Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-94-02169/USCOURTS-ca10-94-02169-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Maria Eugenia Carrillo-Bernal
Appellee
United States of America
Appellant

Document Text:

PUBLISH FILED 

United States Court of Appeals 

Tenth Circuit 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JUN 2 8 1995 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ) 

) 

Plaintiff/Appellant, ) 

) 

v. ) 

) 

MARIA EUGENIA CARRILLO-BERNAL, ) 

) 

Defendant/Appellee. ) 

PATRICK FISHER 

Clerk 

No. 94-2169 

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of New Mexico 

(No. CR-94-173-MV) 

John J. Kelly, United States Attorney, Albuquerque, New Mexico 

(Judith A. Patton, Assistant United States Attorney, Las Cruces, 

New Mexico, with him on the brief), for Plaintiff-Appellant. 

Barbara A. Mandel, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Las Cruces, 

New Mexico for Defendant-Appellee. 

Before HENRY, Circuit Judge, McKAY, Senior Circuit Judge and 

SHADUR, Senior District Judge· 

SHADUR, Senior District Judge. 

Following an evidentiary hearing on a motion by Maria 

Eugenia Carrillo-Bernal ("Carrillo-Bernal") for the suppression 

The Honorable Milton I. Shadur, Senior United States 

District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois, sitting by 

designation. 

Appellate Case: 94-2169 Document: 01019279880 Date Filed: 06/28/1995 Page: 1 
of evidence in her impending criminal case, the district court 

granted that motion. That order is the subject of the United 

States' attempted appeal here. We dismiss the appeal for failure 

to comply with the certification requirement of 18 u.s.c. §3731 

("Section 3731"}. 

Background 

At about 5:45 p.m. on March 11, 1994 Carrillo-Bernal was 

stopped at the primary inspection area of the United States 

Border Patrol checkpoint outside Las Cruces, New Mexico, by 

Border Patrol Agent Randy Holmes ("Holmes"}. Holmes later 

testified that his suspicions were aroused during routine 

questioning by the exceptional cleanliness of Bernal's automobile 

and the absence of luggage in the passenger compartment. Holmes 

asked Carrillo-Bernal what was in the trunk. She told him that 

it was empty. Holmes then asked if he could see for himself. 

Carrillo-Bernal agreed that he could and was directed to a 

secondary inspection area where Holmes conducted his search, 

finding jumper cables and a jug of water in the trunk. Holmes 

next asked if he could conduct a K-9 sniff of the vehicle. Again 

Carrillo-Bernal agreed. When the dog "Nick" alerted to the 

presence of drugs, a further search of a secret compartment that 

Holmes and other agents found in the vehicle turned up 60 pounds 

of marijuana. Carrillo-Bernal was advised of her rights and 

placed under arrest. At first she refused to sign a Miranda 

waiver form and invoked her right to counsel, but she later made 

self-incriminating remarks while being transported to jail. 

2 

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On March 17, 1994 Carrillo-Bernal was indicted for 

possession with intent to distribute marijuana in violation of 21 

u.s.c. §84l(a) (1), and she later entered a plea of not guilty. 

On May 31, 1994 the district court suppressed both the marijuana 

and the ensuing self-incriminating statements on the grounds that 

the marijuana was obtained in violation of Carrillo-Bernal's 

Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and that the 

statements were the fruit of that poisoned tree. It was the 

district court's view that by questioning Carrillo-Bernal about 

the contents of the trunk in the absence of "suspicious 

circumstances," Holmes exceeded the scope of a constitutionally 

permissible checkpoint stop as set out in United States v. 

Martinez-Fuerte, 428 u.s. 543, 556-64 (1976), United States v. 

Ludlow, 992 F.2d 260, 262-65 (lOth Cir. 1993) and United States 

v. Sanders, 937 F.2d 1495, 1498-1502 (lOth Cir. 1991). On July 

11 the district court denied the United States' motion for 

reconsideration. On July 19 the United States filed a notice of 

appeal in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 4(b). 

That decision to appeal was made by Assistant United States 

Attorney Judith Patton in consultation with an unidentified 

attorney from the Appellate Section of the Department of Justice 

(the "DOJ Attorney"). Section 3731 governs interlocutory 

government appeals in a criminal case and provides in relevant 

part (emphasis supplied): 

An appeal by the United states shall lie to a court of 

appeals from a decision or order of a district court 

suppressing or excluding evidence or requiring the 

return of seized property in a criminal proceeding, not 

3 

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made after the defendant has been put in jeopardy and 

before the verdict or finding on an indictment or 

information, if the United States attorney certifies to 

the district court that the appeal is not taken for 

ouroose of delay and that the evidence is a substantial 

proof of a fact material in the proceeding. 

* * * 

The appeal in all such cases shall be taken within 

thirty days after the decision, judgment or order has 

been rendered and shall be diligently prosecuted. 

The provisions of this section shall be liberally 

construed to effectuate its purposes. 

Because the certification called for by Section 3731 was not 

filed at the time the appeal was taken, on August 23 we alerted 

the parties to that deficiency. On August 26 this representation 

was made to the district court over the signature of Acting 

United States Attorney James Tierney: 

The undersigned has reviewed the Memorandum Opinion and 

Order suppressing the evidence in the above-referenced 

criminal cause. The undersigned therefore hereby 

certifies that this appeal is not taken for the purpose 

of delay, and that the evidence suppressed is 

substantial proof of a fact material in the proceeding. 

On September 30, 1994 we granted the United States' motion to 

supplement the record with the August 26 certificate. 

Here is the government's explanation for its failure to file 

a timely Section 3731 certificate (Br. 9-10): 

Undersigned counsel for the United states [AUSA Patton] 

works in the Las cruces, New Mexico, branch office of 

the district. Counsel filed the Notice of Appeal on 

July 19, 1994, in haste and in an abundance of caution, 

to insure she would not miss the thirty-day 

jurisdictional requirement. Counsel planned to be out 

of the office and away from Las Cruces from July 25, 

1994, until August 15, 1994. An attorney from the 

Appellate section of the Department of Justice, who had 

already reviewed the case, advised counsel to file the 

notice of appeal immediately. Undersigned counsel 

4 

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filed the Notice of Appeal almost immediately after 

learning of Judge Vazquez' ruling. Inadvertently, 

counsel failed to file the certificate pursuant to 18 

u.s.c. §3731 before leaving the office for three weeks. 

The branch office for the Office of the United States 

Attorney for the District of New Mexico at Las cruces 

is an extremely high-volume office. It is located near 

the international border. In addition to handling 

reactive cases from the United States Border Patrol 

checkpoints and United States Customs Service Ports of 

Entry, the office manages cases from numerous federal 

and state agencies and task forces in southern New 

Mexico. While the pace of the practice is no excuse 

for the filing error, counsel hopes this Honorable 

court will accept the honest explanation for the 

omission and permit the prosecution of this most 

important appeal. 

To dispel any possible misunderstanding on the part of the United 

States as to the function and importance of Section 373l's 

certification requirement, we are compelled to revisit at some 

length an issue that we thought had been laid to rest by our 

recent decision in United States v. Hanks, 24 F.3d 1235 (lOth 

Cir.l994). 

Section 373l's Certification Requirement 

This Court has long held that the government's failure to 

file a timely Section 3731 certificate does not deprive the court 

of jurisdiction (United States v. Welsch, 446 F.2d 220, 224 (lOth 

Cir.l971)). Instead the relevant inquiry is whether the 

reviewing court should exercise its discretion to entertain the 

appeal in light of such defect, as provided by Fed. R. App. P. 

3 (a) : 

Failure of an appellant to take any step other than the 

timely filing of a notice of appeal does not affect the 

validity of the appeal, but is ground only for such 

action as the court of appeals deems appropriate, which 

may include dismissal of the appeal. 

5 

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Hanks dismissed an appeal from an order suppressing on 

Miranda grounds certain statements made by a defendant, finding 

"no reason to excuse the government's failure timely to comply 

with the §3731 certification requirement" (24 F.3d at 1239}. 

Hanks, id. at 1238-39 identified several factors favoring 

dismissal: (1} a 2-1/2 month delay in filing; (2) the fact that 

final resolution of any criminal case weighs heavily on a 

defendant's mind (even if he or she is out on bail); (3) the 

government's failure to explain why it did not file the 

certificate in a timely manner; (4) the government's failure to 

demonstrate important legal issues needing clarification or other 

significant reason to hear the appeal; (5) the government's 

lackluster response upon learning of the deficiency and 

concomitant waste of judicial resources; 1 and (6) the 

government's failure "even to acknowledge that the certification 

requirement in §3731 should be taken seriously." Hanks, id. at 

1239 (emphasis in original) put these teeth into Section 3731's 

certification requirement: 

We believe that we must give meaning to the §3731 

requirement that the government certify that it is 

taking the appeal for a proper purpose. "[T]he 

certificate process cannot serve its function unless 

the responsible prosecuting official makes a thorough 

In Hanks the .government filed its otherwise timely notice 

of appeal on June 1, 1993; on July 15 defendant raised the 

certification issue; on August 24 the government filed its 

certificate with the district court; the government did not 

attempt to supplement the record nor did it address the issue in 

its original appellate brief; and the panel hearing the appeal 

learned of the late filing only at oral argument, when it then 

ordered supplemental briefing on the issue (Hanks, 24 F.3d at 

1237-38). 

6 

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and conscientious analysis of the case before deciding 

to appeal. The certificate is the official's 

representation that such an analysis has been made, and 

we must therefore require the certificates to be filed 

promptly." United States v. Herman, 544 F.2d 791, 794 

n. 4 (5th Cir.1977). A certification that the appeal 

has not been taken for the purpose of delay would be a 

hollow protection for a defendant's right to resolve 

his or her case quickly if we were regularly to allow 

prosecutors to wait months before verifying the 

propriety of their appeals without requiring some 

explanation for the delay or some showing of why we 

should accept the late filing of the certificate. Post 

hoc certification that an appeal was not taken for the 

purposes of delay reduces the §3731 requirement to 

meaningless formality. 

Here the United States seeks to distinguish Hanks point by 

point, arguing that the certificate was filed only 16 days late 

(point 1}, that Carrillo-Bernal was out on bond (point 2}, that 

untimely filing was the regrettable byproduct of a busy office 

(point 3}, that important legal issues are present (point 4) and 

that the initial oversight was diligently corrected (point 5). 

Finally the United States points to Section 3731's liberal 

construction provision in support of its request that we proceed 

to the merits of the appeal. 

Even in those terms the government's response leaves 

something to be desired. As to point 2 it does not speak at all 

to what Hanks, 24 F.3d at 1238 (relying on two Supreme Court 

decisions) had said: 

Hanks has been out on bond during this time. 

Nonetheless, the government's appeal has delayed final 

resolution of this case, which we do not doubt weighs 

heavily on the defendant's mind, even though he is free 

on bond. 

As to point 3 the government's explanation amounts to nothing 

more than a confession of negligence: Every good lawyer is (or 

7 

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should be) a busy lawyer, but that does not excuse (although it 

may temper the judicial response to) the lawyer's missing a 

deadline. Even more importantly, we find it difficult to credit 

as an "important legal issue needing appellate clarification" 

(point 4) the need to review on the merits the credibility 

determination by a district judge who found that an overzealous 

Border Patrol Agent had seized on any claimed rationalization to 

justify a predetermined search (with canine assistance) at a 

secondary inspection area, irrespective of the existence or 

nonexistence of reasonable grounds for suspicion. More on this 

last point later. 

But in addition to those deficiencies, what the United 

States has really failed to do is demonstrate that it takes 

Section 3731's certification requirement seriously (point 6). 

Despite Hanks' admonition against post hoc certification (24 F.3d 

at 1239), this case again appears to reflect the same pattern. 

What the United states has said is that the decision to appeal 

was made by AUSA Patton and the DOJ Attorney "almost immediately 

after" learning of the district court ruling, with no 

representation having been made by the government (and none 

otherwise evident from the record) that the decision was preceded 

by a reasoned determination as to the considerations that 

Congress has expressly incorporated into Section 3731 (and into 

the earlier versions of the Criminal Appeals Statute) since its 

inception. Instead the certificate that was eventually filed has 

all the earmarks of a rubber stamp--or in Hanks' words a 

8 

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"meaningless formality." It was sworn to by Acting United States 

Attorney Tierney, who on the record before us had nothing to do 

with the case up to that moment. He tells us that his post hoc 

understanding of the matter was gleaned from the district court 

order. By definition that does not constitute conscientious preappeal analysis by the responsible prosecuting official. Nor is 

it explained how a review of that document conducted by an 

attorney who was otherwise not involved in the case enabled him 

to represent the motivation and basis for the appeal by the 

actual decisionmakers in the first instance. 

It is important to understand why something that might be 

perceived in purely surface terms as a formal requirement is 

viewed more seriously by this and other Courts of Appeals (in the 

latter respect see, e.g., United States v. Miller, 952 F.2d 866, 

875-76 (5th Cir. 1992); United States v. Eccles, 850 F.2d 1357, 

1359-60 (9th Cir. 1988)}. For that purpose it is useful to 

examine the relevant statutory provision from a historical 

perspective. 

Government appeals in criminal cases have traditionally been 

"something unusual, exceptional, not favored" (Carroll v. United 

States, 354 U.S. 394, 400 (1957)) and for the greater part of 

this century were viewed with extreme skepticism. By holding 

that in the absence of express legislative authority the 

government has no right to appeal in a criminal case, United 

States v. Sanges, 144 u.s. 310 (1892) set the stage for what 

would become for the United states Attorney General a 70-year 

9 

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quest to secure from Congress the right to appeal certain 

district court rulings. Much later Arizona v. Mannypenny, 451 

U.S. 232, 246 {1981) (citations omitted) explained the twofold 

concerns that underlie the presumption against government 

criminal appeals: 

Both prudential and constitutional interests 

contributed to this tradition. The need to restrict 

appeals by the prosecutor reflected a prudential 

concern that individuals should be free from the 

harassment and vexation of unbounded litigation by the 

sovereign. This concern also underlies the 

constitutional ban against double jeopardy, which bars 

an appeal by the prosecutor following a jury verdict of 

acquittal. In general, both concerns translate into 

the presumption that the prosecution lacks appellate 

authority absent express legislative authorization to 

the contrary. 

To return to Sanges, it prompted the Attorney General to 

launch repeated efforts to secure enabling legislation: no fewer 

than seven proposals in twelve years by five different Attorneys 

General, all designed to obtain for prosecutors what the Supreme 

Court had said they could have only by congressional action 

(Philip Kurland, The Mersky Case and the Criminal Appeals Act: A 

Suggestion for Amendment of the Statute, 28 U. Chi. L. Rev. 419, 

446-55 (1961); Note, Scott Shapiro, Reviewing the Unreviewable 

Judge: Federal Prosecution Appeals of Mid-Trial Evidentiary 

Rulings, 99 Yale L.J. 905, 907-09 (1990)). 

Those repeated efforts failed to yield the desired result. 

It was not until President Theodore Roosevelt entered the lists 

because he viewed a district court as having thwarted his 

antitrust policies by directing a verdict in defendants' favor in 

United States v. Armour & Co., 142 F. 808 (N.D.Ill. 1906) (the 

10 

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famous "Beef Trust Case") that Congress responded by enacting the 

Criminal Appeals Act of 1907 (Pub. L. No. 223, 34 Stat. 1246 

{1907)--what has since become, in considerably revised form, 

Section 3731)). According to United States v. Sisson, 399 U.S. 

262 {1970), the Senate's three-day floor debate on the proposed 

legislation "[r]eflect[ed] the deep concern that the legislation 

not jeopardize interests of defendants whose cases were appealed 

by the Government" (id. at 295) and, more generally (id. at 298): 

[T]he legislative history reveals a strong current of 

congressional solicitude for the plight of a criminal 

defendant exposed to additional expense and anxiety by 

a government appeal and the incumbent possibility of 

multiple trials. 

That original criminal Appeals Act was exceedingly narrow in 

scope--in particular it made no provision for the appeal of 

suppression orders. That latter possibility was not given 

serious consideration until Congress focused its attention on the 

national drug problem during the mid-1950's. Even though the 

Attorney General's representative then testified in favor of a 

proposed amendment to the Criminal Appeals Act to allow the 

government to appeal suppression orders in all criminal cases (S. 

Rep. No. 1997, 84th Cong., 2d Sess. 11 (1956)), Congress was 

persuaded only as to drug cases. It enacted this provision as 

part of the Narcotic Control Act of 1956 (18 u.s.c. §1404, later 

repealed, Pub.L. 91-513, Title III, §1101(b) (1) (A), 84 Stat. 1291 

(1970)) (emphasis supplied): 

In addition to any other right to appeal, the United 

States shall have the right to appeal from an order 

granting a motion for the return of seized property and 

to suppress evidence made before the trial of a person 

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charged with a violation of --

[designated narcotics offenses] 

This section shall not apply with respect to any such 

motion unless the United States attorney shall certify, 

to the judge granting such motion, that the appeal is 

not taken for purposes of delay. Any appeal under this 

section shall be taken within 30 days after the date 

the order was entered and shall be diligently 

prosecuted. 

From the government's perspective the limited scope of the 

quoted provision was a disappointment (S. Rep. No. 1997, 84th 

Cong., 2d Sess. 19 (1956}}, and the Attorney General redoubled 

his efforts to extend the right to appeal suppression orders 

across the board (DiBella v. United States, 369 U.S. 121, 130-31 

(1962}). Those efforts were given concrete impetus by Carroll, 

which refused to entertain an appeal from a district court order 

suppressing gambling paraphernalia. In rejecting the 

government's argument that suppression orders should be 

considered appealable final decisions, Carroll, 354 U.S. at 407-

08 (footnote omitted) invoked the venerable presumption against 

government criminal appeals and highlighted an important 

underlying practical concern: 

If there is serious need for appeals by the Government 

from suppression orders, or unfairness to the interests 

of effective criminal law enforcement in the 

distinctions we have referred to, it is the function of 

the Congress to decide whether to initiate a departure 

from the historical pattern of restricted appellate 

jurisdiction in criminal cases. We must decide the 

case on the statutes that exist today, in light of what 

has been the development of the jurisdiction. It is 

only through legislative resolution, furthermore, that 

peripheral questions regarding the conduct of 

government appeals in this situation can be regulated. 

Some of the problems directed at legislative judgment 

involve such particulars as confinement or bail of the 

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defendant, acceleration of the Government's appeal, and 

discretionary limitation of the right to take the 

appeal. 

That language was followed by a footnote (id. at 408 n.23) 

observing that whenever Congress had in fact allowed a government 

appeal, it had invariably addressed one or more of the listed 

"peripheral questions" (confinement, timing and discretionary 

limitations), including the Narcotic Control Act's requirement 

that the government certify that the appeal is not taken for 

purposes of delay. 

When during the following year the Senate Subcommittee on 

Improvements in the Federal Criminal Code took up the Attorney 

General's legislative proposal to permit the appeal of pretrial 

suppression orders in all types of criminal cases, the 

Subcommittee expressly took the third of those questions 

(discretionary limits) into account (S. Rep. No. 1478, 85th 

Cong., 2d Sess. 16 (1958)): 

To insure against unnecessary delay by the taking of 

frivolous appeals, the legislation the subcommittee 

proposes will provide (1} that the United States 

attorney shall certify to the lower court that the 

appeal is not taken for the purpose of delay, and (2} 

that the prosecution is unable to proceed without the 

evidence which has been suppressed. 

That governmental effort (like the many that had preceded it) 

still proved unsuccessful--it was fully ten years before the 

proposed legislation became law. 

On April 27, 1967 Representative Thomas Railsback submitted 

a bill (H.R. 8654, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. (1967)) to amend the 

Criminal Appeals Act by providing the government the right to 

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appeal: 

From an order, granting a motion for return of seized 

property or a motion to suppress evidence, made before 

the trial of a person charged with a violation of any 

law of the United States, if the United States attorney 

certifies to the judge who granted such motion that the 

appeal is not taken for purposes of delay and that the 

evidence is a substantial proof of the charge pending 

against the defendant. 

In his statement of support Representative Railsback quoted a 

passage from DiBella, 369 U.S. at 124 describing the hazards of 

piecemeal and leaden-footed administration of the criminal law, 

and he explained how his bill addressed those concerns (Anticrime Program: Hearings before Subcomm. No. 5 of the Comm. on the 

Judiciary, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. 1530-33 (1967)): 

It seems [] that any action by the Congress to provide 

for additional grounds for appeal by the Government in 

criminal trials must be tightly drawn and must preserve 

all of the constitutional rights of the defendant. 

Therefore, I believe certain safeguards in such appeals 

are necessary ... [T)o avoid frivolous appeals the 

attorney who seeks the appeal must certify that the 

evidence suppressed in the pretrial motion represents a 

substantial proof in his case against the accused. 

H.R. 8654 was eventually passed as Title VIII of the Omnibus 

Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (Pub. L. No. 90-351, 

82 Stat. 197 (1968}}. Minor subsequent amendments brought 

Section 3731 to its current form. 

Although this opinion has spoken for the most part in terms 

of the delay factor that forms part of the Section 3731 

certification, it should be remembered that Congress has made the 

materiality of the evidence in dispute an equal partner in that 

certification. And although that requirement is specific-caseoriented rather than addressing the general jurisprudential 

14 

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significance of the legal questions presented, we are relatedly 

mindful (as was the Hanks court, 24 F.3d at 1239) of the noncriticality ~f the particular substantive issues posed here to an 

orderly development of the corpus juris of suppression doctrine. 

This court (like many others) has been called on frequently over 

the past several years to deal with variants of the facts 

presented by this appeal. No single case such as this one can 

make any material incremental contribution to the law of 

suppression in the course of what Benjamin Cardozo long ago2 

referred to as "leav[ing] it to be 'pricked out' by a process of 

inclusion and exclusion in individual cases" (The Paradoxes of 

Legal Science 96 (1928))--and in this area of substantive law 

Carrillo-Bernal's case provides a graphic example of that, for 

the district court's ruling was so much a function of the court's 

credibility determinations to which we have already referred. It 

is in that light that the related delay factor must be examined--

and despite the prompt handling of this appeal, almost a full 

year has elapsed since the district court's suppression ruling, 

with the charges hanging over defendant's head all the while (as 

Hanks has pointed out) . 

What separates this opinion from the dissent--which 

certainly reflects a reasoned though different resolution of the 

competing considerations--is a different weighing of those 

2 Justice Cardozo was then serving on the New York Court of 

Appeals, before he continued his distinguished career by 

succeeding Justice Holmes as a Justice of the United States 

Supreme Court. 

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considerations. Every one of the oft-recurring officer-search 

cases presents a somewhat different scenario, calling in turn for 

the application of the case law's previously-announced standards 

to the current factual variation. In our majority view the 

present case, though it is of course concededly somewhat 

different (as every new case is) from those that have gone 

before, is not sufficiently so as to merit our forgoing the far 

less frequently recurring opportunity to emphasize forcefully the 

lesson of Hanks: As Section 3731 directs, every prosecutorial 

decision to take an interlocutory appeal from an adverse 

suppression ruling must be preceded by a reasoned prosecutorial 

decision in the terms expressly set out in that statute. 

In summary, this somewhat extended historical excursion has 

illuminated the exceptional nature of governmental appeals in 

criminal cases--proceedings that have been curbed by the courts 

and carefully circumscribed by Congress out of a desire (among 

other reasons} to safeguard individuals from the special hazards 

inherent in prolonged litigation with the sovereign. As to 

suppression orders, those concerns have been translated into the 

express requirement that the prosecutor contemporaneously certify 

to the district court that the appeal is not taken for purposes 

of delay and that the evidence is critical. It required a great 

deal of time and effort by the United States Attorney General to 

extract from Congress any right to appeal such orders. Both 

Hanks and this case reflect this court's determination that we do 

not ask too much of government attorneys, in their exercise of 

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that right, to slow down long enough to conduct their evaluations 

in a manner and at a time that are consistent with Section 373l's 

history and the important interests that the certification 

requirement was designed to protect. 

Accordingly we DISMISS the appeal. 

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94-2169, United States v. Carillo-Bernal 

HENRY, Circuit Judge, dissenting. 

I agree fully with the majority's thoughtful and scholarly 

analysis of the history and significance of 18 U.S.C. § 3731. 

However, for several reasons, I do not agree that the government's 

appeal should be dismissed. 

First, I do not think that the government's conduct regarding 

the Section 3731 certificate can be equated with the government's 

conduct in United States v. Hanks, 24 F.3d 1235 (lOth Cir. 1994). 

In contrast to Hanks, the record here does not indicate that the 

government "thought so little of the statutory obligation that it 

did not even bother to respond to the appellee's argument or to 

advise us of its late filing of the certificate until we 

explicitly confronted the issue during oral argument." Id. at 

l239. Instead, when notified of the failure to file the 

certificate, the government acted promptly to supplement the 

record on appeal. In addition, the government's briefs and its 

presentation at oral argumentl have convinced me that the cavalier 

approach to the Section 3731 requirements that we identified in 

Hanks is not present here. 

Moreover, I believe this case involves "important legal 

issues needing appellate. clarification," id., such that dismissal 

is not warranted. The district court held that an agent's 

question regarding the contents of the trunk of a vehicle stopped 

at a permanent border checkpoint "exceeded the scope of limited 

1 The United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico 

personally argued this case, though it arose before his term 

commenced. 

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inquiry permissible at permanent checkpoints as delineated in 

Martinez-Fuerte and subsequent Tenth Circuit decisions. 11 District 

Court Memorandum Opinion and Order, Rec. doc. 24, at l3 (citing 

United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543 (l976)). However, 

several of our decisions seem to me to have taken a more expansive 

view of the scope of questioning allowed at a border checkpoint 

without reasonable suspicion or suspicious circumstances. See 

United States v. Rascon-Ortiz, 994 F.2d 749, 752 (lOth Cir. l994) 

( 11 [A] few brief questions concerning such things as vehicle 

ownership, cargo, destination, and travel plans may be appropriate 

if reasonably related to the agent's duty to prevent the 

unauthorized entry of individuals into this country and to prevent 

the smuggling of contraband. 11 ); United States v. Ludlow, 992 F.2d 

260, 265 n.4 (lOth Cir. l993) ( 11 Questions regarding 

citizenship and the contents of the vehicle were of course 

directly related to the Border Patrol agent's duties. 11 ). In my 

view, whether, in the absence of reasonable suspicion or 

suspicious circumstances, the agent could ask Ms. Carillo-Bernal 

what was in the trunk of the car she was driving through a border 

checkpoint is an important legal question that warrants our 

consideration. 

I do not condone the government's failure to timely file the 

Section 373l certificate. However, given our broad discretion in 

this matter, I would proceed to the merits of this case. 

Accordingly, I respectfully dissent. 

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