United States Court of Appeals 

For the First Circuit _____________________ 

No. 15-1716 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Appellee, 

v. 

ROBEL KIDANE PHILLIPOS, 

Defendant, Appellant. 

__________________

Before 

Howard, Chief Judge, 

Torruella, Lynch, Thompson, Kayatta, and Barron. Circuit Judges. 

ORDER OF COURT 

Entered: August 3, 2017 

 Pursuant to First Circuit Internal Operating Procedure X(C), the petition for rehearing en 

banc has also been treated as a petition for rehearing before the original panel. The petition for 

rehearing having been denied by the panel of judges who decided the case, and the petition for 

rehearing en banc having been submitted to the active judges of this court and a majority of the 

judges not having voted that the case be heard en banc, it is ordered that the petition for rehearing 

en banc be denied. 

THOMPSON, Circuit Judge, dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc. In my 

view, the district court abused its discretion in refusing to hold an evidentiary hearing on Phillipos's 

motion to suppress his confession. As a condition of holding an evidentiary hearing in the first 

place, the district court sought to extract a pre-hearing commitment from Phillipos that he'd testify 

at the hearing, and the court further ordered that Phillipos would be the first witness to testify at 

the hearing if one were held. When Phillipos refused to accept these conditions, the district court 

declined to hold an evidentiary hearing. As I see it, this decision is inconsistent with the ironclad 

rule that the government bears the burden of proof on the voluntariness issue. In affirming the 

district court on this point, the majority stretches a prior decision of this court much too far, and I 

cannot find — and the panel opinion has not identified — any other conceivable support for what 

the district court did. Because I fear that the panel's approval of the district court's improper denial 

of an evidentiary hearing will have a far-reaching impact on the manner in which motions to 

suppress are considered and decided within this circuit, I respectfully dissent from the denial of 

rehearing en banc. 
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I. Background 

Before trial, Phillipos moved to suppress his confession. In support of his motion, he 

submitted his affidavit, which was signed under the pains and penalties of perjury. He also 

requested that the district court hold an evidentiary hearing on the suppression motion. And he 

requested that the court "place the burden of production and persuasion as to the voluntariness of 

the defendant's statements on the [g]overnment before requiring the defendant to testify at the 

hearing." Requiring Phillipos to testify first at the evidentiary hearing, he argued, would place 

"the burden of production on the defendant rather than the government, and requir[e] him to be 

offensive with evidence rather than defensive. This is unfair because it is the defendant who should 

be confronting the [g]overnment[']s evidence, not the other way around." 

The district court declined to hold an evidentiary hearing on Phillipos's motion. Because 

of the court's "lingering concern" that, "over the years," the defense bar has employed motions to 

suppress to "obtain[] discovery that the parties are not properly entitled to," it indicated that it 

would hold an evidentiary hearing only if Phillipos agreed to the court's unique order of proof. 

Although the court concluded that the allegations in Phillipos's affidavit were sufficient to create 

the necessary genuine factual dispute to trigger the need for an evidentiary hearing, it nevertheless 

concluded that the affidavit alone was not enough. Based on "what appear[ed] to be ambivalence, 

perhaps, on the part of [Phillipos], the suggestion that, while [his] affidavit[] [is] sufficient, [he 

has] not decided whether to testify," the court reasoned that, if Phillipos did not testify at the 

evidentiary hearing, then his affidavit is "absolutely illusory" and "a bait and switch." 

To combat this perceived danger, the district court ordered that the evidentiary hearing 

would proceed as follows: (1) Phillipos would first testify on direct examination; (2) then, if his 

testimony "raise[d] the question [of voluntariness] sufficiently," the government would produce 

its evidence of voluntariness; and (3) finally, if the government's evidence was sufficient to ground 

a finding of voluntariness, the government would be permitted to cross-examine Phillipos. After 

proposing this unique procedure, the court then sought to extract a commitment from Phillipos to 

testify at the hearing. 

Phillipos objected to the procedure proposed by the district court, arguing that, because the 

government bears the burden of proof on the issue of whether Phillipos's confession was voluntary, 

the government should be forced to first go forward with its evidence at the evidentiary hearing 

and only then, after the government rested, should Phillipos need to decide whether to take the 

stand. The district court remained steadfast in its position, and, when Phillipos was unwilling to 

make a pre-hearing commitment to testify, the district court refused to hold an evidentiary hearing. 

II. No Support for Refusal to Hold an Evidentiary Hearing 

Everyone agrees that Phillipos was entitled to a hearing on his motion to suppress only if 

he made "a sufficient threshold showing that material facts are in doubt or dispute, . . . that such 

facts cannot reliably be resolved on a paper record," and "that there are factual disputes, which, if 

resolved in his favor, would entitle him to the requested relief." United States v. Cintron, 724 F.3d 

32, 36 (1st Cir. 2013) (quoting United States v. Francois, 715 F.3d 21, 32 (1st Cir. 2013)); see also 

United States v. Jiménez, 419 F.3d 34, 42 (1st Cir. 2005); United States v. Staula, 80 F.3d 596, 
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603 (1st Cir. 1996). The district court in this case concluded that, if the allegations in Phillipos's 

affidavit were credited, this standard would have been met, see United States v. Phillipos, 849 F.3d 

464, 468 (1st Cir. 2017), and the panel opinion does not purport to disagree with the district court's 

assessment on this score, so neither will I. Therefore, all agree that Phillipos was entitled to an 

evidentiary hearing if the district court improperly disregarded his affidavit. 

The panel opinion relies on our decision in United States v. Baskin, 424 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 

2005), to support its conclusion that the district court did not abuse its discretion in removing 

Phillipos's affidavit from the equation. See Phillipos, 849 F.3d at 469. In my view, Baskin is cut 

from entirely different cloth than our case. 

For starters, in Baskin, unlike in this case, the district court held an evidentiary hearing. 

424 F.3d at 3. To be sure, the panel opinion acknowledges this difference between Baskin and 

this case, but it nonetheless concludes that Baskin supports the district court's refusal to consider 

Phillipos's affidavit. See Phillipos, 849 F.3d at 469. I cannot subscribe to this conclusion. 

In Baskin, the defendant testified at the evidentiary hearing on direct examination. It was 

only when the defendant invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused 

to answer the government's cross-examination questions that the district court struck his affidavit. 

424 F.3d at 3. The decision to strike the affidavit was viewed by this court as a matter of 

"discretionary selection of remedy" for a witness's gamesmanship. Id. As we explained, "[a] trial 

judge may strike a witness's direct testimony if he flatly refuses to answer cross-examination 

questions related to the details of his direct testimony, thereby undermining the prosecution's 

ability to test the truth of his direct testimony." Id. (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting 

United States v. Bartelho, 129 F.3d 663, 673 (1st Cir. 1997)). 

Phillipos's case, by contrast, is very different. He was not attempting to testify only on 

direct examination without subjecting himself to cross-examination; he was not even attempting 

to testify at all. Instead, he was simply trying to meet his initial burden under our case law to 

demonstrate the existence of a factual dispute necessitating an evidentiary hearing, leaving the 

decision of whether to testify at the hearing until after the government attempted to meet its burden 

of proof on the issue of voluntariness. 

It is one thing to say that, when a hearing is held and a defendant takes the stand but refuses 

to be subject to cross-examination after completion of his testimony on direct examination, the 

court can strike from the record the evidence that has been improperly shielded from crossexamination. It seems to me something completely different to say that, when assessing whether 

a defendant has met his initial burden to show a factual dispute entitling him to an evidentiary 

hearing, the district court can refuse to consider an affidavit — signed under the penalties of 

perjury — and decline to hold any evidentiary hearing in the first place simply because the 

defendant is not prepared, then and there, to commit to taking the stand. At the very least, nothing 

in Baskin — which has nothing to do with the standard for obtaining an evidentiary hearing — or 

any of the other cases cited by the government or in the panel opinion suggests that a defendant's 

affidavit suffices to meet our evidentiary-hearing standard only when the defendant makes a prehearing commitment to testify at the hearing. Cf. United States v. Schaefer, 87 F.3d 562, 570 (1st 

Cir. 1996) (explaining that "a judge presiding at a suppression hearing may receive and consider 
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any relevant evidence, including affidavits and unsworn documents that bear indicia of reliability" 

and concluding that "the government effected a prima facie showing of consent by placing a copy 

of the police report before the court"). 

Moreover, the existence of a hearing is not the only critical difference between Baskin and 

this case. The only issue with which this court was concerned in Baskin was whether the defendant 

had standing to challenge the officers' warrantless entry into a motel room.1 See 424 F.3d at 3. A 

defendant bears the burden of establishing his or her standing to challenge an unlawful search. 

United States v. Stokes, 829 F.3d 47, 51 (1st Cir. 2016) ("Under what is known as the 'standing' 

doctrine, the defendant carries the burden of making a threshold showing that he has 'a reasonable 

expectation of privacy in the area searched and in relation to the items seized.' . . . 'This burden 

must be carried at the time of the pretrial hearing and on the record compiled at that hearing.'" 

(quoting United States v. Aguirre, 839 F.2d 854, 856 (1st Cir. 1988))). And, in Baskin, the only 

evidence the defendant offered to support his standing to mount the Fourth Amendment challenge 

was contained in his affidavit. 424 F.3d at 3. When the defendant, after testifying on direct, 

refused to answer the government's questions on cross-examination, the district court struck his 

affidavit. Id. And, because the defendant had "offered no other evidence" to shoulder his burden 

to establish standing, he "failed to establish any ground for asserting a Fourth Amendment right." 

Id. 

In this case, by contrast, Phillipos moved to suppress his confession on the ground that it 

was not voluntary. Unlike on the question of Fourth Amendment standing, "[t]he burden of proof 

is on the prosecution to show by a preponderance of the evidence to the judge that the confession 

was voluntary."2 United States v. Feliz, 794 F.3d 123, 130 (1st Cir. 2015). Therefore, although 

Baskin might support a requirement that the defendant agree to testify consistently with his 

affidavit when the affidavit concerns a matter on which the defendant bears the burden of proof,3

it offers no support for the district court's requirement in this case that a defendant who did not 

bear the burden of proof make a pre-hearing commitment to testify (and testify first). 

Taken together, the two critical differences between this case and Baskin convince me that 

that case provides no support for what the district court did here: conditioning the decision whether 

to hold an evidentiary hearing concerning an issue for which the government bears the burden of 

proof on a defendant's pre-hearing commitment to testify. The panel opinion does not identify any 

other authority to support the district court's decision to disregard Phillipos's affidavit, and I too 

 1

 I use the term "standing" here in the interest of brevity. See United States v. Sowers, 136 

F.3d 24, 26 n.2 (1st Cir. 1998) ("Although use of the term standing in this context may offend a 

legal purist, we have employed that word as a shorthand method of referring to the issue of whether 

the defendant's own Fourth Amendment interests were implicated by the challenged governmental 

action." (internal quotation marks omitted)). 

2

 Although the panel opinion acknowledged that the constitutional basis for suppression in 

Baskin (the Fourth Amendment) differed from that invoked by Phillipos (the Fifth Amendment), 

see Phillipos, 849 F.3d at 469, it failed to acknowledge the difference in the party bearing the 

burden of proof on the issue to which the affidavit was directed. 

3

 I emphasize "might" here because — it bears repeating — Baskin did not address our 

standard for the showing necessary to obtain an evidentiary hearing in the first place. 
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have found none. None of our cases on the need to show an entitlement to an evidentiary hearing 

suggests the defendant also needs to commit to testifying — let alone to agreeing to be the first 

witness to testify at the hearing. See, e.g., Jiménez, 419 F.3d at 43 (holding that district court did 

not abuse its discretion in refusing to hold second evidentiary hearing where "[t]he district court 

had already heard evidence at the previous evidentiary hearing about the [relevant] circumstances" 

and could "therefore reach a determination about voluntariness without the need for additional 

evidence"); Staula, 80 F.3d at 603-04 (affirming refusal to hold evidentiary hearing because, even 

if defendant's affidavit was accepted as true, it did not create factual dispute concerning key issue 

of when officer first smelled marijuana). 

Indeed, we've even found a district court's refusal to hold an evidentiary hearing to be an 

abuse of discretion where, as here, a defendant's affidavit created the requisite dispute of material 

fact. See United States v. D'Andrea, 648 F.3d 1, 3, 8 (1st Cir. 2011). In that case, the government 

sought to justify a warrantless viewing of photographs in a password-protected website on the 

basis of the private-search doctrine, among other grounds. Id. at 6. The critical issue posed by the 

application of that doctrine to the facts of D'Andrea was how the anonymous tipster obtained the 

account access information that she later disclosed to law enforcement. See id. at 8. We held that 

an evidentiary hearing was required because, among other reasons, there was a dispute as to 

whether the defendants shared the access information with the tipster. Id. We noted that "both 

defendants affirmed in sworn affidavits that they did not share the password with anyone." Id. 

The need for an evidentiary hearing was based on the affidavits themselves; nothing in that 

decision suggested that the need for the hearing depended on defendants' pre-hearing commitment 

to testify consistently with their affidavits. 

To be sure, if, as was the case here, a defendant's affidavit establishes the need to hold an 

evidentiary hearing and if, after the government presents sufficient evidence of voluntariness, the 

defendant refuses to testify or present any evidence besides his or her affidavit, the district court 

is not required to accept the affidavit into evidence.4

 To the contrary, at this point, the district 

 4

 A criminal defendant's decision to take the stand at a suppression hearing is not one that 

should be undertaken lightly. Although the government cannot use a defendant's suppressionhearing testimony as evidence of the defendant's guilt at trial, see United States v. Simmons, 390 

U.S. 377, 390, 394 (1968); United States v. Symonevich, 688 F.3d 12, 21 n.6 (1st Cir. 2012), such 

pretrial testimony can be used to impeach a defendant's testimony at trial, United States v. Smith, 

940 F.2d 710, 713 (1st Cir. 1991). See United States v. Jaswal, 47 F.3d 539, 543-44 (2d Cir. 1995) 

(holding that defendant's suppression-hearing testimony can be used to impeach defendant's 

testimony at trial); United States v. Beltran-Gutierrez, 19 F.3d 1287, 1289-91 (9th Cir. 1994) 

(same); United States v. Quesada-Rosadal, 685 F.2d 1281, 1283 (11th Cir. 1982) (same); see also 

United States v. Geraldo, 271 F.3d 1112, 1116 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (suggesting same); cf. United 

States v. Salvucci, 448 U.S. 83, 93-94 & nn.8-9 (1980) (explaining that Court "has not decided 

whether Simmons precludes the use of a defendant's testimony [at a suppression hearing] to 

impeach his testimony at trial," while simultaneously noting that "[a] number of courts considering 

the question have held that such testimony is admissible as evidence of impeachment" and that 

"[t]h[e] Court has held that 'the protective shield of Simmons is not to be converted into a license 

for false representations'" (quoting United States v. Kahan, 415 U.S. 239, 243 (1974))). 
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court has discretion to strike or refuse to consider the affidavit. See, e.g., United States v. Riney, 

742 F.3d 785, 787 (7th Cir. 2014) (defendant supported his motion to suppress with his affidavit, 

which contradicted officers' version of events; evidentiary hearing was held; when defendant 

refused to testify, court refused to admit affidavit into evidence, such that "[n]one of the evidence 

offered at the hearing supported the version of events presented in [defendant's] affidavit"); United 

States v. Maldonado-Rivera, 922 F.2d 934, 972 (2d Cir. 1990) ("in support of his contention that 

he had been coerced into making the statements," defendant relied upon affidavit of his attorney 

and "unsworn and unsigned 'declaration[s]' by his wife and himself"; evidentiary hearing was held; 

when defendant refused to testify, district court "properly declined to credit the attorney's affidavit 

because it was not based on the attorney's personal knowledge and declined to credit the 

'declaration[s]' because they were not sworn to or even signed").5

In my view, the district court's discretion to strike or refuse to consider the defendant's 

affidavit if he ultimately elects not to take the stand during the evidentiary hearing is more than 

enough to combat the problem of "illusory" defense affidavits perceived by the district court. The 

more drastic step of securing a pre-hearing commitment from the defendant that he will testify and 

ordering him to do so at the outset of the hearing is overkill that, as far as I can tell, has no basis 

in our law. 

So there we have it: Neither the only case cited by the panel opinion nor any other case 

unearthed by the government or the panel supports what the district court did. As I see it, that 

alone warrants reconsideration of this aspect of the panel opinion. But there's more cause for 

concern. 

 

The district court recognized this concern, but it thought that deferring cross-examination 

until after the government presented sufficient evidence of voluntariness was an adequate 

safeguard. I disagree. Because the decision whether to testify at a suppression hearing is a weighty 

one, it is imperative that a defendant not be forced to make that decision — in this context where 

the government bears the burden of proof — before hearing the government's evidence on the issue 

of voluntariness. The district court's approach, by contrast, would force defendants to commit to 

testifying before hearing the government's evidence and even though that evidence might turn out 

to be insufficient to carry the government's burden, in which case the defendant's testimony would 

be unnecessary. 

5

 Indeed, until the panel opinion in this case, that's precisely how district courts within this 

circuit have interpreted Baskin. See, e.g., United States v. Cabral, 965 F. Supp. 2d 161, 167-68 

(D. Mass. 2013) (recognizing court's discretion under Baskin to strike affidavit if, during the 

suppression hearing, defendant elects not to testify, but declining to exercise that discretion in the 

circumstances); United States v. Ramos, 591 F. Supp. 2d 93, 113-14 (D. Mass. 2008) (same); 

United States v. Sanchez, 535 F. Supp. 2d 216, 218, 224 n.8 (D. Mass. 2008) (same); cf. United 

States v. Deleston, No. 15-cr-113(PKC), 2015 WL 4745252, at *5 (S.D.N.Y. July 24, 2015) 

(noting that, in that jurisdiction, "a defendant is required to submit a sworn affidavit in order to 

obtain a suppression hearing. Having served this purpose, the affidavit effectively drops from 

sight, since it is rarely, if ever, considered by a judge in assessing the evidence at the suppression 

hearing" and citing Baskin to support court's authority to strike affidavit if, during the evidentiary 

hearing, the defendant refuses to testify (quoting United States v. Polanco, 37 F. Supp. 2d 262, 264 

& n.4 (S.D.N.Y. 1999))). 
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III. Conflating Distinct Burdens 

I'm persuaded by Phillipos's argument that the district court's take-it-or-leave-it proposition 

— that, if Phillipos wanted an evidentiary hearing, he'd need to be the first witness to take the 

stand — improperly shifted the burden of proof on the voluntariness inquiry. In my view, the 

district court impermissibly conflated two distinct burdens: the initial burden to show the existence 

of a factual dispute warranting an evidentiary hearing, which rests with a defendant, and the burden 

of production at the evidentiary hearing, which rests with the government in the voluntariness 

context. See 3 Wayne R. LaFave et al., Criminal Procedure § 10.1(b) (4th ed. 2016) [hereinafter 

LaFave] (distinguishing the requirement that a defendant making a suppression motion "set out 

facts in support of the motion" from the separate "question whether it is wise to impose upon the 

defendant the initial burden of going forward with the evidence at the suppression hearing"). The 

government's burden of proof on the voluntariness of the confession 

actually encompasses two separate burdens. One burden is that of producing 

evidence, sometimes called the "burden of evidence" or the "burden of going 

forward." . . . The other burden is the burden of persuasion, which becomes crucial 

only if the parties have sustained their respective burdens of producing evidence 

and only when all evidence has been introduced. 

 

Id. § 10.3(a); see also id. § 10.3(c) ("When the issue at a suppression hearing is whether a 

confession obtained from the defendant was voluntary, most jurisdictions place the burdens of 

production and persuasion upon the prosecution." (footnote omitted) (emphasis added)). 

In this case, the district court ordered that Phillipos would testify first at the suppression 

hearing. In doing so, it undeniably placed the burden of production — the burden of going forward 

— on Phillipos. It explained that it would "put the [g]overnment to its proof" if and only if 

Phillipos's testimony was "sufficient." Such an allocation of the burden of production may be 

appropriate where the defendant bears the burden of proof on an issue. See id. § 10.3(a) 

("[A]llocation of the burden of going forward may be of greater significance. . . . [I]f the defendant 

has the burden of going forward he must often take the stand first and tell 'his side of the story.'"). 

But it is, in my view, inappropriate where, as here, the government bears the burden of proof. 

I am of the opinion that the district court's assignment of the burden of going forward to 

the wrong party is an error of law and, therefore, constituted an abuse of discretion. See Phillipos, 

849 F.3d at 468 ("[A]n error of law is always tantamount to an abuse of discretion." (quoting 

Torres-Rivera v. O'Neill-Cancel, 524 F.3d 331, 336 (1st Cir. 2008))). 

Perhaps as a fallback, the government notes — without extended discussion — that 

"[f]ederal district judges enjoy broad discretion in respect to the ordering and presentation of proof 

and the handling of evidentiary questions." (Quoting United States v. Holmquist, 36 F.3d 154, 

163 (1st Cir. 1994).) That's true as far as it goes, but it doesn't take the government very far in this 

case. While district courts undeniably possess discretion on order-of-proof determinations, that 

discretion has limits: "a trial court's authority to regulate the order of proof does not include the 

power to shift the burden of proof." Morales Feliciano v. Rullán, 378 F.3d 42, 57 (1st Cir. 2004). 

The district court's impermissible shift of the burden of production from the government onto the 
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defendant therefore cannot be upheld as a permissible exercise of the discretion to regulate the 

order of proof.6 

CONCLUSION 

The district court's refusal to hold an evidentiary hearing is supportable only if the court 

properly declined to consider Phillipos's affidavit. But the decision to cast aside the affidavit was 

improper, resting, as it did, on the court's mistaken view that the need to show a factual dispute to 

obtain a hearing also required Phillipos's pre-hearing commitment to testify. This conclusion was 

not just entirely unsupported by our case law, but it also improperly conflated two distinct burdens. 

This error of law amounts to an abuse of discretion.7

 

But the damage done by the panel opinion is not limited to Phillipos's case. Instead, any 

time a defendant moves to suppress his or her confession, a district court within this circuit can 

insist that, if the only basis for a factual dispute is the defendant's affidavit disputing the officer's 

version of events (as it most always will be in the confession context), the defendant make a prehearing commitment to testify as a condition for holding the hearing. The result, I fear, will be 

that defendants will often be deprived of evidentiary hearings on the voluntariness of their 

confessions, even though the admission of an involuntary confession is a clear-cut violation of due 

process, see Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 376 (1964), and even though there's no basis in our 

law (other than the panel opinion in this case, that is) for insisting that the defendant commit to 

testifying at an evidentiary hearing on a motion to suppress a confession. Therefore, in my view, 

this case presents "a question of exceptional importance" that calls for rehearing en banc. Fed. R. 

App. P. 35(a)(2). I respectfully dissent from my colleagues' decision to the contrary. 

 6

 Our decision in Morales Feliciano is not to the contrary. In that case, which arose in the 

very different context of an evidentiary hearing on a motion to terminate prospective relief under 

the Prison Litigation Reform Act, we discerned no abuse of discretion in the district court's 

decision to order one party to present his proof first because the court already "had before it a full 

evidentiary record, developed over many years, together with a cache of periodic reports as to 

progress under the consent decree," and "[t]his plethoric evidence was sufficient, if unrebutted, to 

support a finding that constitutional violations endured." 378 F.3d at 57. "With this in mind," we 

reasoned, "it was sensible for the court to invite the Secretary to offer evidence to the contrary." 

Id. To cinch matters, "[i]n its subsequent review of the evidence, the court said nothing that 

indicated any misunderstanding as to where the burden of proof rested." Id. 

In this case, by contrast, the government had not yet presented the district court with any 

evidence to satisfy its burden of proving that Phillipos's confession was voluntary, and what the 

district court did — conditioning the decision to hold an evidentiary hearing on Phillipos's 

acceptance of the government's burden of production and his pre-hearing commitment to testify 

— improperly shifted the burden from the government to Phillipos. 

7

 An erroneous refusal to hold an evidentiary hearing on a suppression motion can warrant 

reversal of a defendant's conviction. See, e.g., D'Andrea, 648 F.3d at 3, 14-15 & n.18 (vacating 

defendants' convictions for failure to hold an evidentiary hearing on the suppression motions); cf. 

United States v. Burger, 739 F.2d 805, 808-09 (2d Cir. 1984) (vacating defendant's conviction 

where, although evidentiary hearing was held, district court "improperly placed the burden of 

proving involuntariness and the lack of a valid [Miranda] waiver on the defendant"). 
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 By the Court: 

 /s/ Margaret Carter, Clerk 

cc: 

Hon. Douglas P. Woodlock 

Robert Farrell, Clerk, United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts 

Derege B. Demissie 

Susan Brooks Church 

Robel Kidane Phillipos 

John A. Capin 

Dina Michael Chaitowitz 

B. Stephanie Siegmann 

Randall Ernest Kromm 

Jonathan M. Albano 

John H. Cunha Jr. 

Daniel Volchok 

John Reinstein 

Nancy Gertner