Jackson v. United States
| Decision Date | 20 February 1964 |
| Docket Number | No. 18144.,18144. |
| Citation | 329 F.2d 893,117 US App. DC 325 |
| Parties | Francis E. JACKSON, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit |
Mr. James E. Hogan, Washington, D. C. (appointed by this court), for appellant.
Mr. Gerald A. Messerman, Asst. U. S. Atty., with whom Messrs. David C. Acheson, U. S. Atty., Frank Q. Nebeker and Harold H. Titus, Jr., Asst. U. S. Attys., were on the brief, for appellee.
Before BAZELON, Chief Judge, and BASTIAN and BURGER, Circuit Judges.
Appellant was convicted on three counts of violation of narcotics laws; three concurrent sentences were imposed. At trial the principal defense was that appellant was not guilty by reason of insanity. Various errors in the conduct of the trial are asserted and we find that they are without merit save as to one contention, i. e., the claim of undue intervention in the trial by the judge in a manner prejudicial to the defendant.
The appellant's brief of necessity takes utterances and questions of the trial judge out of context and there is no way to evaluate his claims of undue and prejudicial intervention except by an examination of the entire transcript of the trial, which we have done, in order to be sure that we "guard against the magnification on appeal of instances which were of little importance in their setting."1 Even a close examination of a transcript cannot, as everyone experienced in litigation knows, truly reflect the trial itself. Sometimes a trial judge intercedes because of seeming inadequacy of examination or cross-examination of witnesses by counsel; sometimes to draw more information from reluctant witnesses or experts who are either inarticulate, less than candid or not adequately interrogated. This is permissible, of course.
At best it is difficult on appellate review to appraise the impact of intervention by the presiding judge and determine whether his participation exceeded permissible bounds. However this transcript reveals what seem to us an inordinate number of instances of extensive examination and cross-examination of witnesses and comments by the court. Fairly read, no single comment or question, or line of questioning, can be regarded as prejudicial, but the cumulative impact of all the trial judge's activist participation could well have been prejudicial at the very least and could have led jurors to give undue weight to points treated by...
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