Opinion ID: 1231096
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Dissent's Plea Agreement Concern

Text: The same conclusion obtains with respect to the dissent's suggestion that we convene en banc to review the district court's evidentiary ruling on the inadmissibility at the sentencing proceeding of an unexecuted plea agreement between Fell and the Vermont U.S. Attorney's Office. The district court allowed the jury to hear that Fell had offered to plead guilty to the capital kidnapping charge in exchange for a sentence of life imprisonment, but excluded from evidence the plea agreement to that effect drafted (but not signed) by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Vermont and subsequently rejected by the Justice Department. Fell sought to offer the plea agreement as evidence (1) that substantial mitigating factors existed, largely related to his mental history, difficult youth, remorse, and assistance to the authorities; and (2) that he had accepted responsibility for his criminal conduct. United States v. Fell, 531 F.3d at 217. The dissent identifies no error in the panel's conclusion that the district court acted well within its discretion in excluding the agreement for these purposes. Instead, the dissent urges us to consider en banc the agreement's admissibility for a quite different purpose never advanced by Fell, but purportedly compelled by principles of federalism, i.e., that a capital jury should be allowed to knownot for purposes of nullification, but for purposes of judgment what local law enforcement officials believed was adequate punishment for the crime of conviction. Post at 287. Implicit in the dissent's discussion of this point is an unwarranted factual assumption: that a local United States Attorney's view regarding the appropriate sentence for a crime mirrors the values of the community in which he serves. This is hardly obvious given that United States Attorneys are not elected to their positions but are appointed by the President of the United States, who himself may or may not have received a majority of the votes cast in the district at issue. In any event, the dissent's argument misperceives the role of a prosecutor in our adversarial system. He is the advocate of a contested position; he is not an expert witness. The dissent asserts that allowing the jury to hear about plea offers does not entail transforming prosecutors into expert witnesses, but simply allow[s] the defense the option of submitting prosecutors' viewsalong with those of so many other sourcesto a capital sentencing jury. Post at 287-88. This explanation is unconvincing because prosecutors' views on appropriate punishment would have no relevance unless prosecutors are recognized as experts who, as the dissent assumes, have particular insight into and expertise with the needs and values of the communities in which they work. Post at 287-88. In a capital case, however, it is the jury alone that is charged with the responsibility of speaking for the community in deciding whether a particular defendant deserves to live or to die. As noted in Part LA of this opinion, the jurors who serve on a capital jury may support or oppose the death penalty, but in returning a verdict their oath obliges them to temporarily set aside their own beliefs in deference to the rule of law. Lockhart v. McCree, 476 U.S. at 176, 106 S.Ct. 1758. Thus, they do not speak for the community in the sense of an electorate voting on a referendum as to whether to prescribe or proscribe the death penalty generally. Rather, they represent the community in assuming the specific responsibility to give careful and thorough consideration to the relevant evidence in the case on trial with a view toward making a unique, individualized judgment about the appropriateness of the death penalty as a punishment for the particular defendant on trial in light of his particular crime. For precisely this reason, no expert opinions on the issue of sentence are warranted, whether from local prosecutors (either when they have vigorously supported the death penalty from the moment of arrest, or when they may have favorably considered lesser alternatives), their Justice Department counterparts, capital defense bar representatives, newspaper editorial boards, victims' rights groups, or even the trial judge. To be sure, the law may permit certain witnesses e.g., the defendant, his family members, his victimsto make a plea for the jury to exercise its sentencing judgment mercifully or severely. See generally 18 U.S.C. § 3595(c) (stating that information may be admitted at capital sentencing hearing regardless of its admissibility under the rules governing admission of evidence at criminal trials). But the allowance of such appeals from persons who have been affected by the crime or who will be affected by the sentence is very different from allowing purported experts to opine as to the appropriate sentence in the case. [10] Further, although the law liberally permits a capital defendant to put mitigating evidence before a jury, see Tennard v. Dretke, 542 U.S. 274, 284, 124 S.Ct. 2562, 159 L.Ed.2d 384 (2004) (recognizing mitigating evidence to include any information that tends logically to prove or disprove some fact or circumstance which a fact-finder could reasonably deem to have mitigating value), there are limits. Specifically, Congress has authorized district courts to exclude information from a capital sentencing hearing when its probative value is outweighed by the danger of creating unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, or misleading the jury. 18 U.S.C. § 3593(c). The probative value of plea-offer information is minimal with respect to the jury's evaluation of the relevant aggravating and mitigating factors in a case. Such factors may not have been fully identified at the time of the plea offer. Even if they were, the totality of circumstances relevant to those factors could not have been developed as completely as is possible through the crucible of trial. Thus, any inference as to the appropriate sentence that might be drawn from an unexecuted plea agreement will necessarily be prejudicial and confusing insofar as it focuses the jury's attention, even if only briefly, on what a third-party may have thought based on a different record from that developed at the sentencing hearing. More important, evidence of an unexecuted plea agreement would distract the jury from its sworn duty carefully to consider for itself the hearing record, and to make a unique, individualized judgment about the appropriateness of the death penalty as a punishment for the particular defendant on trial. A final word on the dissent's discussion of the role of prosecutors in capital cases. The dissent asserts that [s]urely the concurrers know that prosecutorseven federal prosecutorsare significantly affected by local values and attitudes in their choice of what is an appropriate sentence to pursue. Post at 290 (emphasis added). Respectfully, I submit that this statement, unsupported by any authority, offers too simple a view of prosecutorial decision making. First, the vast majority of sentences sought by federal prosecutors are determined not by juries but by judges. Until recently, judges had their discretion circumscribed by mandatory Guidelines structured to minimize local sentencing disparity. See United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 233-34, 125 S.Ct. 738, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005). Even after Booker, judges may consider the local impacts of crime in imposing sentence, but not local mores or feelings about crime. See United States v. Cavera, 550 F.3d 180, 195 (2d Cir.2008) ( en banc ) ( dictum ). Thus, to the extent local values are not a significant factor in a judicial determination of sentence, I do not think there is any basis for the dissent's pronouncement that prosecutorial assessments as to the appropriate sentences they might urge judges to impose are significantly affected by local values. [11] Even if the dissent's significant effect pronouncement refers only to capital cases, it fails to recognize the myriad factors that can inform a prosecutor's decision to seek the death penalty. More significant than local values supporting or opposing the death penalty, I suggest, is the strength of the government's case for a capital sentence. This factor can vary enormously depending not only on the circumstances of the capital crime, the character of slain victims, the complicity of others who may not face capital punishment, and a range of mitigating or aggravating factors pertaining to the defendant himself, but also on a strategic assessment of how much of this evidence a jury is likely to hear (in light of possible legal challenges) [12] or to question (in light of efforts to impeach prosecution witnesses). Prosecutors carefully weigh these circumstances because they know that, even in a state where local values generally support the death penalty, the punishment can be imposed in a particular case only on unanimous consent of twelve jurors. In short, regardless of local values, the law effectively gives a single juror the ability to veto capital punishment. Because the dissent oversimplifies prosecutorial decision making, I fear that, in construing federalism to mandate the admissibility of unexecuted plea agreements in capital cases, it has found a Pandora's Box that this court should not open. If a jury's exercise of its capital sentencing judgment is usefully informed by evidence that local federal prosecutors were, at some point, willing to dispose of Fell's case with a life sentence rather than death, would it then be relevant for a Vermont jury in some other case to know that local federal prosecutors were not willing to extend such an offer? Similarly, if a plea offer to a life sentence in a capital case were to be received as some evidence that local prosecutors thought that punishment was sufficient to do justice, would local prosecutors be allowed to explain if their reasons for extending the offer were not so based? For example, would the scuttled agreement be relevant where the offer was informed not by mitigating circumstances pertaining to the defendant but by a desire to spare a defendant's frightened or seriously injured surviving victim the further trauma of having to testify about the experience? Or where the offer was informed by the anticipated high cost of a capital prosecution? See Frederic Block, A Slow Death, N.Y. Times, Mar. 15, 2007, at A27 (estimating that more than $17 million has been spent on 17 federal death penalty trials in New York State). Countless scenarios relating to plea negotiations can be envisioned. To my mind, any such evidence is invariably more prejudicial and confusing than probative and should not be presented to a capital jury. This case presents no exception.