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DLD-106 NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

___________

No. 15-2255

___________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

v.

JAMES MURPHY,

a/k/a Jimmy Murphy, a/k/a Black

James Murphy, 

 Appellant

____________________________________

On Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Middle District of Pennsylvania

(D.C. Crim. No. 1-08-cr-00433-001)

District Judge: Honorable William W. Caldwell

____________________________________

Submitted for a Decision on the Issuance of a Certificate 

of Appealability and for Possible Summary Action

Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 27.4 and I.O.P. 10.6 

January 14, 2016

Before: CHAGARES, GREENAWAY, JR. and SLOVITER, Circuit Judges

(Opinion filed: April 11, 2016)

_________

OPINION*

_________

 

* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not 

constitute binding precedent.
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PER CURIAM

James Murphy appeals from the order of the District Court denying his motion for 

the disclosure of grand jury material. We will affirm.

I.

Murphy is a federal prisoner serving a sentence of 360 months of imprisonment 

for drug trafficking crimes. See United States v. Murphy, 460 F. App’x 122 (3d Cir. 

2012). This appeal arises from the latest in his series of attempts to obtain grand jury 

material. After Murphy was convicted, he filed a motion seeking the disclosure of certain 

grand jury material, including “all of the ministerial grand jury material” relating to his 

indictment. The District Court denied that motion, and we affirmed. See United States v. 

Murphy, 479 F. App’x 418, 420 (3d Cir. 2012). In doing so, we noted that Murphy 

already had been provided with certain grand jury transcripts and “has not shown any

rationale for disclosing additional grand jury proceedings, let alone [made] the strong 

showing generally required.” Id. at 419 (quotation marks omitted).

Murphy later filed a motion for relief from his sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 

and raised claims based on his grand jury proceeding and indictment (among other 

things). The District Court denied the motion, and we denied a certificate of 

appealability (“COA”). (C.A. No. 13-4016, Feb. 12, 2014.)

Shortly after that ruling, Murphy filed suit in the United States District Court for 

the District of Columbia regarding a request under the Freedom of Information Act 

(“FOIA”). In that request, Murphy sought certain information regarding the grand jury 
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proceeding that led to his indictment and a grand jury proceeding involving his coconspirator Richard Byrd. He filed the request with the Executive Office for United 

States Attorneys, which provided most of the requested information and declined to 

provide only the dates and times during which the grand jury met to hear testimony and 

deliberate. The District of Columbia court entered summary judgment against Murphy, 

and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed. See

Murphy v. Exec. Office for U.S. Attorneys, 789 F.3d 204, 213 (D.C. Cir. 2015).

While that appeal was pending, Murphy filed the motion at issue here with his 

sentencing court. Murphy titled his motion as a “motion for disclosure of grand jury 

records pursuant to common law, and the First Amendment,” and he sought records 

regarding his and Byrd’s grand jury proceedings that are similar in some respects to the 

information he requested and obtained under FOIA. Murphy did not claim to require the 

records for any particular purpose and instead disclaimed any intent to raise any 

challenge to his grand jury proceeding. 

After directing the Government to respond to Murphy’s motion, the District Court 

denied it. In doing so, the District Court accepted the Government’s representation that it 

did not possess and thus could not produce certain of the records. The District Court 

further concluded that one of Murphy’s requests was moot because the Government 

provided the information in its response and that the remainder of his requests sought 

records that are protected from disclosure by Fed. R. Crim. P. 6, which governs the 
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secrecy and disclosure of grand jury material. Murphy appeals.1

II.

Murphy raises several challenges to the District Court’s ruling. He argues, for 

example, that the District Court erred in applying Rule 6 to his requests because he 

requested only “ministerial” records that do not implicate grand jury secrecy and that he 

has both a common law and a First Amendment right to those records. See In re Grand 

Jury Investigation (DiLoreto), 903 F.2d 180, 182 (3d Cir. 1990). He further argues that 

the District Court itself should have provided records instead of denying certain of his 

requests on the basis of the Government’s asserted inability to satisfy them. We need not 

address these arguments as presented because, even if we agreed with Murphy in part 

(which we do not decide), we ultimately conclude that the District Court did not abuse its 

discretion in declining to disclose the records that Murphy sought. We will address 

Murphy’s eight specific requests in three categories.

First, Murphy sought disclosure of: (1) the judge’s instructions to the grand juries; 

(2) the transcript of Byrd’s grand jury testimony; and (3) a copy of the grand jury records 

maintained pursuant to Rule 6(c).2 Rule 6 and its rule of grand jury secrecy apply to 

 

1 The District Court’s denial of Murphy’s post-judgment motion for the disclosure of 

grand jury records is a final civil order. See United States v. Miramontez, 995 F.2d 56, 

58-59 (5th Cir. 1993). Murphy does not require a COA to appeal that order because it is 

not related to any § 2255 proceeding and is not “the final order in a proceeding under 

section 2255.” 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(1)(B). We thus have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 

1291. We review the District Court’s ruling for abuse of discretion. See Douglas Oil Co. 

v. Petrol Stops N.W., 441 U.S. 211, 223 (1979); United States v. McDowell, 888 F.2d 

285, 289 (3d Cir. 1989).
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“anything which may reveal what occurred before the grand jury.” United States v. 

Smith, 123 F.3d 140, 148 (3d Cir. 1997) (quotation marks omitted). These categories of 

records clearly qualify. Thus, Murphy has no common law or First Amendment right to 

these records and may obtain them only if disclosure is authorized by Rule 6. See id. at 

148, 156. Murphy has not argued that the disclosure of these records is authorized by 

Rule 6, and it is not. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(e)(3)(E); see also McDowell, 888 F.2d at 

289 (“To support a motion for a judicially ordered disclosure of grand jury testimony, a 

party must show a particularized need for that information which outweighs the public 

interest in secrecy.”).

Second, Murphy requested a copy of the captions of both his and Byrd’s 

indictments. The Government responded that the indictments were publicly available, 

but it reproduced the captions in its response for Murphy’s benefit and the District Court 

deemed this request moot for that reason. Murphy argues that the accuracy of the 

captions is “in dispute,” but he has not specified how or why he disputes it or how he 

believes the purported dispute may be resolved. We thus agree that this request is moot.

Finally, Murphy requested: (1) the court orders empaneling the grand juries; (2) 

orders returning the indictments; (3) orders extending the grand juries’ periods of service; 

and (4) orders discharging the grand juries. It would appear that the Government already 

 

2 That rule requires the grand jury foreperson to “record the number of jurors concurring 

in every indictment” and provides that “the record may not be made public unless the 

court so orders.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(c).
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has provided Murphy with all non-secret information that may be contained in these 

orders. See Murphy, 789 F.3d at 207 (noting that Murphy was provided with, inter alia, 

“the date the grand jury was impaneled and expired; the name of the judge who 

supervised the grand jury; and the date on which the grand jury was convened and 

returned an indictment for each particular criminal case”). Thus, it would further appear 

that any other information that might be contained in these orders could reveal what 

transpired before the grand jury and would be subject to the same analysis as the first 

category of documents discussed above.3 Moreover, Murphy previously requested all 

“ministerial grand jury material,” and we affirmed the District Court’s denial of that 

request. Murphy, 479 F. App’x at 419. We further note that Murphy has not shown—

and in fact has expressly disclaimed—any conceivable need for whatever information 

may be contained in these orders. Under the circumstances, we cannot say that the 

District Court abused its discretion in declining to provide these orders, assuming that 

they even exist.

III.

For these reasons, we will affirm the judgment of the District Court. 

 

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In particular, it appears that this request may be designed to circumvent the District of 

Columbia court’s ruling that Murphy is not entitled to know the dates and times of the 

day that the grand juries met to receive evidence because that information might tend to 

reveal the identity of grand jury witnesses. The District of Columbia Circuit has since 

affirmed that ruling, see Murphy, 789 F.3d at 209-13, and we would not second guess its 

decision even if we were at liberty to do so.