422
Opinion of the Court
Here, to the contrary, the structure of Rule 29 indicates that subdivision (a) is limited as its caption says.
Petitioner's proposed reading would create an odd system in which defense counsel could move for judgment of acquittal for only seven days after the jury's discharge, but the court's power to enter such a judgment would linger. In United States v. Smith, 331 U. S. 469 (1947), we declined to read former Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 33, which placed a 5-day limit on the making of a motion for new trial, as "permit[ting] the judge to order retrial without request and at any time," 331 U. S., at 473. "[I]t would be a strange rule," we said, "which deprived a judge of power to do what was asked when request was made by the person most concerned, and yet allowed him to act without petition," and such an arrangement "would almost certainly subject trial judges to private appeals or application by counsel or friends of one convicted," id., at 474, 475. The same is true here.2 In addition, petitioner's reading makes a farce of subdivision (b) of Rule 29, which provides that a court may reserve decision on the motion for judgment of acquittal and decide it after submission to the jury. There would be no need for this procedure if, even without reserving, the court had continuing power to grant judgment of acquittal on its own. In
2 The dissent forcefully argues that Smith does not compel the result we reach in this case. Post, at 452-453. That is an effective rejoinder to an argument we have not made. In response to the argument we have made—that some of the considerations supporting the holding in Smith apply here—the dissent (i) ignores the portion of Smith discussing the strangeness of a rule that would give a judge greater power to act sua sponte than on motion; and (ii) transforms Smith's desire to spare trial judges "private appeals or application by counsel or friends of the person convicted" into a concern for the "appearance of impropriety" that "ex parte approaches" would create, post, at 453, which concern in the present context (though presumably for some reason not in the Smith context) the dissent regards as "a highly inappropriate comment on the integrity of the federal judiciary," ibid., and the dissent says it was dictum in Smith anyway.
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