Source: http://openjurist.org/472/f3d/1106/united-states-v-fort
Timestamp: 2015-10-07 17:52:57
Document Index: 761115607

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1961', '§ 3432', '§ 3432', '§ 3432', '§ 3432', '§ 1961']

472 F3d 1106 United States v. Fort | OpenJurist
472 F. 3d 1106 - United States v. Fort HomeFederal Reporter, Third Series472 F.3d
472 F3d 1106 United States v. Fort 472 F.3d 1106
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant,v.Emile FORT, aka Twin; Edgar Diaz, aka Hook; Robert Calloway, aka Papa, Defendants-Appellees.United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,v.Emile Fort, aka Twin; Edgar Diaz, aka Hook, Defendants-Appellants.
Erika R. Frick, Assistant United States Attorney, San Francisco, CA, for Plaintiff-Appellant/Cross-Appellee.
Michael Satris, Law Offices of Michael Satris, Bolinas, CA; and Martha Boersch and John D. Cline, Jones Day, San Francisco, CA, for Defendant-Appellees/Cross-Appellants.
Appeals from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California; William H. Alsup, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. Nos. CR-05-00167-WHA, CR-05-00167-WHA.
Before GRABER, W. FLETCHER, and TALLMAN, Circuit Judges.
The federal criminal prosecution of Defendants Emile Fort, Edgar Diaz, and Robert Calloway for racketeering and various predicate crimes is pending trial. Defendants are alleged to be members of the "Down Below Gang," a San Francisco-based street gang operating in the Sunnydale Public Housing Project. They stand accused of engaging in an illegal enterprise of individuals associated in fact, who dealt drugs, committed robberies, and assaulted and killed those they believed were cooperating with the police. The witnesses who are expected to testify for the United States are primarily residents of the housing project, and the district court has found "that the government has made a substantial showing of danger to inculpatory witnesses."
The United States brings this interlocutory appeal to challenge a discovery order issued by the district court ("June 16 Order"). The June 16 Order ruled that police reports created by San Francisco police officers prior to the federal prosecution of Defendants do not qualify for the discovery exception created by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16(a)(2), even though those investigative reports are in the hands of the federal prosecutor for the purpose of pursuing charges against Defendants under the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act ("RICO"), 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961-1968. The government refused to comply with the discovery order, and the district court sanctioned the noncompliance. On appeal, the government seeks review of the sanction and of the district court's underlying decision regarding the scope of Rule 16(a)(2). Defendants Fort and Diaz cross-appeal the sanction order and seek additional sanctions against the government.
We hold that the documents in dispute are not discoverable because they are covered by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16(a)(2) whether prepared by federal, state, or local officials. Accordingly, we vacate the June 16 Order and do not reach the merits of the government's challenge to the sanction imposed. We do not have jurisdiction over Defendants' cross-appeal.
In addition, the government petitions for a writ of mandamus to reverse a separate order ("August 26 Order") of the district court. The August 26 Order requires the government to produce a list of witnesses to Defendants 21 days before trial, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3432. The government submitted a notice of noncompliance to the district court but has not yet violated the order nor been sanctioned. For the reasons that we explain below, we remand the August 26 Order without ruling on the mandamus petition.
A grand jury returned an 86-count second superseding indictment charging Defendants Fort, Diaz, Calloway, and several other people with racketeering crimes that include predicate acts involving drugs, firearms, murder, and attempted murder. In the course of discovery, the district court issued a number of orders compelling the government to turn over witness information to the defendants. Defendants Fort, Diaz, and Calloway are the only three defendants who are involved in this appeal.
A. Rule 16 Orders
The first set of orders at issue here relates to inculpatory police reports created by the San Francisco Police Department prior to the initiation of the federal prosecution of Defendants. The government disclosed many thousands of pages of these reports to Defendants during discovery but redacted all witness names and locator information.
The district court issued a series of orders relating to the discoverability of the police reports. The first order, dated May 18, 2006, held that all investigative reports created by the San Francisco police that are "in the possession, custody or control" of the United States Attorney's Office are "documents" subject to discovery within the meaning of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16(a)(1)(E). It further held that a report is exempt from discovery under the provisions of Rule 16(a)(2) "only if the report was prepared in connection with investigating or prosecuting the subject case by police officers having a relationship to the federal prosecutors substantially equivalent to that of federal investigative agents." The court invited the government to demonstrate that the reports were so prepared. The government made no such showing.
The district court finalized its discovery ruling with regard to the police reports in its June 16 Order. It held that "all of the local police reports related to this case in the possession of the United States Attorney's Office are producible under Rule 16 and are not within the work-product exemption to Rule 16(a)(2)." The district court also made two alternative rulings relating to waiver. First, it held that any Rule 16(a)(2) protection that may have attached to the police reports was waived by the government when it voluntarily and intentionally produced portions of the reports to Defendants. Second, it held that the government further waived any Rule 16 protection with regard to a number of the police reports by allowing a witness for the government who is an expert on gang crimes to rely on the reports in forming his conclusions. The June 16 Order directed the government to allow Defendants access to the information redacted from the police reports pursuant to the terms of an accompanying Protective Order for Witness Security ("Protective Order") and memorandum opinion, also issued on June 16, 2006.
The district court devised the Protective Order without the government's cooperation. In its related memorandum opinion, the court found that the government had made a substantial showing of serious physical danger to inculpatory witnesses. In its view, the terms of the Protective Order would improve, rather than impede, the witnesses' security. The Protective Order contained extensive regulation of the discovery and use of protected information.
The government promptly filed a notice of noncompliance with regard to the Protective Order. The district court issued a sanction order on July 20, 2006, that precludes the government from using against Defendants the testimony of any inculpatory civilian witness whose name was redacted from discoverable materials, unless the government demonstrates that the refusal to allow access was substantially harmless.
The government appealed both the Rule 16 ruling and July 20, 2006, sanction order. Defendants Fort and Diaz filed a cross-appeal challenging the sanction order, arguing that the district court should, additionally, preclude the government from seeking the death penalty against them.
B. 18 U.S.C. § 3432 Order
Before making its Rule 16 determination, the district court had issued a separate discovery order on August 26, 2005, requiring the government to disclose its witness list 21 days before trial, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3432. The government submitted a notice of noncompliance to the court. The government petitions for mandamus, seeking reversal of the § 3432 discovery order. The government filed its mandamus petition more than 21 days before the date on which the trial is scheduled to commence, so at the time of the filing the government had not yet violated the discovery order and the court had not yet imposed any sanction.
We review de novo a district court's interpretation of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. United States v. Navarro Viayra, 365 F.3d 790, 793 (9th Cir. 2004). We also review de novo questions of waiver. Feldman v. Allstate Ins. Co., 322 F.3d 660, 665 (9th Cir.2003).
As a preliminary matter, Defendants argue that we lack jurisdiction to review the district court's interpretation of the scope of Rule 16. Defendants assert that, because the government appealed the July 20, 2006, sanction order, the "collateral bar" rule precludes us from reviewing the district court's underlying substantive ruling contained in the June 16 Order. That argument is foreclosed by our precedent, which permits an appeal on the merits in this situation. See United States v. Fernandez, 231 F.3d 1240, 1245 (9th Cir. 2000) ("For while discovery orders themselves are not generally `final' for purposes of section 1291, parties who face such an order have the option of making the decision `final' simply by refusing to comply, and appealing the resulting sanction." (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)). We turn, therefore, to the merits of the government's appeal.
This appeal presents the question whether investigative reports prepared by a local police department prior to a federal prosecutor's involvement qualify for the discovery exemption created by Rule 16(a)(2) when they are turned over to the federal prosecutor for use in the federal investigation and prosecution of the same acts by the same people.1 From the outset, it is important to note that this appeal does not involve the government's disclosure obligations under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), or other disclosure rules. The identifying information here pertains to inculpatory, not exculpatory, evidence, and nothing in this opinion should be interpreted to diminish or dilute the government's Brady obligations. We review only the district court's determination that local police reports do not qualify for the Rule 16(a)(2) exemption and that they are, therefore, discoverable materials under Rule 16(a)(1)(E). This is an issue of first impression for our court. No constitutional or statutory provisions control the outcome, so we must begin by reviewing the text of Rule 16. See United States v. John Doe, Inc., 481 U.S. 102, 109, 107 S.Ct. 1656, 95 L.Ed.2d 94 (1987) (stating that an appellate court must look first to the plain meaning of the text when interpreting a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure).
1. Text of the Rule
Rule 16(a)(1)(E) sets out the types of information that the government must disclose to defendants during discovery:
Upon a defendant's request, the government must permit the defendant to inspect and to copy or photograph ... documents ... if the item is within the government's possession, custody, or control and:
(Emphasis added.) Rule 16(a)(2) limits the scope of discoverable materials:2
It is undisputed that the written police reports at issue here are "documents" within the "possession, custody, or control" of the federal prosecutor and that they are "material to preparing the defense." Thus, the reports are discoverable under Rule 16(a)(1)(E) unless exempted by Rule 16(a)(2). We must decide whether the reports were "made by an ... other government agent in connection with investigating or prosecuting the case." This inquiry requires us, in turn, to determine what is meant by "government agent" and "the case." a. "Government agent"
The Rules do not define the phrase "other government agent." Although the constituent term "government" is not explicitly defined, it is used as shorthand for "federal government" throughout the Rules.3 In accordance with that construction, Rule 1(b)(1) defines restrictively the term "attorney for the government" to mean (as relevant here) a federal prosecutor.4
Even though "government" means "federal government" in Rule 16(a)(2), we are still left to determine who qualifies as an "agent" of the federal government in the context of the discovery process in a federal criminal prosecution. Defendants urge us to limit the concept of "government agent" to those individuals who were employed directly by the federal government or who were acting at the federal prosecutor's direction at the time that they drafted a report. In contrast, the government urges that the term "government agent" be given a broader definition that would include state or local police officers whose investigation of a defendant provides evidence to support a federal prosecution of the same defendant for the activities so investigated. Both readings are plausible, so we must look more deeply.
It is a general rule of statutory construction that "identical words used in different parts of the same act are intended to have the same meaning." Gustafson v. Alloyd Co., 513 U.S. 561, 570, 115 S.Ct. 1061, 131 L.Ed.2d 1 (1995) (internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, we first examine the other parts of Rule 16 for guidance. Rule 16(a)(1)(A) and (B) both refer to a "government agent." Rule 16(a)(1)(A) provides:
Upon a defendant's request, the government must disclose to the defendant the substance of any relevant oral statement made by the defendant, before or after arrest, in response to interrogation by a person the defendant knew was a government agent if the government intends to use the statement at trial.
(Emphasis added.)5 As is true of Rule 16(a)(2), the term "government agent" is not specifically defined in Rule 16(a)(1)(A). But Rule 16(a)(1)(A) has been read to require federal prosecutors to disclose statements made by defendants to local law enforcement officers so long as such statements are in the federal prosecutor's possession at the time of trial. See United States v. Mitchell, 613 F.2d 779, 781 (10th Cir.1980) (holding that Rule 16(a)(1)(A)'s disclosure requirement applies to a statement made by the defendant to a state probation officer); see also United States v. Rinn, 586 F.2d 113, 120 (9th Cir.1978) (analyzing under Rule 16(a)(1)(A) the government's failure to disclose the defendant's statement to an undercover state police officer and holding that there was no violation, but only because the defendant's statement was not in response to "interrogation"); United States v. Cooper, 800 F.2d 412, 416 (4th Cir.1986) (same, with regard to the defendant's incriminating statements to a D.C. corrections officer); United States v. Brazel, 102 F.3d 1120, 1150 (11th Cir.1997) (holding that the government did not violate Rule 16(a)(1)(A) by failing to disclose the defendant's state-court guilty pleas before trial, where it disclosed them as soon as it gained possession). We have found no contradictory construction of Rule 16(a)(1)(B).
The government's proposed reading of "government agent" is consistent, then, with decisions implementing the same phrase in Rule 16(a)(1)(A). Even so, Defendant's narrower construction is still plausible. Therefore, we look beyond Rule 16 for additional insight.
Few of the Rules address the kind of potential cooperation between federal and non-federal players raised in this appeal, so they offer little guidance in interpreting Rule 16's use of the term "government agent." See supra note 2. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6 is one of the few Rules, other than Rule 16, that pertains to potential cooperation among federal, state, and local law enforcement. The commentary to Rule 6 assists us in understanding the Advisory Committee's general concerns for a practical, cooperative approach.
Rule 6 governs federal grand jury proceedings. In establishing exceptions to the general rule of secrecy for grand jury proceedings, Rule 6(e)(3) allows disclosure to "any government personnel—including those of a state, state subdivision, Indian tribe, or foreign government—that an attorney for the government considers necessary to assist in performing that attorney's duty to enforce criminal law." Fed. R.Crim.P. 6(e)(3)(A)(ii) (emphasis added). Thus, "government personnel" is defined expressly to incorporate not only federal authorities, but also employees of non-federal government entities that are engaged in assisting federal criminal law enforcement. In explaining the rationale for this expansive definition, the Advisory Committee described concerns equally apropos to Rule 16:
Fed.R.Crim.P. 6(e)(3)(A)(ii) (1985 amendments) advisory committee's note.
Although the Advisory Committee has not amended Rule 16 to include a similar (or, indeed, any) express definition of "government agent," Rule 16 has not been subject to the type of conflict among district courts that prompted the Advisory Committee to amend Rule 6.6 The practical and policy considerations are parallel. We thus find it more reasonable that, read in context, "government agent" includes non-federal personnel whose work contributes to a federal criminal "case."
b. "The case"
Defendants argue that, even if "government agent" is read to include local law enforcement officers, the police reports at issue here do not fall within the scope of Rule 16(a)(2) because they were prepared before the federal prosecutor initiated "the case." In other words, Defendants argue that, for the purposes of Rule 16(a)(2), a "case" does not begin until a federal prosecutor becomes involved. Again, the government urges a more expansive reading of the term that includes the investigative work done before a federal prosecutor takes on a federal prosecution, if the investigative work concerns a particular defendant and the particular conduct for which he is federally prosecuted.
Defendants assert that the Supreme Court and our court have already addressed this question and have defined "the case" in the limited manner that Defendants propose. To the contrary, the ambiguity of this term remains. Indeed, the opinions that Defendants cite actually weigh in favor of the government's proposed definition.
In United States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456, 116 S.Ct. 1480, 134 L.Ed.2d 687 (1996), the Supreme Court considered whether Rule 16 entitled the defendant to discovery for the purpose of gathering materials in support of a proposed counterclaim of selective prosecution against the federal prosecutors. The defendant sought a list of the racial identities of all defendants prosecuted federally for possession of drugs and firearms during a three-year period. Id. at 459, 116 S.Ct. 1480. The Court held that a "defense" to which the documents must be material means only "an argument in response to the prosecution's case in chief" and, thus, did not include separate counterclaims such as selective prosecution. Id. at 462, 116 S.Ct. 1480. In arriving at that conclusion, the Court stated that the term "case," as used in Rule 16(a)(2), does not extend to prosecutions against other people. Id.
The logic of Armstrong cuts against Defendants' proposed interpretation of "case." In Armstrong, the key question in determining the scope of a "case" under Rule 16(a)(2) was whether it involves the same defendant and the same crime. When state or local officials conduct an investigation that ultimately leads to a federal (instead of a state) prosecution against the same defendant for the very activities investigated, Armstrong suggests that there is but one "case" against the defendant within the meaning of Rule 16. This concept is particularly applicable in RICO prosecutions where state crimes can be charged as predicate acts to establish a "pattern of racketeering activity." 18 U.S.C. § 1961(1) & (5).
Similarly, in United States v. Cedano-Arellano, 332 F.3d 568 (9th Cir.2003) (per curiam), we interpreted Rule 16(a)(2) to apply only to documents generated with a view toward the prosecution of a defendant. In Cedano-Arellano, the defendant sought access to the training records of the narcotics-sniffing dog that had alerted police to drugs in the gas tank of the defendant's vehicle. Id. at 570. We held that Rule 16(a)(2) did not except the training records from discovery because "they were not made in connection with investigating or prosecuting this or any other case." Id. at 571.
The clearest reading of Cedano-Arellano supports the conclusion that documents that are "made in connection with investigating or prosecuting this or any other case" against a defendant are exempt from discovery under Rule 16(a)(2). Local police reports that result in a federal investigation or prosecution of the same defendant for the same acts are part of "the case" as so understood.
The continuing ambiguity of Rule 16(a)(2), notwithstanding Armstrong and Cedano-Arellano, is illustrated by the conflicting approaches that district courts have taken in interpreting it. Compare United States v. Cherry, 876 F.Supp. 547, 551-52 (S.D.N.Y.1995) (holding that, where the federal prosecution is a direct outgrowth of an investigation by local authorities, the local investigation and federal prosecution are one "case," and the local police reports