Court Opinion

ID: 9463440
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:07:14.338024+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:07.056274
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
Chief Judge Kaufman’s opinion concludes that the trial judge’s silence on March 25, while “a serious abdication of his responsibility” amounting to “error,” did not affect the judgment. I agree with this conclusion and therefore concur- in the opinion, but write separately only to emphasize the significance of the type of error committed here. As the panel opinion implies, it is the type of error on which, in another case, we might be forced to reverse despite strong evidence of guilt, if we could not say that the error did not affect the judgment. See United States v. Robinson, 544 F.2d 611, 619 (2d Cir. 1976), quoting R. Traynor, The Riddle of Harmless Error 28 (1970).
I simply do not understand how a trial judge who sees a witness taking a drug can allow the trial to continue as if nothing had happened. It may be that the ingestion by a drug addict of a “small snip” of raw opium would have no effect on the addict’s capacity as a witness, but that is hardly a question on which federal judges are qualified to take sub silentio judicial notice. See McCormick’s Handbook of the Law of Evidence § 329, at 760 (2d ed. E. Clearly 1972). As Judge Kaufman’s opinion makes clear, there were a number of options available to the judge had he excused the jury and revealed the bizarre opium-eating incident to counsel. The trial judge’s own observations of the witness after the incident are hardly a substitute for “the benefits which informed discussion and debate between court and counsel may produce even where a court may be aware in the abstract of its own alternatives.” United States v. Robinson, supra, 544 F.2d 611, 621.
When a trial judge sees a witness do something so unusual and is aware that counsel did not see the incident, he has an obligation to inform counsel as soon as possible as to what he has observed. To fail to do so is, in effect, to exclude the defendant from one of the trial’s events, in violation of the defendant’s right to be present “at every stage of the trial.” Fed.R.Crim.P. 43(a). As we have previously noted, this right is an “unequivocal mandate,” United States v. Glick, 463 F.2d 491, 493 (2d Cir. 1972), although subject, of course, to the harmless error rule, see Rogers v. United States, 422 U.S. 35, 40, 95 S.Ct. 2091, 45 L.Ed.2d 1 (1975); United States v. Glick, supra, 463 F.2d at 493; United States v. Schor, 418 F.2d 26, 30 (2d Cir. 1969). The Government, too, has a substantial interest in the matter.
The courts have repeatedly expressed condemnation of situations in which a trial judge receives a communication and fails to reveal it to counsel. See, e. g., Rogers v. United States, supra, 422 U.S. at 39-41, 95 S.Ct. 2091; United States v. Robinson, supra, at 620-621; United States v. Glick, supra, 463 F.2d at 493-94; United States v. Schor, supra, 418 F.2d at 29-30. In such situations, there is a “presumption of prejudice.” United States v. Treatman, 524 F.2d 320, 323 (8th Cir. 1975). These situations seem to me virtually indistinguishable from the ease before us. The trial judge’s failure to disclose what he knows, be it a juror’s communication or a witness’s bizarre action, cannot be lightly passed over.