Source: http://whitecollarcrime.foxrothschild.com/tags/perry/
Timestamp: 2013-05-24 03:58:01
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Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 3661', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 1']

: Perry : White Collar Defense and Compliance
Home > Perry > Posted on March 15, 2012 by Alain Leibman
Attacking eyewitness identification after Perry v. New Hampshire
I have co-authored with my colleague Jana Volante, Esq. an article appearing this week in BNA's Criminal Law Reporter entitled "Attacking Eyewitness Identification Testimony." In the article, we examine the various approaches available to defense counsel to exclude such evidence altogether, or at least to blunt its potentially devastating impact.
Tags: Perry, Trial tactics, due process, eyewitness
Posted on January 16, 2012 by Alain Leibman
Supreme Court Makes It Difficult To Gain Suppression Of Eyewitness Identification
Much has been written in the academic and scientific literature about the accuracy, or apparent inaccuracy, of eyewitness identification, particular cross-racial identification. Some have called for a Daubert-like gatekeeper role for trial judges. But the Supreme Court last week in Perry v. New Hampshire clarified the test for the admissibility of eyewitness identifications without requiring any general gate-keeping function. In an opinion by Justice Ginsburg, the Court held that the Due Process Clause, under most circumstances, does not require a trial judge to screen eyewitness identification evidence for reliability before allowing the jury to assess its creditworthiness. The Due Process Clause only requires a preliminary judicial inquiry into the reliability of an eyewitness identification when the identification was procured under unnecessarily suggestive circumstances arranged by law enforcement.
In Perry an eyewitness was asked at the scene for a more specific description of the man that she had seen breaking into her neighbor’s car, and pointed to the defendant while he was standing next to a police officer in the parking lot where the car was parked. The witness had identified the defendant in the equivalent of what, if arranged deliberately by the police, would have been an improper one-man line-up. But the eyewitness had voluntarily and spontaneously identified the defendant without being asked by the police to identify him. Because there was no improper police influence affecting the eyewitness’s identification in this case, the Court held that the identification procedure was not suggestive and unnecessary, and that the eyewitness testimony was, therefore, properly placed before the jury without a preliminary judicial assessment of its reliability.
The Court also held that, even when a suggestive and unnecessary identification procedure is used, suppression of the resulting identification is not automatic. Where there has been improper police conduct, the trial judge must screen the identification evidence for reliability before trial. After screening the evidence for reliability, the judge should only suppress the resulting identification if the “indicators of [a witness’] ability to make an accurate identification” are “outweighed by the corrupting effect of the improper police conduct.” In other words, the trial judge should only suppress the identification evidence if the improper police conduct created a “substantial likelihood of misidentification.” Otherwise, the identification evidence should be submitted to the jury. (Jana Volante, Esq., the author of this entry, is an associate with Fox Rothschild LLP, based in our Pittsburgh, PA office. Her practice concerns white collar criminal defense and commercial litigation)
Tags: Daubert, Evidence, Perry, Supreme Court, due process, exclusion, eyewitness, gatekeeper, identification
Posted on July 1, 2011 by Alain Leibman
Eighth Circuit Construes Proffer Agreement To Prevent Overreaching By Prosecutors
Perhaps it is felt especially acutely by defense attorneys who formerly were employed by the Justice Department, but few experiences disappoint as sharply as those in which federal prosecutors behave unfairly or unjustly. The government, in this author’s opinion, should not only be held to the highest standard of behavior, but should relish that charge in its role as the proverbial striker of hard blows, but fair ones, to paraphrase Justice Sutherland’s famous construction.
Among other concrete demonstrations of their obligations to do justice, prosecutors should never try to squeeze unfair advantage out of proffer agreements. The last point is the takeaway from the recent case of United States v. Perry, 2011 WL 1900388 (8th Cir., May 20, 2011).
The position taken by the government in construing its proffer agreement with Perry could only be the result, one hopes, of a rogue or unsupervised AUSA, who lost sight of his or her higher responsibility. The standard proffer agreements in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Des Moines, Iowa apparently prohibited use in the government’s case-in-chief of proffered statements, but also provided that if the witness either testified or otherwise presented a position in any legal proceeding which materially varied from his proffer, then the government could make impeachment or rebuttal use of the proffer. A general provision, which paralleled 18 U.S.C. § 3661, authorized full disclosure to the sentencing court of all proffered information, but there was no provision which addressed the specific use, or prohibition on use, of proffered information at sentencing,. (In the District of New Jersey, the current form of proffer agreement not only prohibits case-in-chief use, but generally disallows use “for purposes of sentencing.” The inclusion of that provision would have avoided all mischief in Perry, but proffer agreements vary widely among offices).
Prior to his drug trial, Perry agreed to proffer to the government in the hopes of cooperating against a co-conspirator. Under the auspices of the standard office agreement, he volunteered information supporting an earlier starting date to the conspiracy than was charged, and a greater quantity of drugs than was set forth in his indictment. Perry eventually went to trial and lost. The prosecutor sought to punish him at sentencing by arguing (contrary to the Presentence Report, in fact) and convincing the judge that a too-old sentence should be used to increase Perry’s criminal history score despite the limitations period allowing consideration only of sentences imposed within 10 years of the commencement of the current offense, because of the earlier start date to the conspiracy which Perry had supplied in his proffer. The prosecutor also persuaded the court that the base offense level should be increased to account for the extra quantity of drugs he admitted trafficking.
The Eighth Circuit was having none of it, and vacated the enhanced 130-month sentence which resulted from the sentencing court’s adoption of the prosecutor’s arguments. Under § 1B1.8 of the Sentencing Guidelines, a commitment by the government to a defendant who has agreed to cooperate not to use any of his proffered statements has the effect of preventing those statements from being used by the court in determining the sentencing range, unless otherwise provided in the agreement. The prosecution in Perry contended that the absence of any broad “no use at sentencing” provision rendered § 1B1.8 inapplicable altogether. But the Court of Appeals held that even a limited agreement by the prosecution not to make case-in-chief use of proffered statements triggered the presumptive prohibition of § 1B1.8 (citing cases from the 6th and 10th circuits similarly relying on limited prohibitory language to bring a proffer agreement under § 1B1.8).
The only remaining question was whether this proffer agreement otherwise carved out an exception which allowed sentencing use of the proffer. The appeals court rejected the claim that the provision allowing disclosure of all information to the sentencing court created an exception for sentencing use, saying that the government’s right to provide information was not the same as the court’s right to use that information. Then, the government argued that the bar against case-in-chief use implied by omission a right to use proffered statements for all other purposes, including sentencing; the appeals court rejected that argument too, pointing to the specific limitation on impeachment/rebuttal use as evidence of a carefully articulated and limited grant of proffer uses to the government. Finally, the government argued that since Perry had sat down for a proffer only to see if the government would potentially accept his cooperation, he had not yet formally agreed to cooperate, as required by § 1B1.8. This unworthy argument was rejected, appropriately by footnote, since the proffer’s requirement that Perry provide complete and truthful information concerning criminal activity adequately demonstrated his agreement to cooperate.
Tags: 18 U.S.C. 3661, 1B1.8, Grand jury, Perry, proffer agreement