Court Opinion

ID: 9651280
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:12:29.423072+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:31.622997
License: Public Domain

DENMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
From the extended review in the court’s opinion of the history of the law respecting the obligation of the trial court to litigants in a criminal prosecution with respect to instructions to the jury, it is apparent that the denial to the United States of its verdict and judgment is one of major importance. However, the grave considerations stressed by the court were discovered by it sua sponte and were not presented or considered in argument or briefs by either of the parties to the litigation.
I dissent from denying to the United States its right in this appellate court to present its views on this unraised contention and thus tend to frustrate it in its difficult task of enforcing the price control legislation. In the earlier period of Anglo Saxon law, reviewed by the court, the discussion of “star chamber” proceedings had a vital place in the struggle for judicial freedom. The essence of star chamber procedure is that the litigants learn of the matter in issue and the judgment thereon only after the judgment against them is rendered.
I dissent further from what I regard as a misapplication of the rule in this circuit respecting our sua sponte consideration of matters not urged in the court below and, a fortiori, matters not urged here. Its statement is in Judge Rudkin’s opinion in the leading case of Marco v. United States, 9 Cir., 26 F.2d 315, 316, and recently repeated in Giles v. United States, 9 Cir., 144 F.2d 860, 861. The rule in the Marco case is “The sufficiency of the testimony to support the verdict was not raised at the conclusion of all the testimony in the court below, and for that reason the question is not properly before us for review. Under such circumstances courts will only look into the record far enough to see that there has been no miscarriage of justice, or that there is some testimony tending to support the verdict.” [26 F.2d 316.]
It is obvious that if Morris hád committed the acts described in the hypothetical alternative in the charge so challenged alone by the court, he was in fact guilty. Hence there was no “miscarriage of justice” and no occasion for a sua sponte consideration of the instruction. Morris is represented here by one of the most experienced practitioners in criminal cases at the circuit bar. He saw nothing of the character found by the court in the instruction to cause him to claim here that an injustice had been done his client.
I further, dissent from the court’s selecting only a part of the keen and able district judge’s instruction respecting the nature of the offense he described to the jury. The discussion in this court’s opinion seems to command the inference that the instruction was so meager the jury may never have realized that Morris was charged with any crime. The omitted portions of the instruction, showing the contrary, are1
“This duty you should perform uninfluenced by pity fot the defendant or by passion or prejudice on account of the nature of the charge against him. * * * Both the public and the defendant have a right to demand, and they do so demand *533and expect, that you will carefully and dispassionately weigh and consider the evidence and the law of the case and give to each your conscientious judgment; and that you will reach a verdict that will be just to both sides, regardless of what the consequences may be. The offense with which the defendant is charged is: Violation of the Price Control Act of 1942.
“The court instructs you that the regulation under which this case arose, Maxi-' mum Price Regulation 292, was promulgated by the Price Administrator on December 31, 194-2, to become effective January 11, 1943, and was duly approved by the Secretary of Agriculture before its promulgation, and that all this was done pursuant to the authority granted by the Congress of the United States in the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942, as amended.” (Emphasis supplied.)
It is obvious that here the District Court was instructing the jury concerning the issue presented by the criminal information and that it charged a violation of the Price Control Act of 1942 and particularly of Maximum Price Regulation 292.
The majority opinion states the elementary rule that the District Court need not read the law and regulations to the jury if not sufficiently clear in themselves, but must explain them in other language in order to have a clear understanding of the law when the jury applies it to the facts. In my opinion the district judge did so in the usual manner of trials in this circuit and in full satisfaction of the court’s obligation to the litigants.
In this connection, I further dissent-from the omission in this court’s opinion of the following instructions to the jury':
“ * * * I shall leave the determination of the facts in the case to you, satisfied as I am that you are fully capable of determining them without my aid. However, it is the exclusive province of the judge of this court to instruct you as to the law that is applicable to the case, in order that you may render a general verdict upon the facts in the case, as determined by you, and the law as given you by the judge in these instructions. * * *
“* * * You are to be governed, therefore, solely by the evidence introduced in this trial, and the law as given you by the court. * * * ”
It is apparent that the district judge did not require the historical review to apprise him of this elementary rule which has controlled federal judges since the Constitution was adopted. The portion of his instruction so taken from the context and challenged sua sponte by the court, is cast in the hypothetical alternative form customarily used by all courts, federal and state, as shown by the text books cited in the court’s opinion.2 That portion of his instruction recites the facts constituting as a matter of law the offense which the court had stated was in violation of the Price Control Act and regulation 292. It is what the jury was expecting after the judge said to them that they were to be “governed * * * by the law as given' you by the court.” It was not necessary, and certainly not reversible error, not to have placed the words “It is the law that * * * ” before the challenged instruction that
“If you believe beyond a reasonable doubt that on or about October 27, 1943, defendant sold five hundred and eighty two boxes of oranges to Aldrich & Company at a price of $5.50 per box, or for a total sum of $3,619.00, and that said transaction was on behalf of Morris Brothers Fruit Company, and that defendant wilfully and deliberately and not as a result of innocent mistake entered upon said Morris Brothers Fruit Company’s copy of a statement showing such sale, and entry that the sale had been made at a price of $4.50 per box or a total sale price of $2,619.00, and that the statement was made in a record of the kind customarily kept by Morris Brothers Fruit Company during the time prior to January 11, 1943 (effective date of Regulation) then you will find defendant guilty as charged in Count One of *534the Information, regardless of what you may believe the correct ceiling price of such oranges to have been at said time.
On the other hand, if you entertain a reasonable doubt as to whether my one or more of the elements I have just recked to you have been proved, you must give the defendant the benefit thereof and acquit him.” (Emphasis supplied.)
I take it that the extended discussion in the court’s opinion means that the district judge should have taken two bites at the cherry and that he should have given two instructions, the first stating “A person violates the statute and regulations I have referred to if he has sold five hundred and eighty two boxes of oranges to Aldrich & Company at a price of $5.50 per box,” and stating the further facts as in the challenged instruction, followed by the challenged instruction as to the law concerning the duty of the jury when it finds or fails to find these facts.
To me there is no need for such circumlocution. The federal courts have long since departed from the legal mumbo jumbo of the early common law period in England that the court’s opinion reviews. The law as stated in the hypothetical alternative gave all that was necessary to bring a just verdict. The situation would be different if the instruction given were regarded by the court as omitting any of the essential facts constituting a violation of Price Regulation 292, as in United States v. Levy, 3 Cir., 153 F.2d 995, and United States v. Noble, 3 Cir., 155 F.2d 315. That, however, is not what the court holds. It was what was contended by Morris’ brief and stated by the sixth paragraph of the court’s opinion as not reached.
The instruction challenged sua sponte by the court properly expressed the law and the District Court’s action in giving it should be sustained. Since, in any event, the jury’s verdict would have been the same if there had been a more formal double statement of the law, no injustice was done and there is no warrant for invoking the rule of sua sponte action of Marco v. United States, supra.
Rehearing denied; DENMAN, Circuit Judge, dissenting.

 Besides this the court gave other instructions covering six printed pages.

 Hughes Instructions to Juries (1905 ed.) § 172; Blashiield Instructions to Juries (1916 ed.) § 41: Thompson Charging the Jury, § 68; Randall’s Instructions to Jury § 284.