Opinion ID: 216669
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Establishing the Presumption

Text: To get the benefit of the presumption, a defendant must show the prosecutor’s action was “more likely than not” attributable to vindictiveness. See Gary, 291 F.3d at 34 (quoting Alabama v. Smith, 490 U.S. 794, 801 (1989)). We have held “a prosecutorial decision to increase charges after a defendant has exercised a legal right does not alone give rise to a presumption in the pretrial context,” Meyer, 810 F.2d at 8 1246, but it is surely a fact relevant to the analysis, see id. It is also a fundamental assumption of the doctrine of prosecutorial vindictiveness that a prosecutor, like a judge, being but human “may have a personal stake in [a] prior conviction and a motivation to engage in self-vindication,” United States v. Stanfield, 360 F.3d 1346, 1362 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (quoting Chaffin v. Stynchcombe, 412 U.S. 17, 27 (1973)), and it follows that a decision to add charges after a defendant’s conviction has been reversed risks violating the defendant’s right to due process. Accordingly, while it appears the only relevant fact the district court considered in erecting the presumption of vindictiveness was that the prosecutor added new charges after Safavian had successfully exercised his right to appeal, we cannot say the district court clearly erred in presuming the Government was being vindictive in adding Counts Three and Five, regardless whether we would reach that conclusion were we making the decision in the first instance.