George R. Woody v. United States

This is a very simple case which might appropriately be affirmed by a summary order except that the factual setting assumes some importance in light of the dissent.

The evidence showed that the complaining witness had been robbed in his office at gun point by Appellant. After the robbery the victim jumped out a window 12 feet to the ground and, crying “holdup”, pursued the assailant. He found Appellant being held at bay by two other citizens who had taken up the chase. Appellant was being held at gun point and had been disarmed. Witnesses testified that Appellant offered to return the stolen money to the victim, who declined, saying the police would want it as evidence. Witnesses for the government also testified that when the police arrived, Appellant handed over the money, saying, “Here is the money, here is all of it,” and that he “did it.”

Appellant was taken to the station-house, where he was given warnings, the adequacy of which are not questioned; here Appellant told officers he was “going to plead guilty and throw himself on the mercy of the court because he only had one record of arrest.”

Appellant took the stand in defense and denied committing the offense and denied making any of the incriminating statements attributed to him. He said he “panicked” when the complainant chased him and fled because of this.

There is dictum in United States v. Inman1 that the trial judge should sua sponte order a hearing on the voluntariness of a confession and, if he finds it voluntary, instruct the jury with respect to their role in deciding on the use of the confession. Even assuming we were disposed to follow the dictum in Inman, which we elect not to do, it should be noted that it has no application to a situation such as existed here. Not only did Appellant fail to make objection to use of the statements, but he also denied making them.

A remand would call on the District Judge to decide on the voluntariness of statements which Appellant insists he never made. We are not prepared to assume that Appellant would give a different version of the facts in a hearing now conducted by the District Judge.2 The testimony he gave at trial that no statements were uttered by him could be called to the attention of. the District Judge should Appellant, on a remand hearing, give statements inconsistent with his trial testimony. It would indeed be a most remarkable proposition were an accused permitted, in a non-jury hearing, to admit the utterance of damaging statements but seek to exclude earlier testimony denying the statements offered to impeach him. An accused who fails in his effort to exclude statements he admits uttering may not then — with impunity — take the stand before the jury and give contrary testimony about the circumstances or deny under oath that he ever made the statements which he described to the judge on his motion to suppress. In or out of the presence of the jury, the accused testifies on the record and under oath and his election to try to suppress the admitted utterance may well circumscribe what he may safely thereafter tell the jury. Allowing an accused to testify out of the jury’s hearing at 9:30 a. m., for example, does not give him a license for perjury at 11:00 a. m., when the jury is recalled. This is not a game or a sporting contest; an oath to tell the truth has the same significance — and the same consequences — out of the presence of a jury as before a jury.

Walder v. United States, 347 U.S. 62, 65, 74 S.Ct. 354, 356, 98 L.Ed. 503 (1954), teaches that “there is hardly justification for letting the defendant affirmatively resort to perjurious testimony in reliance on the Government’s [alleged] disability to challenge his credibility.” The Supreme Court there allowed impeachment even though the impeaching evidence had been “illegally secured.” A fortiori testimony under oath voluntarily given by an accused at a non-jury hearing to suppress evidence is at least as admissible as evidence “illegally secured” by the Government. See Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 261-262, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960).33

In short, if the Appellant on remand testified that he had indeed made incriminating statements but that these utterances were coerced, he could surely be impeached by his testimony in this case that he had made no such statements whatever; the trial judge might draw the disagreeable inference that Appellant was lying on one of the two occasions and hence would be free to disbelieve him. Similarly if an accused testifies in a non-jury hearing to suppress evidence, his testimony at that hearing may be used, at the very least, to impeach later contrary statements.

We do not rest solely on the futility of remand. Appellant never contested the voluntariness of the statements and never asked for a hearing on voluntariness; we see no basis for a remand to afford him an opportunity to make a claim he has heretofore eschewed.

Affirmed.