Court Opinion

ID: 9474780
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:08:28.662317+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:19.670455
License: Public Domain

CUMMINGS, Chief Judge, with whom WOOD and COFFEY, Circuit Judges,
join, dissenting.
I dissented from the panel opinion (reported in 772 F.2d 293) because of my agreement with the reasoning of the Illinois Supreme Court when in People v. Miller, 96 Ill.2d 385, 70 Ill.Dec. 849, 450 N.E.2d 322 (1983), it disposed of Miller’s appeal from the Appellate Court of Illinois. I still fully agree with the Illinois Supreme Court’s rationale:
Here, it is our view that, beyond a reasonable doubt, the prosecutor’s improper inquiry did not affect the verdict, In addition to the fact that the jury was informed to disregard the question, it was but a single, isolated reference to defendant’s post-arrest silence made during the course of a lengthy trial. Further, the evidence, as previously recited, was sufficient to prove defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. We do not consider this “a case in which, absent the constitutionally forbidden [inquiry], honest, fair-minded jurors might very well have brought in [a] not-guilty [verdict].” Chapman v. California (1967), 386 U.S. 18, 25-26, 17 L.Ed.2d 705, 711, 87 S.Ct. 824, 829.
96 Ill.2d at 396, 70 Ill.Dec. 849, 450 N.E.2d 322.
*448While the majority opinion here relies on the Supreme Court’s most recent treatment of Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610, 96 S.Ct. 2240, 44 L.Ed.2d 91, in Wainwright v. Greenfield, — U.S. —, 106 S.Ct. 634, 88 L.Ed.2d 628, the Florida attorney general did not claim in Greenfield that the prosecutor’s comment on Greenfield’s silence was harmless error. 106 S.Ct. at 640-41 n.13, 644. The majority opinion concludes here, like the concurring opinion in Greenfield, that a Doyle error is still to be judged by the “harmless beyond a reasonable doubt” standard.1
While I also believe that the “harmless beyond a reasonable doubt” standard still governs Doyle violations, the district court and the Illinois Supreme Court rightly considered that under that standard this fifteen-second colloquy,2 alleviated by the trial judge’s immediately sustaining the defendant’s objection and instructing the jury to ignore the prosecutor’s improper question 3 and by a threshold jury instruction to disregard questions to which objections were sustained (Trial Court Record C368 and C420), did not affect the verdict. The district court’s judgment should be affirmed.

. See Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U.S. 141, 94 S.Ct. 396, 38 L.Ed.2d 368; Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 40 L.Ed.2d 431; Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 828, 17 L.Ed.2d 705.

. District Court order reproduced in petitioner’s App. A p. 3.

. The instruction was “to ignore the last question, for the time being” unless the judge’s checking while Miller was on the witness stand on cross-examination showed that the prosecutor’s question was permissible (petitioner’s App. A p. 2). Since the judge did not so find, the instruction remained in effect and was augmented by the fourth instruction to the jury upon the completion of the closing arguments.