Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-15-03603/USCOURTS-ca8-15-03603-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Grand Jury Process
Petitioner

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

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No. 15-3603

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In re: Grand Jury Process, John Doe,

lllllllllllllllllllllPetitioner.

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Appeal from United States District Court 

for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis

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 Submitted: December 1, 2015

 Filed: December 28, 2015

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Before WOLLMAN, COLLOTON, and GRUENDER, Circuit Judges.

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COLLOTON, Circuit Judge.

An attorney in the Eastern District of Missouri petitions for a writ ofmandamus

and/or prohibition directing the district court to set aside an order that disqualified

counsel from representing three witnessesin a grand jury proceeding and to schedule

a hearing to address whether counsel has an unwaivable conflict of interest that

necessitates his disqualification. Before the “drastic and extraordinary” remedy of

a writ may issue, the petitioner must show that he has no other adequate means to

obtain relief, that his right to issuance of the writ is clear and indisputable, and that

the writ is appropriate under the circumstances. Cheney v. U.S. Dist. Court for D.C.,

542 U.S. 367, 380-81 (2004). “[O]nly exceptional circumstances amounting to a

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judicial usurpation of power or a clear abuse of discretion will justify the invocation

of this extraordinary remedy.” Id. at 380 (internal quotations and citations omitted).

According to counsel’s petition, he represents three clients in connection with

an ongoing federal grand jury investigation. He reports that one client has testified

before the grand jury, another was interviewed by agents of the Federal Bureau of

Investigation, and the third has information relevant to the investigation. Counsel

represents that each client is aware that counsel represents the others, that no known

conflicts of interest exist, and that each client has executed a “conflicts waiver.” 

Counsel states, however, that an attorney for the government advised him in July

2015 that she believed counsel had a conflict of interest, and that she would arrange

a hearing before the district court to address it. 

Counsel says that he next received a letter from the clerk of the district court

on September 29, 2015, stating that he was disqualified from representing all three

clients in any grand jury proceeding pending before the court. Counsel avers that he

then wrote to the chief judge of the district court explaining that neither he nor his

clients had participated in a hearing about disqualification of counsel. The next day,

counsel reports, he received a telephone call from a district judge explaining that

based on a presentation by the government, the judge had concluded that counsel had

an unwaivable conflict of interest and directed the clerk to send counsel the

aforementioned letter.

In his petition, counsel cites the right of an accused under the Sixth

Amendment to the assistance of counsel and asserts that the Sixth Amendment

protects the right of a defendant to retain counsel of his choice. Counsel complains

that the government obtained an order of disqualification through an ex parte

submission to the district court, and that he and his clients are entitled to a hearing on

whether disqualification is warranted. According to counsel, he and his clients do not

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believe that a conflict of interest exists, and that any alleged conflict would be

“cured” by waivers.

We requested a response to the petition from the district court, and the court’s

response alerted us to an eight-page order dated September 28, 2015, in which the

district court granted an ex parte motion by the government to disqualify counsel

based on an unwaivable conflict of interest. In the order, the district court recounted

confidential information derived from the grand jury proceedings and found that

because counsel cannot effectively advocate for each client concurrently, a conflict

of interest exists.

The court then considered whether counsel’s clients should be afforded a

hearing and an opportunity to make a knowing waiver of the conflict of interest. The

court reasoned that a hearing was impractical, because in order to explain the nature

of counsel’s conflict of interest, the court would be required to breach the secrecy of

the grand jury. Maintaining confidentiality of grand jury proceedings, the court

observed, protects several important interests of the government and the citizenry. 

See In re Grand Jury Investigation, 610 F.2d 202, 213 (5th Cir. 1980). The court

then determined that while the circumstances here did not establish a conflict of such

a serious nature that “no rational defendant would knowingly and intelligently desire”

the attorney’s representation, United States v. Levy, 25 F.3d 146, 153 (2d Cir. 1994),

the countervailing interest in grand jury secrecy nonetheless justified a finding of an

unwaivable conflict of interest. The court reiterated that it would be impossible to

hold a hearing without disclosing secret grand jury material, and the court expressed

concern that jointly-represented grand jury witnesses should not be able to discover

confidential grand jury information through the mechanism of a conflict-of-interest

waiver hearing. 

The district court recognized that when proceeding without the benefit of an

adversarial hearing, the court “must exercise the highest caution in acting to deny a

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client the opportunity to be represented by an attorney of his choice and to interfere

in the opportunity of an attorney to engage in representing a client.” The district

court concluded, however, that “under the unique facts of this case,” counsel’s

representation of the three clients must be terminated, and each client must be given

the opportunity to employ new counsel before testifying in any grand jury proceeding.

Having reviewed the sealed motion to disqualify filed by the United States

Attorney, which includesinformation derived fromsecret grand jury proceedings, we

are satisfied that counsel does have a conflict of interest in concurrently representing

his three clients during proceedings before the grand jury. On the question whether

the district court clearly abused its discretion in ordering counsel’s disqualification

without a hearing, we note first that counsel’s clients—as putative grand jury

witnesses—do not enjoy a right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment, because none

of them is a person “accused” of a crime. See United States v. Mandujano, 425 U.S.

564, 581 (1976) (plurality opinion); In re Grand Jury Investigation, 182 F.3d 668,

671 (9th Cir. 1999). Although one court has suggested that the Sixth Amendment

standards “may also apply in the grand jury context, at least to some extent,” In re

Grand Jury Proceedings, 859 F.2d 1021, 1024 (1stCir. 1988), while also recognizing

“potentially significant” differences, id. at 1024 n.4, this court has not applied the

Sixth Amendment to a witness who is not an “accused.” More appropriate is the

Seventh Circuit’s conclusion that a grand jury witness’s right “is akin to that of

parties in civil cases—a right under the due process clause to be free of unjustified

interference by the government in a private arrangement between client and lawyer.” 

In re Schmidt, 775 F.2d 822, 824 (7th Cir. 1985). 

Under thatstandard, we conclude that the district court’s ruling was not a clear

abuse of discretion. Grand jury secrecy safeguards a number of important interests,

see Butterworth v. Smith, 494 U.S. 624, 630 (1990), and we agree with the district

court that a hearing to consider possible waivers of counsel’s conflict of interest

would require a deleterious breach of grand jury secrecy. We cannot say that the

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government’s interest in secrecy here is minimal, cf. In re Taylor, 567 F.2d 1183,

1188 (2d Cir. 1977), questioned in United States v. Cain, 671 F.3d 271, 295 n.10 (2d

Cir. 2012); the information at issue, in our view, is central to a sensitive ongoing

criminal investigation. Ex parte proceedings are disfavored, but the district court’s

approach here wasjustified by the interest in maintaining grand jury secrecy. We also

share the district court’s concern that jointly-represented witnessesshould not be able

to gain information about confidential grand jury proceedings through a hearing on

their attorney’s conflict of interest. Assuming that a grand jury witness could waive

his interest in conflict-free assistance of counsel, cf. In re Grand Jury, 446 F. Supp.

1132, 1140 (N.D. Tex. 1978), the district court did not engage in judicial usurpation

of power by concluding that no such waiver was feasible or permissible under the

circumstances presented here. Cf. Wheat v. United States, 486 U.S. 153, 162, 163

(1988)(holding that even where the Sixth Amendment applies, a court presented with

an actual conflict of interest has “broad latitude” and may decline a proffer of waiver

and insist that multiple defendants be separately represented). Each client, of course,

is free to retain different counsel to provide representation in connection with the

grand jury proceedings.

The petition for writ of mandamus and/or prohibition is denied.

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