Court Opinion

ID: 9449199
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 00:00:49.869961+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:45.333081
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice REED
(dissenting).
This appeal presents problems regarding the preparation by an indigent defendant of his defense to criminal charges. Congress and the federal courts have been sympathetic through the years with the need to accept financial responsibility for those who are unable to pay the costs of their witnesses.1 Provision *112for the assumption of these expenses by the Government is now included in Rule 17(b) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which reads:
“(b) Indigent Defendants. The court or a judge thereof may order at any time that a subpoena be issued upon motion or request of an indigent defendant. The motion or request shall be supported by affidavit in which the defendant shall state the name and address of each witness and the testimony which he is expected by the defendant to give if subpoenaed, and shall show that the evidence of the witness is material to the defense, that the defendant cannot safely go< to trial without the witness and that the defendant does not have sufficient means and is actually unable to pay the fees of the witness. If the court or judge orders the subpoena to be issued the costs incurred by the process and the fees of the witness so subpoenaed shall be paid in the same manner in which similar costs and fees are paid in case of a witness subpoenaed in behalf of the government.”
In addition, Rule 15(c) also authorizes the district court to direct the Government to bear the expense of taking depositions for an impecunious defendant. See also Proceedings in forma pauperis, 28 U.S.C. § 1915 (1958 ed.).
Under these provisions, the defendant with the assistance of his appointed counsel must furnish evidence satisfactory to the district court of his need to summon witnesses for his defense or to take depositions at distant points. The procedure is not put into operation on mere assertion of need, but requires the exercise of discretion by the district court judge. In an early ease interpreting the statute antecedent to Rule 17(b), the Supreme Court stated:
“The third assignment is based upon the refusal of the court to grant an application by the prisoner for process for three witnesses, such process to be served at the expense of the government. The trial was begun on the 27th of May, 1890; the application was not made until the 31st day of May, just before the defendant was called as the last witness in his own behalf. It would probably have delayed the trial a number of days to send the process into the Indian Territory, make service of it there, and bring in these witnesses to testify. Whether the trial should be delayed for the production of these witnesses was clearly a matter of discretion and not reviewable upon a writ of error. The testimony of the proposed witnesses seems to have been of little importance, and the application was to subpoena these witnesses at the expense of the government, which would of itself have been a matter of discretion, even had the application been made before the trial began. Rev.Stat. § 878. It is clear that the ruling of the court is not subject to review. * * * ” Crumpton v. United States, 138 U.S. 361, 364-365, 11 S.Ct. 355, 34 L.Ed. 958 (1891). (Emphasis added.)
See Goldsby v. United States, 160 U.S. 70, 73, 16 S.Ct. 216, 40 L.Ed. 343 (1895); Gibson v. United States, 53 F.2d 721 (C.A.8, 1931) cert. denied, 285 U.S. 557, 52 S.Ct. 458, 76 L.Ed. 946 (1932). The Notes to the Rules of Criminal Procedure for the District Courts of the United States, March 1945, indicate that the Rules were intended to carry over the same discretionary authority of the district judge.2 See Reistroffer v. United States, 258 F.2d 379, 395-396 (C.A.8, 1958), cert. denied, 358 U.S. 927, 79 S.Ct. 313, 3 L.Ed.2d 301 (1959); Feguer v. United States, 302 F.2d 214, 241 (C.A.8, 1962); Murdock v. United States, 283 F.2d 585, 587 (C.A.10, 1960), cert. denied, 366 U.S. 953, 81 S.Ct. 1910, 6 *113L.Ed.2d 1246 (1961); United States v. Kinzer, 98 F.Supp. 6 (D.D.C.1951); United States v. Whiting, 308 F.2d 537 (C.A.2, 1962); cf. Estep v. United States, 251 F.2d 579, 582 (C.A.5, 1958).
This discretion, of course, is not absolute in the sense of “no review under any circumstances,” but does leave a large degree of freedom of decision to the trial judge to determine the materiality of the evidence which the defendant seeks and the likelihood that such evidence will be forthcoming. Neither Rule 15 nor Rule 17 authorizes a general inquiry at Government expense into the circumstances of the crime with which the defendant is charged upon mere hope that favorable evidence will be unearthed; they provide for financial aid only when the defendant asserts reasonable grounds to believe that a witness has pertinent testimony to offer or that other helpful evidence is obtainable. Cf. Ingram v. United States, 114 U.S.App.D.C. 283, 315 F.2d 29.
In the opinion of the Supreme Court in Coppedge v. United States, 369 U.S. 438, 444, 82 S.Ct. 917, 8 L.Ed.2d 21 (1961), where a similar issue arose, it was held that an indigent defendant should be allowed to appeal in forma pauperis if the appeal is “not frivolous.” This case indicates that these rules should be interpreted liberally, giving the defendant the benefit of reasonable doubts. If a defendant were required to substantiate his allegations with evidence, Rules 15 and 17 would be rendered largely nugatory. Nonetheless, the determination of what applications are “frivolous” must still rest largely on the judgment of the trial court informed by the record in the case.
The facts of the present case provide an example of the manner in which relevant, though elusive, factors should be taken into account in the exercise of the district court’s discretion, and indicate that there is but a remote possibility that appellant would have been able to unearth the evidence he alleges awaits him in Ft. Worth. His allegations regarding the circumstances surrounding his confession and the search *114of his mother’s home are supported only by the appellant’s affidavits. Of course this is not conclusive, yet we note that since certain witnesses he desires to depose and to subpoena are close members of his family, it is not unlikely that if his allegations were true he could have provided affidavits or at least unsworn letters from these persons supporting his view of the facts.
The Government presented an affidavit of one of the police officers who arrested appellant setting forth step by step the events which ocurred in Ft. Worth, while appellant alleged only in general terms that he was beaten and that the search of the house had not been consented to. No details which might add plausibility to these allegations are provided.
Moreover, appellant’s allegations are not wholly consistent with his testimony at his removal proceedings before the United States Commissioner in Ft. Worth. There, contrary to his allegations to the District Court, he testified that he had given the police officers permission to enter his mother’s house and to examine his luggage and effects. Although he testified that he had confessed because he feared police brutality, he did not allege, as he did before the district court, that he actually was beaten by the police officers.
Thus, there is much to suggest that appellant would not have been able to improve his case had the district court granted him the pre-trial relief which he requested, and there is nothing other than his unsupported allegations to suggest the contrary. Additionally, the district court was able to observe appellant and it might, had it thought such inquiry helpful, have addressed questions to him, in order to substantiate or refute its conclusion in this regard.
The question in this case thus comes down to the soundness of the trial court’s refusal to require the Government to assume the expenses of what can be considered no more than an investigation of the circumstances of the defendant’s confession and production of the loot. It is true that if the defendant’s allegations were established as true, this would substantially weaken the prosecution’s case. And it is also true that the tendency of recent decisions is to alleviate the disadvantages faced by impoverished defendants.3 But although the action of the trial court is not conclusive, it does carry great weight.4 From the record in this case, I am convinced that the refusal of the trial judge to authorize the assistance sought — on the facts as they are shown — was by no means an abuse of his discretion. I would affirm.

. Act of August 8, 1846, ch. 98, § 11, 9 Stat. 74. This became § 878 of the Revised Statutes of 1878, and then 28 U.S. C. § 656 (1928 ed.). See also Act of Aug. 3, 1882, ch. 378, § 3, 22 Stat. 215, which became 18 U.S.C. § 656 (1927 ed.).

. The Note to Rule 17 (b) provides that “[t]he showing required by the rule to justify such relief is the same as that now exacted by 28 U.S.C. former § 656.” The Note to Rule 15(a) states that “[t]he rule continues the limitation of the stat*113ute [28 U.S.O. former § 644] that the taking of depositions is to be restricted to cases in which they are necessary ‘in order to prevent a failure of justice.’ ”
Moreover, it may be significant that additional safeguards for indigent defendants were added to both rules at the same time as provisions adding or strengthening the necessity for a showing of materiality. The final version of Rule 15(a) provides that a deposition may be taken when it appears “that his [a prospective witness’] testimony is material and that it is necessary to take his deposition in order to prevent a failure of justice.” This entire clause was absent from the Preliminary and Second Preliminary Drafts of the Rules, as was sub-paragraph (c) of Rule 15, which authorizes the court to place these expenses upon the Government.
Two changes from the old statute that appear in Rule 17(b) seem significant. First, the old statute authorized the court to subpoena witnesses at government expense only if the witness was within the district in which the court sat or within 100 miles of the place of trial; this limitation was removed in the rule. Second, the statute required as a condition of relief that the defendant submit an affidavit “setting forth that there are witnesses whose evidence is material to his defense; that he cannot safely go to trial without them; what he expects to prove by each of them; * * In the Preliminary Draft, the defendant, in his affidavit, was required to “state * * * the testimony which he [the witness] is expected by the defendant to give if subpoenaed, that the evidence of the witness is material to the defense and that the defendant cannot safely go to trial without the witness * * The Second Preliminary and Final Drafts, however, require that the defendant, in his affidavit, “show that the evidence of the witness is material to the defense, that the defendant cannot safely go to trial without the witness * * (Emphasis added.) That is, rather than merely state the conclusion that the witness is necessary, the defendant is now required to shoio the district judge that this is so. It seems reasonably clear to me that the rule-makers intended the district judge to require a satisfactory showing that a witness would aid the defense before subpoenaeing him at government expense.

. Cf. Aid for Indigent Litigants in the Federal Courts, 58 Col.L.Rev. 832 (1958).

. Cf. Johnson v. United States, 352 U.S. 565, 77 S.Ct. 550, 1 L.Ed.2d 593 (1957).