United States v. Reaves

• Decision Date: 01 July 1986
• Docket Number: Crim. A. No. 85-44.
• Citation: 636 F. Supp. 1575
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Frank REAVES, Jr., and Harold Shapot, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Kentucky

636 F. Supp. 1575

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Frank REAVES, Jr., and Harold Shapot, Defendants.

Crim. A. No. 85-44.

United States District Court, E.D. Kentucky, Lexington Division.

July 1, 1986.

Jane Graham and Thomas Self, Office of U.S. Atty., Lexington, Ky., for plaintiff.

William E. Johnson, Frankfort, Ky., for Reaves.

John F. Lang, New York City and Richard Plymale, Lexington, Ky., for Shapot.

OPINION

BERTELSMAN, District Judge:

Both the prosecution and the defendants in this criminal tax fraud case have challenged the authority of this Court to curtail the presentation of cumulative and time-wasting evidence by placing time limits on various stages of the trial.

BACKGROUND

The indictment charges the defendants with setting up and participating in several spurious coal mining partnerships, not with the genuine intent of doing any mining, but solely for the purpose of providing themselves and others with fraudulent tax deductions against their earned income from other sources. When the time limits were set at a pretrial conference, there were three defendants. One pled guilty prior to trial.

Initially, the United States estimated the trial would take a month. Upon further inquiry, the court was convinced that this time was excessive. It was apparent to the Court that the prosecution intended to introduce numerous tax returns of various individuals and partnerships page by page, making little effort to organize the voluminous evidence into a meaningful pattern or streamline the presentation of the case by the use of charts or summary exhibits. See Fed.R.Evid. 1006.

Thus, the Court found itself confronted with a situation where it was convinced an excessive amount of its time was about to be consumed by a wasteful, duplicative, and inefficient method of introducing evidence. It was apparent that, although little of the evidence was strictly irrelevant to the issues in the case, only about half of the time estimated was necessary to present the issues. This was not a new situation.

It would seem that early in the career of every trial lawyer, he or she has lost a case by leaving something out, and thereupon resolved never again to omit even the most inconsequential item of possible evidence from any future trial. Thereafter, in an excess of caution the attorney tends to overtry his case by presenting vast quantities of cumulative or marginally relevant evidence. In civil cases, economics place some natural limits on such zeal. The fact that the attorney's fee may not be commensurate with the time required to present the case thrice over imposes some restraint. In a criminal case, however, the prosecution, at least in the federal system, seems not to be subject to such fiscal constraints, and the attorney's enthusiasm for tautology is virtually unchecked.

Thus, this court was once subjected to the calling of ten firemen in an arson prosecution to prove a house burned down. On another occasion, fifteen bank patrons were called to prove a bank was robbed by a masked marauder that no one could identify or describe, since he was heavily disguised. The only evidence against the defendant was that he was apprehended some weeks later with large quantities of bait money.

So it was that, at the early pretrial conference in this case, the court was all too familiar with the prosecutorial penchant to regard the omission of any job or title of possible evidence with the same horror as Scrooge regarded the expenditure of a shilling. Having experienced in the past the stoney-hearted indifference with which the prosecutors usually received the court's tearful entreaties concerning the state of its civil docket and the plight of those litigants unfortunate enough to have cases moldering there,¹ the court decided to take unilateral action to keep the trial of this case within reasonable bounds. Inspired by the example of Judge Leval of the Southern District of New York in the much publicized libel suit, Westmoreland v. CBS,² the Court entered a scheduling order which set time limits for the presentation of the various phases of the case.³

The scheduling order was designed to give the United States ten days to present its case in chief and to impose proportionate limits on the other phases of the trial.⁴ The order worked well in practice. Actually, it was more than generous, the prosecution's case still being overlong. It was refreshing to see, however, how things started to move along as the prosecution's time began to run out. Suddenly, the prosecutors quickly reached the point with each witness and stuck to the issues, thus eliminating many objections, and the case became intelligible and interesting. Unfortunately, it ended in a mistrial because of the conduct of a witness.

PRECEDENT

Although the inherent power of the court to manage its workload by placing reasonable time limits on trials is theoretically unchallengeable, precedent is sparse. Therefore, a published opinion marshalling the authorities and discussing the policy considerations seems appropriate.

"Recent opinions establishing time limits on trials have broken the barrier of novelty, but strict limits are still rare."⁵ Yet, the power of a trial court to set trial time limits in the reasonable exercise of its discretion has uniformly been upheld by those courts that have addressed the matter. Most of the reported cases where this method has been employed are civil antitrust cases.⁶ However, the applicability of these authorities to criminal cases has been recognized.⁷ Indeed, because of the considerations mentioned above, the need to employ this device may be greater in many criminal cases than in civil cases.

Also, as has been stated, Judge Leval used this method in the Westmoreland case, although apparently he did not publish an opinion. In any event, no authority questioning the power of the Court to employ the device has been found, although the Court is confident the prosecutors in this case made the wires of Lexis and Westlaw sizzle in their attempts to find some.

As Judge Leval has said so well:

"I have been asked whether I am confident of the lawfulness of such a limitation on trial. I know of no authority to the contrary and can see no reason why such an order should be struck down if the time allotments are reasonable. It is a common practice in the appeals courts to limit the number of pages of briefs, as well as the time for argument. Court time is a valuable and limited resource, and as the volume of litigation grows, the ability of the courts to render service to the public is increasingly threatened. I would think it most shortsighted to prohibit courts from imposing reasonable limitations on the duration of trials. On the other hand, an unreasonable limitation might well be found an abuse of discretion."⁸

ANALYSIS

A theoretical basis for using the time limit method may be found in the venerable concept of the inherent power of the court to control its docket. This inherent power has been codified in Federal Rules of Evidence 403 and 611(a).

These Rules read, in pertinent part, as follows:

"Rule 403. Exclusion of Relevant Evidence on Grounds of Prejudice, Confusion, or Waste of Time.

Although relevant, evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay, waste of time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence."

"Rule 611. Mode and Order of Interrogation and Presentation.

(a) Control by court. The court shall exercise reasonable control over the mode and order of interrogating witnesses and presenting evidence so as to (1) make the interrogation and presentation effective for the ascertainment of the truth, (2) avoid needless consumption of time, and (3) protect witnesses from harassment or undue embarrassment." (Emphasis added)

Fed.R.Evid. 403 recognizes the power and duty of the court to exclude cumulative evidence or evidence which consumes more time than its probative value justifies.⁹ Rule 611 commands the court to "exercise reasonable control over the mode and order of interrogating witnesses and presenting evidence, so as to (1) make the interrogation and presentation effective for the ascertainment of the truth, and (2) avoid needless consumption of time."

It is fundamental that a court has the power and duty to manage its docket and the individual cases before it to "secure fairness in administration, and elimination of unjustifiable expense and delay." Fed. R.Evid. 102. Modern courts recognize that the court's time is "a public commodity which should not be squandered." D. Louisell and C. Mueller, 2 Federal Evidence § 128 (1985). There is an unnamed party in every lawsuit — the public. Public resources are squandered if judicial proceedings are allowed to proliferate beyond reasonable bounds. The public's right to a "just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action"¹⁰ is infringed, if a court allows a case, civil or criminal, to preempt more than its reasonable share of the court's time.

A court cannot rely on the attorneys to keep expenditures of time in trying a case within reasonable bounds. The perspectives of the court and the attorneys in trying a case differ markedly. A judge wants to reach a just result in the case and to do so expeditiously and economically. An attorney's primary concern is to WIN the case. If he believes he can win that case by proliferating the evidence of the favorable, but relatively uncontested matters so that the weaker aspects of the case will be camouflaged, it is asking too much of our fallen nature to expect him voluntarily to do otherwise.

Somehow the unfortunate trend has arisen among attorneys to make almost every case a BIG CASE. There is a tendency to want to present the evidence not once, but many times over, and to adduce needlessly cumulative evidence not only on the controverted issues but...