Cite as: 517 U. S. 416 (1996)
Stevens, J., dissenting
turned. The omission of the words "on such motion" from the third sentence surely just reflects a draftsman's sensible decision to avoid a patent redundancy rather than a cryptic intent to change the law by prohibiting a judge from exercising his or her inherent power to enter a judgment of acquittal.7
Common sense refutes what the text fails to compel. Under the majority's reading, Rule 29(c) establishes a most inefficient regime for setting aside unsupported jury verdicts by requiring defendants to file appeals and collateral challenges to judgments of conviction that district judges knew to be unsupported. Given that Federal Rule of Criminal
7 The inclusion of the phrase "on such motion" in the second sentence of Rule 29(c) is no mystery. Unlike the present Rule, the original version of Rule 29 permitted the defendant to move either for a new trial or for an acquittal after the jury had been discharged. The next sentences of the original Rule stated that the district court was authorized to grant either a new trial or an acquittal whether or not the jury returned a verdict. The inclusion of the phrase "on such motion" was necessary in order to make clear that the judge could not order a new trial unless the defendant first requested one.
Contrary to the majority's construction of the relevant language, there is no reason to suppose that the phrase "on such motion" in the old Rule applied only to the circumstance in which the jury returned a verdict. Under such a construction, the original Rule would have been intended to "conve[y] the idea," ante, at 423, that the District Court possessed the authority to impose a new trial against the defendant's wishes whenever the jury had been discharged without having returned a verdict. It is clear that the drafters never intended to convey such a potentially unconstitutional idea. Indeed, it was the drafters' concern that the original Rule might be subject to the potentially unconstitutional "interpretation that a motion for judgment of acquittal gives the court power to order a new trial even though the defendant does not a wish a new trial and has not asked for one" that led them to eliminate all references to new trial orders in what is now Rule 29(c). Advisory Committee's Notes on Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 29, 18 U. S. C. App., pp. 784-785. There is no hint in the Advisory Committee's Notes, or the Rule's drafting history, that this limiting revision was simultaneously intended to link the district court's power to acquit for insufficiency of the evidence with the jury's return of a verdict.
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