United States v. Beaty, William Edwin, in 83-5021 and United States of America v. John Ballouz, in 83-5045

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that “the damaging impression created by the judge’s questions” was not mitigated by subsequent instructions, and that “such admonitions may offset [only] brief or minor departures from strict judicial impartiality”
• observing that “a jury might think that a witness would be more likely to tell the truth to the judge than to counsel”
• explaining that clarifying questions that do not go to ultimate issues of fact for the jury “are proper unless they convey[] to the jury the judge’s belief on the proper outcome of the trial”
• upholding defendant's conviction when judge's actions reflected \frustrat[ion] by counsel's repeated attempts to do that which he had properly been forbidden to do\
• adhering to distinction between prosecutor's personal opinions based on evidence and those based on facts not in evidence but finding opinion was based on evidence and that judge's instruction dispelled any improper inference
• reversing one conviction because district court's \overzealous examination\ of key defense witness, including questions unrelated to crimes charged or substance of witness' testimony, gave impression that judge didn't believe witness

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).