Court Opinion

ID: 9467192
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:41:20.592668+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:13.239538
License: Public Domain

VAN GRAAFEILAND, Circuit Judge,
(dissenting):
In affirming the judgment herein, my colleagues have done exactly what the Supreme Court has said should not be done. They have measured the constitutional obligation of due process “by the moral culpability, or the willfulness, of the prosecutor.” United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 110, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 2400, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976). They hold that the failure of the prosecutor to disclose his knowledge of a juror’s job application denied petitioner due process regardless of whether the judgment of the juror in question was in fact affected by his interest in future employment so as to deprive petitioner of a fair trial. I cannot subscribe to this unwarranted expansion of the habeas corpus powers of the federal courts.
In Remmer v. United States, 347 U.S. 227, 74 S.Ct. 450, 98 L.Ed. 654 (1954), an FBI agent was sent into the jury room without the defendant’s knowledge or consent to investigate a rumor concerning jury tampering. The Court recognized that sending an agent in to investigate a juror as to his conduct “is bound to impress the juror and is very apt to do so unduly.” Id. at 229, 74 S.Ct. at 451. It ordered that the trial judge be directed to hold a hearing so as to determine whether the incident was prejudicial and harmful to the defendant and if “it [was] found to have been harmful, to grant a new trial.” Id. at 230, 74 S.Ct. at 452. Since Remmer, this has been the generally approved procedure where there are reasonable grounds to suspect jury improprieties. See, e. g., United States v. Johns, 615 F.2d 672, 676 (5th Cir. 1980); United States v. Gross, 614 F.2d 365, 368 (3d Cir. 1980); Sullivan v. Fogg, 613 F.2d 465, 467 (2d Cir. 1980). It was the procedure followed by the state court judge in this case.
The state judge held a hearing during which the challenged juror was examined. Following the hearing, the judge found that the juror was not prejudiced or hostile and had made no premature determination of the defendant’s guilt; that instead the jur- or was honest and able to render a verdict on the evidence. The judge concluded that petitioner had not been deprived of a fair trial. The district court likewise found that the record did not support petitioner’s claim that the letter-writing juror was partial to the prosecutor’s case.
My colleagues say this makes no difference and approve the granting of a writ solely because they find the state prosecutor’s conduct to have been reprehensible. However, reprehensible conduct by a state prosecutor which has not deprived the defendant of a fair trial does not warrant federal habeas corpus relief. Fambo v. Smith, 565 F.2d 233, 235 (2d Cir. 1977). Our right to review state court proceedings is “the narrow one of due process, and not the broad exercise of supervisory power that [we] would possess in regard to [our] own trial court.” Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 642, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 1871, 40 L.Ed.2d 431 (1974), quoting DeChristoforo v. Donnelly, 473 F.2d 1236, 1238 (1973).
New York State Supreme Court judges are obligated and fully qualified to supervise the trial conduct of state prosecutors. Unless a prosecutor’s conduct has so prejudiced a defendant as to deprive him of a fair trial, section 2254 gives a federal judge no right to usurp the state judge’s function. Borodine v. Douzanis, 592 F.2d 1202, 1209-12 (1st Cir. 1979). The purpose of habeas corpus “is not punishment of society for *1025misdeeds of a prosecutor but avoidance of an unfair trial to the accused.” Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 1197, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963).
I dissent.