Court Opinion

ID: 9478377
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:47:49.766431+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:24.250317
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Although differing with the court, I find no fault with its thoughtful analysis of Strickland as such. However, I reject strongly the idea that Strickland should be the focus in this case. Indeed, this case presents a question way beyond the narrow confines of Logan’s appeal.
In the high name of Strickland and its test of legal error, what the court does is effectually destroy the time-honored power and duty of a federal trial court to grant a new trial when that court senses that an injustice has been done. The court need not find a legal error. All that is needed is the Judge’s feeling that a wrong (injustice) has been done.
This fundamental is reflected by Professor Wright’s statement that “(i)t has long been understood that if the trial judge is not satisfied with the verdict of a jury, he has the right — and indeed the duty — to set the verdict aside and order a new trial.” C. Wright Law of Federal Courts 634 (1984).1
This venerable right — and duty — of a United States District Judge, traced historically so carefully by Judge Parker of the Fourth Circuit — a pillar of the Federal Judiciary — is reflected in his words which we2 have accepted concerning the grant or denial of a motion for new trial:
[ o]n such a motion it is the duty of the judge to set aside the verdict and grant a new trial, if he is of opinion that the verdict ... will result in a miscarriage of justice.... The exercise of this power is not in derogation of the right of trial by jury but is one of the historic safeguards of that right.
Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. v. Yeatts, 122 F.2d 350, 352-3 (4th Cir.1941).
Judge Parker emphasized that a trial judge has a duty to order a new trial when he feels that the trial over which he has presided has resulted in a miscarriage of justice. In Judge Parker’s words:
While according due respect to the findings of the jury, he [the trial judge] should not hesitate to set aside their verdict and grant a new trial in any case where the ends of justice so require.
Id. at 354.
Furthermore, a trial judge may order a new trial “whenever in the exercise of a sound discretion the trial judge thinks this action necessary to prevent a miscarriage of justice.” Id.
Although both Aetna and Bucon were civil cases, this principle so eloquently expressed by Judge Parker of the right and duty of a trial judge to order a new trial when the Judge feels that to allow a verdict to stand would result in an injustice, is a lynchpin of our system of jurisprudence applicable equally to civil and criminal cases.
The intent of the Supreme Court in Strickland was never ever to limit this *867prerogative. Worse, it rides roughshod in fact over the Fifth Circuit’s highly deferential standard calling for a clear abuse of discretion for review of granting a new trial.3
Meeting the demands of the Bar, indeed meeting the demands of Federal Judges on the firing line,4 the Supreme Court in Strickland undertook to develop and then announce principled standards to apply in the currently challenging context of post-conviction relief for inadequate representation by counsel. It dealt primarily with resurrecting the past. Neither the case nor its circumstances dealt with the action which Federal District Judges should take in the context of an on-going trial or one not yet completed by verdict and judgment of conviction.
The court is quite correct in its capsulation of Strickland: there must be (i) conduct (or lack of it) by counsel not measuring up to professionally accepted standards of competent counsel; and (ii) such deficiency in legal representation must have prejudiced the accused.
I also accept — indeed as I cheerfully must in our system of hierarchial supremacy — that the Supreme Court has expressly stated that Strickland standards apply as well “on direct appeal or in motions for a new trial” 466 U.S. 668, 697, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2070, 80 L.Ed.2d 674, 700 (1984).
But with the cherished fundamental of the power and duty of a Federal District Court to grant a new trial where the court thinks an injustice has been done, I cannot believe that by that simple aside, the Supreme Court meant to whittle away or eliminate that long-established, long-recognized, long-revered ultimate safeguard to liberty and justice.5
Here is where our standard of review becomes critical. As the court properly emphasizes by appropriate authoritative precedent and quotation, the appeal by the government of a grant of a new trial is judged by abuse of discretion.6
I can accept the proposition that the trial judge — in his earnest effort to assure a constitutionally fair trial to that most unfortunate of individuals, a convicted felon engaging in an asserted prison-based crime, probably made a legal error in granting a new trial.
But considering the concerns expressed by the District Judge which the court faithfully recites, including the basic fact that Logan’s veracity was directly on the line, I *868cannot find that acting on these reasons the Judge can be faulted. Any such conclusion reflects such indifference to reason and settled principles by the Judge as to come within that most damning of all criticisms — the judge abused his discretion. No matter how tempered down or submerged in euphemistic poetry of appellate opinions, this means: the judge acted wholly outside of law and reason; the judge abandoned all principles; the judge acted for reasons or purposes in no way supported or justified by right thinking, right acting judges.
As to the element of prejudice, we are to view this not through our 20/20 lenses, but that of a trial judge. He thought that to subject an accused to trial and conviction in which evidence (and actions) resulted from an obvious, insupportable, mistake by the counsel charged with protecting his interests, was to subject him to an unconstitutional trial. That he rebelled from such a thought should merit our commendation, not the condemnation of that demeaning sobriquet: abuse of process.
Long after Mr. Logan will have served both his initial sentence and the one following this verdict of guilt, the countless hundreds of persons cowing before the August tribunal of a United States District Judge will have to realize that unlike their predecessors they cannot count on the Federal trial Judge to save their trial from a constitutional wrong.
Believing in the necessity for a wide power of discretion in every Federal trial Judge, to determine whether an injustice has been done, I must respectfully dissent.

. Wright further points out that;
On the one hand, the trial judge does not sit to approve miscarriages of justice. On the other hand, a decent respect for the collective wisdom of the jury, and for the function entrusted to it in our system, certainly suggests that in most cases the judge should accept the findings of the jury, regardless of his own doubts in the matter. Probably all that the judge can do is to balance these conflicting principles in the light of the facts of the particular case. If, having given full respect to the jury’s findings, the judge on the entire evidence is left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed, it is to be expected that he will grant a new trial.
C. Wright Law of Federal Courts 635 (1984).

. See United States v. Bucon Construction Co., 430 F.2d 420, 423 (5th Cir.1970).

. United States v. Fowler, 735 F.2d 823, 830 (5th Cir.1984) (“[T]he district court’s denial of a new trial will be reversed only where a clear abuse of discretion is demonstrated.”); United States v. Vergara, 714 F.2d 21 (5th Cir.1983). In both cases, this Court refused to overturn the denial of a grant of a new trial absent a showing of clear abuse of discretion. It would be anomo-lous to hold that this standard does not also apply to the granting of a new trial.

. Not the least of these was this very Court. See Washington v. Strickland, 673 F.2d 879 nn. 11-20 (5th Cir.1982) Judge Randall’s (now Judge King) opinion for us analyzed the great number of opinions in the various circuits regarding their efforts to distill workable, principled standards.

. This is a most solemn, serious, judicial duty of a trial Judge. See Newman v. United States, 238 F.2d 861 (5th Cir.1956).
[Here the] relief being pursued was a request for a new trial because injustice had been done. That presented a solemn, serious matter, the solution of which was the very act of adjudication, the full exercise of the judicial function. This called for considerate deliberation and decision as a Judge, weighing carefully all that would indicate whether justice or injustice had been the result. The very nature of the process negatived, therefore, the basis for the claim that a paper — the recanting affidavit — compelled automatically the grant of a new trial. To honor such a claim — to test right by paper form, not substance — would be abdication of constitutional duty....
Id. at 862.

.See United States v. Arroyo, 805 F.2d 589, 599 (5th Cir.1986) ("We should not, by applying the harmless error standard, substitute our judgment of law for the discretion and direct perceptions of the trial judge, unless those perceptions form an abuse of the judge’s discretion.”) United States v. Lincoln, 630 F.2d 1313, 1319 (8th Cir.1980) ("This authority [to grant a new trial] should be exercised sparingly and with caution; nevertheless, the trial court has wide discretion in deciding whether to grant a new trial in the interest of justice. Corresponding to the district court's broad discretion is the limited scope of our review: we will reverse ... only if we find that rehearing to be a clear and manifest abuse of discretion.’’)