Court Opinion

ID: 9478712
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:55:54.284888+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:34.692311
License: Public Domain

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the judgment of affirmance, but do so only with grave misgivings, which I would like to explain briefly.
In this case, the District Court virtually directed a verdict with respect to at least one element of the crime. It told the jury that “money was gone, not [sic] question about it.” Ante, at 1104. It also strongly intimated that certain other elements of the crime, for example that the institution robbed was federally insured and that a dangerous weapon had been used, had been established.
One of the most precious of all our constitutional rights is that criminal cases must be tried to a jury, in the absence of waiver, which of course did not occur here. *1107That means that the jury, and no one else, must find that the government has proved each and every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. A directed verdict in a criminal case is always error, and can never be harmless. See, e.g., Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570, 106 S.Ct. 3101, 92 L.Ed.2d 460 (1986). So, if a proper objection to these jury instructions had been made by counsel for Neumann, it would be clear, at least to me, that this judgment would have to be reversed.
It is true, as the Court points out, that the judge's comments on the evidence began with a general caveat evidently intended to remind the jury that it was the sole factfinder. This general statement, however, came before the Court’s specific comments, which were very pointed indeed, and the jury could reasonably have understood that they had to find the several elements of the crime that the judge described as “satisfied.” Ante, at 1104. It is also true that some of the judge’s comments were hedged. He said, for example, as to certain elements, not simply that they had been satisfied, but that “it seems to me” that they have been satisfied. Ibid. When the statement is read as a whole, however, I believe that a reasonable juror could have understood that the trial judge was limiting the jury’s function to the “principal issue,” that is, the identity of the robber. It follows that defendant may not have received a trial by jury at all, but rather a trial by judge, in stark violation of the Constitution.
In the present case, however, we must view these contentions not directly, but rather through the lens of plain error. When the focus of inquiry is thus widened, it is permissible for us to consider, in addition to the strict legalities, the facts that certain portions of the judge’s charge were correctly stated, that the jury need not necessarily have understood him as instructing it to make particular findings, that some of the elements of the crime about which the judge expressed a view could reasonably be classified as “technical,” and that, in truth, the judge’s statement that the real issue in the case was the identity of the defendant was a correct one. Given this context, I reluctantly concur in affirming this conviction. I wish to stress that our action does not mean, nor does the Court’s opinion imply that it means, that this set of jury instructions would have been upheld if a proper objection had been made by counsel.
I add a word with regard to the search- and-seizure issue. Neumann’s attorney, quite prudently, raised the issue by motion in limine, and a pretrial hearing on this motion to suppress was held. The motion was denied. Today, we decline to review the merits of this action, holding that the record has not been sufficiently preserved. We do so because the objection embodied in the motion in limine was not renewed when the evidence in question was actually offered at trial. United States v. Roenigk, 810 F.2d 809, 815 (8th Cir.1987), is cited in support of this holding. The citation is correct, and we are bound by Roenigk, but the rule of law thus applied is disquieting. If a lawyer properly makes a motion in limine and advances in support of it all of his contentions, and if the motion is fully aired in an evidentiary hearing, and if the motion is then denied, what sense does it make to require that the lawyer repeat, as if by rote, the same contentions when the evidence is offered at trial? Unless circumstances have changed, either by way of the discovery of new evidence or by way of a change in the controlling law, or unless the context in which the evidence was expected to be offered is somehow different from what it appeared to be at the time of the suppression hearing, such a requirement makes absolutely no sense. It wastes the time of counsel and court and is a trap for unwary lawyers. It is reminiscent of the rule of criminal procedure, once extant in the state courts of Arkansas, which required a lawyer, once an objection was overruled, to add the incantation “save my exceptions,” on pain of losing the point for purposes of appellate review. Despite my feelings, however, Roenigk is the law of this Circuit, and we are obliged to follow it. I hope that the bar will take notice and avoid this kind of snare in the future.
With these comments, I concur in the result reached by the Court.