Opinion ID: 3011009
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Grand Jury Obstruction

Text: A grand jury investigation clearly qualifies as a pending judicial proceeding under S 1503. See United States v. 10 Wood, 6 F.3d 692, 696 (10th Cir. 1993). The District Court, in its written opinion upon Davis's sentencing, found that there was a pending grand jury investigation into organized crime and the Giampa Crew in particular at the time of Davis's acts. However, the trial record is nearly barren of any evidence of this fact. The government identifies one piece of evidence in support of its contention--the testimony of Agent Delia, who testified that, before obtaining the wiretap order of January 13, 1994, Customs subpoenaed subscriber information and toll records for a number of customers from NYNEX. But Agent Delia did not testify that a grand jury was actually in the process of investigating the people whose records were subpoenaed or that the subpoena issued in furtherance of a presently contemplated presentation of evidence before a grand jury. As in many districts in modern times, a grand jury is always empaneled in the District of New Jersey, which comprises the entire state of New Jersey. For that very reason, the mere existence of a grand jury in a district does not trigger S 1503; the grand jury must have some relationship to the investigation that is obstructed. See Nelson, 852 F.2d at 711. Nor is the issuance of a subpoena automatically proof of a pending grand jury investigation. As we wrote in Nelson: Fed. R. Crim. P. 17(a) provides for issuance of subpoenas signed and sealed but otherwise blank to a party requesting it, who shall fill in the blanks before it is served. Because these subpoenas are issued without meaningful judicial oversight, the pendency of a grand jury investigation cannot be determined from their face alone. Not every investigation in which grand jury subpoenas are used ripens into a pending grand jury investigation for purposes of 18 U.S.C. S 1503. Id. Thus, the government must show something more than that a grand jury exists in the district and that subpoenas have issued in order to prove that a judicial proceeding is pending. We have refused to make rigid rules about how the connection between an investigation and a grand jury must be shown so as to avoid meaningless formality, see 11 Walasek, 527 F.2d at 678, but the record in this case is devoid of any evidence of such a connection. There is no testimony that the subpoena was issued in furtherance of an ongoing or presently contemplated presentation of evidence to the grand jury. We cannot, consistent with our precedent, find Agent Delia's testimony about the subpoena sufficient to sustain Davis's conviction. There is another fundamental flaw in the government's case. A person who lacks knowledge or notice of a pending proceeding necessarily lacks the intent to obstruct that proceeding. See Aguilar, 515 U.S. at 599; Pettibone v. United States, 148 U.S. 197, 206 (1893). The Aguilar Court explained that recent decisions of the appellate courts have placed certain boundaries on S 1503's apparently broad sweep. For example, the defendant's action must be with an intent to influence judicial or grand jury proceedings; it is not enough that there be an intent to influence some ancillary proceeding, such as an investigation independent of the court's or grand jury's authority. Aguilar, 515 U.S. at 599 (citing Brown, 688 F.2d at 598).[I]f the defendant lacks knowledge that his actions are likely to affect the judicial proceeding, he lacks the requisite intent to obstruct. Id. The government concedes that there is no record evidence that Davis had actual knowledge of a grand jury proceeding, but argues that the evidence was sufficient to support a conviction on the ground that Davis inferred that a grand jury investigation was pending. Davis knew that Sabol had been convicted in Georgia on serious drug charges and was facing a twenty-year prison term. He received assurances from a FBI agent that Sabol would serve a lengthy sentence. In light of the fact that Davis was a police officer, the District Court found that there was a sufficient basis to conclude that Davis knew or believed that Sabol was only out of prison because he was an informant or cooperating witness in some federal investigation. Indeed, Davis communicated this belief to Michael and Vittorio, and, in the District Court's view, the jury could take him at his word, even though he later claimed that he was just bluffing to get Sabol out of his life. 12 The District Court concluded that Davis's failure to take proper police action from December 25, 1993 (when hefirst learned about Sabol's link to Vittorio), through March 4, 1994, justified an inference that Davis knew that Sabol was involved in an ongoing investigation. The District Court believed that Davis should have reported Sabol and Vittorio's illegal activities to his superiors, and that, when he did not, a jury could infer that he believed that Sabol was working for the government.2 At the very least, the District Court held, the jury could have found that Davis was willfully blind to the likelihood that Sabol was involved in an investigation. Moreover, the jury could have concluded that Davis knew that his actions had the natural and probable effect of interfering with a federal investigation. As Vittorio testified, but for Davis's actions, he and other members of the Giampa crew would have continued to deal with Sabol. The District Court's reasoning is sound, but it fails to go far enough to show Davis's knowledge of a grand jury investigation. There was no evidence that Davis concluded that Sabol was involved in a grand jury-based investigation. Agent Geer and Davis's superior, Larry Wirsing, both testified that a police officer would likely conclude that a person in Sabol's situation was or had been an informant. Both men formed the impression that Davis had reached this conclusion, though nothing explicit was said. But informants and investigations exist without grand juries. We cannot find in this record a shred of evidence that Sabol's status as an informant would have led Davis to conclude that Sabol was involved in an investigation related to a pending grand jury proceeding. _________________________________________________________________ 2. The District Court also noted that Davis reported his contacts with Vittorio to his supervisor, Larry Wirsing, on March 4, 1994. At that point, Wirsing and Davis contacted FBI Agent John Truslow. The court found that the jury could have viewed Davis's contacts with authorities as another attempt to rid himself of Sabol's presence. While this behavior is probative of Davis's underlying motive, it is inconsistent with a belief that Sabol was an informant; if Sabol were an informant, the government would not have any reason to rearrest Sabol for associating with Vittorio. 13 In United States v. Frankhauser, 80 F.3d 641 (1st Cir. 1996), the defendant took a number of acts to cover up evidence of hate crimes. The evidence clearly showed that he was aware of an FBI investigation into the crimes. The court, after scouring the record, found no evidence that the defendant knew or had notice of the pending grand jury proceeding. The government offered two pieces of evidence to meet its burden. The first was a misstatement by the defendant that he expected the FBI investigator to return with a subpoena or search warrant, when it was clear that he meant to say search warrant. In addition to finding that this was an irrelevant misstatement, the court also held that, even if the defendant was referring to a subpoena, there was no way to infer from this statement that he knew that a grand jury proceeding was underway, rather than merely a future possibility. See id. at 650. The government's second piece of evidence was similar to the government's evidence in this case: A witness testified that the defendant knew that the crimes were under investigation. The court found that we see no way the jury could have inferred that the investigation was by a grand jury rather than by the FBI. Id. Frankhauser, which we find persuasive, strongly supports Davis's argument, as it clearly distinguishes simple awareness of a federal investigation from knowledge of a pending judicial proceeding. The only relevant case from this circuit involves police officers who beat a civilian to death and then took actions to cover up their misbehavior. See United States v. Messerlian, 832 F.2d 778 (3d Cir. 1987). The defendants argued that there was no evidence that they could have foreseen that federal judicial proceedings were in the offing when they committed their obstructive conduct. We found that the defendants, ten- and twenty-five-year veterans of the New Jersey State Police, could, by reason of their positions, be expected to know that federal grand jury investigations often follow when an arrestee dies suspiciously in police custody. See id. at 794 n.23. By contrast, we do not think that a police officer, particularly a transit police officer, should ordinarily expect that an informant is involved with a grand jury investigation, and the government offered no testimony to the contrary. Intent 14 to influence an investigation, which the evidence clearly supports, is insufficient to sustain a conviction under S 1503. See Aguilar, 515 U.S. at 599. The government's proof in this case is deficient in two respects: First, it failed to show that the NYNEX subpoena was issued pursuant to a presently contemplated presentation of evidence to a grand jury. Second, it failed to show that Davis had the requisite knowledge that a grand jury investigation, as opposed to an investigation by federal agents, was pending. Davis's conviction on this count must therefore be reversed.