Court Opinion

ID: 9488462
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:46:19.661301+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:54.592898
License: Public Domain

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the majority that it is not our role to review the record de novo to make an independent determination of whether the transcription had an impact on the jury prejudicial to Berry. The trial court must make the initial determination of prejudice, and we review that determination solely for abuse of discretion. I write separately to offer my thoughts on factors the district court may consider in making its determination in the context of the particular facts of this ease.
In United States v. Boyd, 55 F.3d 239, 242 (7th Cir.1995), we noted that when a trial judge sat through the trial, heard the testimony, and observed the jurors’ reactions to the evidence, he would develop a “feel” for the impact of the evidence on the jury and how that impact might have been different in the absence of the evidentiary error. We acknowledged that “an appellate court, confined to reading the transcript, cannot duplicate” that “feel.” Id. That “feel” is especially important in the instant case, where the jury returned a split verdict.
Berry was charged with two counts of unlawful delivery of a controlled substance. Both counts arose from alleged sales of crack cocaine by Berry to a government informant. The evidence for the two counts was identical *309except that on the second sale, the informant wore a wire, and the government therefore had a tape recording of the alleged buy. The jury acquitted Berry on the first count for which no recording or transcription existed, but convicted him on the second count. In light of the acquittal on Count I, it seems highly likely that the tape recording and the government’s transcription of the tape recording (which identified Berry as the speaker at key points in the recorded conversation) were instrumental to the jury’s verdict on the second count.
Also relevant to the analysis is the impact of the transcription on Berry’s defense. Berry’s entire theory of defense was that he was not the person who sold the cocaine to Brown, and he was not the speaker on the tape. Thus, the identification of the speaker was the central issue in the case. Berry argued below that the transcription was unfairly prejudicial because, among other things, it identified him as the speaker, and it did not indicate pauses or lapses of time in the recorded conversations. As the majority notes, the trial court rejected Berry’s version of the transcription, which removed his name from the margin and inserted a question mark instead. The court allowed the tape to be admitted as evidence and allowed the jury to use the government’s transcription as an aid.
In light of the centrality of the issue of identification in the case, it is difficult to imagine evidence that would be more prejudicial to the defendant than a transcription of a conversation in which he allegedly sold crack cocaine to a government informant, where the transcription identifies him as the speaker and the sole issue in the case is who was speaking during the transaction. The trial judge determined that each and every juror used the transcription extensively during deliberations. The majority notes that one juror indicated the transcription may have helped Berry. But there are no comments on the record indicating the effect of the transcription on the other eleven jurors, and this is a matter uniquely within the province of the trial judge to determine. Boyd, 55 F.3d at 242.
In its oral remarks, the district court spoke at length about the inadequacy of instructing the jury that the transcription was not evidence in light of the fact that the transcription mistakenly went back to the jury room and was used extensively by all the jurors. The court also stated that the “government’s case is not the strongest case in the world,” an acknowledgement that without the error, the jury may have acquitted Berry on both counts, instead of just one. All of this implies that the district court was inclined to believe Berry was prejudiced by the presence of the transcription in the jury room. But because the district court has not yet rendered a definitive assessment, we must remand to allow him to make explicit whether the jury’s use of the transcription contributed to Berry’s conviction on the second count.
Finally, I am troubled by several aspects of the dissent. First, the dissent quotes out of context the court’s remarks reflecting the off-the-record comments of one juror (that the transcription actually helped Berry). As I have already noted, we do not know the effect of the transcription on the other eleven jurors. Second, the dissent misconstrues two unrelated comments of the court in order to claim a remand would be futile because the court could not set aside remarks jurors made off the record. In fact, the court remarked that the jurors were not able to erase from their minds the effects of the transcriptions. The court’s comment supports affirmance, not reversal. Third, the dissent’s reading of the court’s comments requires us to assume the trial court committed an utterly irrational act — granting a new trial when he believed that the transcription actually helped Berry. I am not prepared to assume, without any support in the record, that a learned and fair-minded judge would grant a new trial on an irrational basis.
Fourth, the dissent sets a standard that would allow anything presented during trial to be used during deliberations, whether it was properly admitted as evidence or not.1 *310This view contravenes a body of law which recognizes that the decision whether to permit a transcript or other item into the jury room is a question committed to the district court’s discretion and one entirely independent from the decision whether it should be admitted at trial, which is governed by separate considerations. See e.g. United States v. Hofer, 995 F.2d 746, 749 (7th Cir.1993) (trial court has broad discretion in deciding whether to permit jury to use transcriptions during deliberations); United States v. Doerr, 886 F.2d 944, 966 (7th Cir.1989) (same); United States v. Zambrano, 841 F.2d 1320, 1339 (7th Cir.1988) (same). The dissent’s view would render this line of cases defunct, collapsing the two questions into one.
Fifth, and most troubling, is the dissent’s attempt to change the standard of review from abuse of discretion to de novo. We explained in Boyd the multitude of reasons why we will not lightly disturb the decision of a trial court to grant a new trial, and I will not repeat those rationales here. However, were I inclined to adopt de novo review for this case, I would affirm because the record is replete with evidence of prejudice to Berry caused by the erroneous presence of the transcription in the jury room.

. The dissent’s comment that to the extent the transcription is accurate, "it is merely cumulative” is mystifying. Berry's entire theory of defense was that the transcription was inaccurate *310because it identified him as the speaker. Therefore, the transcription could never be cumulative.