Opinion ID: 4202211
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: B The Motivations behind the Indictment

Text: Although he cites no law to support his theory, Katzin complains that his indictment was improper because it was motivated by the prosecution’s desire to evade 6 the strictures of Rule 404 by transforming past acts evidence into intrinsic evidence of a conspiracy. Katzin’s claim could, perhaps, be framed as challenging a retaliatory charging in response to his efforts to exclude improper past acts testimony. Without the benefit of Katzin’s own legal theory, we analyze his claim under the framework of prosecutorial vindictiveness, which prevents a person from being “punished for exercising a protected statutory or constitutional right.” United States v. Goodwin, 457 U.S. 368, 372 (1982). However, in a pretrial context, the Supreme Court has explained that “[a]n initial [prosecutorial] decision should not freeze future conduct” and that a “prosecutor should remain free before trial to exercise the broad discretion entrusted to him to determine the extent of the societal interest in prosecution.” Id. at 382. Thus, in the absence of “actual vindictiveness,” which requires evidence that the charging decision resulted “solely” from the defendant’s exercise of a legal right, a prosecutor is permitted to add charges to an indictment. See United States v. Paramo, 998 F.2d 1212, 1221 (3d Cir. 1993). Katzin does not point to any such evidence.