Clark v. United States

¶4PER CURIAM:

¶5W. B. Clark appeals from his conviction for possession and transportation of nontax-paid whiskey in violation of 26 U.S.C. §§ 5205(a) (2) and 5604(a). He confines his specifications of error to the contents of the district judge’s charge to the jury. To three parts of the charge, objection is raised for the first time on appeal; only one alleged error was properly preserved for appeal.1 Appellant acknowledges that he failed to comply with the provisions of Fed.R.Crim.P. 30, relating to proper objection to contents of a charge;2 but requested this Court to review the “semantic error” as reversible pursuant to Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(b), permitting appellate scrutiny of “plain error.” The compliment to the jury, properly objected to at trial,3 was also argued to have constituted reversible error.

¶6We conclude that the parenthetical judicial remark to the jury4 was impartial and legitimate, even if injected into the mainstream of the charge. We decline, in the circumstances here, to overrule the clear intent underlying Rule 30 where counsel failed to make timely objection to or alternative suggestion for the trial judge’s wording of the charge. Cf. Johnson v. United States, 318 U.S. 189, 202, 63 S.Ct. 549, 555, 87 L.Ed. 704 (1943) (Mr. Justice Frankfurter, concurring). Finally, we conclude that the cumulative effect of the four charge remarks, if error at all, was unmistakenly “harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” Chapman v. State of California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967); Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(a).

¶7The judgment of conviction' is, therefore, affirmed.