96agree that the law of this Circuit mandates, such an extension of the “plain error” rule.
Accordingly, contrary to the majority’s conclusion, I would affirm the district court and I respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding.

. The appellant Graner at no time suggested that the failure of the district court judge to charge on the issue of character evidence constituted plain error. As the majority notes (maj. op. p. 91), “By failing to object specifically to the omission in the charge, the defendant did not preserve the issue for appeal unless the district court’s action constituted plain error or affected substantial rights.”
The record is clear that Graner did not preserve for appeal the issue of a character evidence charge. Indeed, Graner’s brief does not even intimate that plain error would permit our review of the district court’s failure to instruct on character evidence. As a consequence, the Government does not address this issue either. Accordingly, the ground on which the majority’s decision rests and the ground on which it reverses the district court is a ground never urged by Graner and never briefed by the parties, and, insofar as our independent research reveals is a holding that has never been reached by any court.

. Darland v. United States, 626 F.2d 1235 (5th Cir.1980), cited in the majority opinion, maj. op. p. 91-92, is not to the contrary. In Darland, the character evidence produced by the defendant was in the form of an affidavit to which the Government did not object. After the affidavit had been read to the jury, the district court, upon learning that the defendant himself would not testify, sua sponte struck the affidavit and instructed the jury to disregard the character evidence. Having no character evidence in the record, the district court then refused to give a proper jury instruction on character evidence requested by the defendant. The Fifth Circuit reversed, but its reversal was predicated wholly upon the error in striking the relevant character evidence without cause, particularly where the character evidence offered affected a trait relevant to the crime charged.
Darland is thus not authority for a situation such as the one presented here: where character evidence is properly admitted, the requested instruction is incorrect, and no objection is made to the failure of the district court to charge.

. The majority’s “notice” rule would appear to lead to the anomalous conclusion that a defendant who does not even submit a charge, or who refuses to submit requests to charge, could put the court on “notice” that he desired instructions in a number of different areas — character evidence, expert testimony, interested witness, absence of witnesses, number of witnesses, ac*96complice testimony, inconsistent statements, credibility of witnesses, etc. — then leave it to the trial judge to frame the correct instruction, and then, further, have the charge reviewed under plain error even in the absence of an objection to the court’s charge if it is not given, or to its content if it is ultimately given.