Taitano v. Government of Guam

187 F. Supp. 75, 1960 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3344
CourtDistrict Court, D. Guam
DecidedSeptember 2, 1960
DocketCr. No. 18-A
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 187 F. Supp. 75 (Taitano v. Government of Guam) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Guam primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Taitano v. Government of Guam, 187 F. Supp. 75, 1960 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3344 (gud 1960).

Opinion

FURBER, District Judge.

This is an appeal from a judgment of the Island Court of Guam in its Cr. Case No. 112-59, convicting the appellant of the offense of vagrancy in violation of Sec. 647(a) (1) of the Penal Code of Guam. The appellant raises three points:

1. That the trial court abused its discretion in qualifying one of the [76]*76government witnesses, aged five, as a competent witness.
2. That the defendant was deprived of his right to due process of law when the court denied his motion to avail himself of a certain written police report, and
3. That the evidence is insufficient to warrant the conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.

The competency of a child five years old to testify is a matter resting largely in the discretion of the trial court. From the record before us, we can see no indication that the trial judge abused his discretion in this connection. It is unfortunate that the child’s mother took such an active part in the inquiry as to the child’s competency, but the trial judge may well have used good judgment in avoiding argument with the mother. The child appears to have told a reasonably straight-forward story, on her own responsibility, in testifying as to facts involved in the case. 58 Am.Jur. Witnesses, Sec. 136.

The appellant’s second point deals with his motion for production of a written report made by a police officer who had testified for the government concerning certain very damaging statements, amounting to an oral confession, alleged to have been made to him by the defendant. In connection with this motion, counsel for the defendant stated, “At this time we invoke the Jencks case.” Transcript p. 13. His reference was obviously to the case of Jencks v. United States, 1957, 353 U.S. 657, 77 S.Ct. 1007, 1 L.Ed.2d 1103. Counsel indicated very clearly that he wished this report for possible use in further cross-examination of this witness who had testified as follows concerning the report:

“Q. Did you make a report now ? A. Yes.
“Q. Is that report in writing, too? A. The report of the investigation.
******
“Q. In that report, did you quote or write in substance what the defendant allegedly told you in your conversation? A. Yes, sir.” Transcript pp. 12, 13.

The trial court denied the defendant’s motion for production of this report.

The appellant-defendant below claims that this report, under the circumstances disclosed, falls squarely within the doctrine enunciated in the Jencks case, supra, and that denial of defendant's motion to inspect it deprived the defendant of his right to due process of law.

The appellee-government argues that at the trial the defendant was apparently seeking his own statement as contained in a police report and that such a police report is not subject to production for the use of the defendant, either under the Jencks doctrine or under Sec. 3500 of Title 18 U.S.C. (commonly known as the Jencks Act) and that the trial court accordingly ruled properly on the defendant’s motion.

We do not fully agree with the contention of either party on this matter. The Jencks case, supra, in requiring the production, under certain circumstances, of documents in possession of the government, did not purport to be stating a requirement of due process, but stated that the restriction on such production contended for in that case would “be clearly incompatible with our standards for the administration of criminal justice in the federal courts and must therefore be rejected.” Jencks v. United States, supra, 353 U.S. at page 668, 77 S.Ct. at page 1013. This view is reinforced by the following statement of the Supreme Court in Palermo v. United States, 1959, 360 U.S. 343, at page 345, 79 S.Ct. 1217, at page 1221, 3 L.Ed.2d 1287:

Exercising our power, in the absence of statutory provision, to prescribe procedures for the administration of justice in the federal courts, this Court, on June 3, 1957, in Jencks v. United States, 353 U.S. 657 [77 S.Ct. 1007, 1 L.Ed.2d 1103], [77]*77decided that the defense in a federal criminal prosecution was entitled, under certain circumstances, to obtain, for impeachment purposes, statements which had been made to government agents by government witnesses.

Following the Jencks case, supra, Congress enacted what has now become Sec. 3500 of Title 18 U.S.C. defining the rules that should govern in this particular area in criminal prosecutions brought by the United States, and the Supreme Court has recognized this Congressional definition of the rules as the one now controlling. Palermo v. United States, supra, 360 U.S. at pages 347-348, 79 S. Ct. at pages 1222-1223; Rosenberg v. United States, 1959, 360 U.S. 367, 369, 79 S.Ct. 1231, 3 L.Ed.2d 1304.

While some police or investigative reports clearly do not come within the terms of the Jencks Act, the following cases show that in federal prosecutions such reports are subject to production when they meet the terms of the Act.

In Holmes v. United States, 4 Cir., 1959, 271 F.2d 635, the court described the situation there involved, in part, as follows, at pages 636-637:

“At the trial, one of the principal witnesses for the government was an FBI agent who testified at length about his investigation and about' conversations he had with the defendants. The defense demanded the production of the memo-randa and reports prepared by the agent during his investigation and recording its result.”

The court thereafter, at page 638, discussed the application of the Jencks Act to this situation, as follows:

“The Government now contends * * * that the Jencks Act does not apply to statements prepared by a government agent who becomes a witness at the trial. In the Jencks case, itself, the defendant sought the production of FBI reports in order to obtain material with which to cross examine an FBI informer, and clearly that was the situation which Congress had principally in mind when it enacted the Jencks Act. The written report of the agent, however, is just as much a verbatim statement of the agent, who prepares it, as a written statement of an informer, incorporated in the report, is the statement of the informer. It is a statement within the literal and evident meaning of subsection (e) of the Act. Its use to contradict the agent who prepared it in no way contravenes the policy of the Act against the use of an investigator’s notes or summaries of information to contradict his informer. In Palermo v. United States, it was held that an agent’s summary of information obtained from his informer was not a ‘statement’ within the meaning

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187 F. Supp. 75, 1960 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3344, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/taitano-v-government-of-guam-gud-1960.