Opinion ID: 2828954
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Brecht

Text: The district court concluded that the government’s protracted misconduct required a new trial under Brecht. 22 In Brecht, the Supreme Court held that to obtain relief on collateral review, a habeas petitioner must establish that the constitutional trial error had a “substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury’s verdict.” Id. at 637-38, 113 S. Ct. at 1722 (quoting Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 776, 66 S. Ct. 1239, 1253 (1946)). In other words, the habeas petitioner must establish actual prejudice. The Court distinguished such “trial errors,” which occur during the presentation of a case to the jury, from “structural defects” in the prosecution, like denial of counsel, that require automatic reversal of a conviction. 507 U.S. at 629-30, 113 S. Ct. at 1717. The Court also stated that its holding: does not foreclose the possibility that in an unusual case, a deliberate and especially egregious error of the trial type, or one that is combined with a pattern of prosecutorial misconduct, might so infect the integrity of the proceeding as to warrant the grant of 22The district court also cited its supervisory power. This ground for relief is disputed by the government, and we neither discuss nor rely on it. 23 Case: 13-31078 Document: 00513162268 Page: 24 Date Filed: 08/20/2015 No. 13-31078 habeas relief, even if it did not substantially influence the jury’s verdict. Id. at 638 n.9, 113 S. Ct. at 1722 n.9 (emphasis added). The district court found that the government’s pervasive misconduct so contaminated every phase of the prosecution that this case, unique “in nature [and] in scope,” fit “squarely within” Brecht’s prejudice exception. September Order, 969 F. Supp. 2d at 619. The government argues that (1) the Supreme Court did not create an exception to the prejudice requirement in Brecht but merely reserved the possibility for a future decision and (2) thus, prejudice cannot be presumed but must be proven. These contentions assume that the misconduct in this case— online commenting, guilty plea leak, and the incomplete investigation of misconduct—was not sui generis. Yet neither the government’s efforts nor our additional research reveals cases on point or closely analogous. One certainty is that the government presents an overly restrictive interpretation of Brecht footnote nine. Contrary to the government’s position, this court has described the errors contemplated in footnote nine as “hybrid” errors, falling somewhere on a spectrum between structural errors (prejudice presumed) and trial errors (subject to the harmless error standard). See Burgess v. Dretke, 350 F.3d 461, 471 (5th Cir. 2003). In Burgess, this court held that under Brecht, “if ‘structural’ or ‘hybrid’ error occurs, harmless error review is inappropriate.” Id.; see also Cupit v. Whitley, 28 F.3d 532, 538 (5th Cir. 1994). We interpreted Brecht to create a new category of errors, not simply to preserve the possibility of doing so in the future. See Burgess, 350 F.3d at 471; Cupit, 28 F.3d at 532. And we have interpreted Brecht to hold that “a federal court in habeas must generally review a state court’s decision using a strict ‘harmless error’ standard, but that cases involving ‘structural’ or ‘hybrid’ 24 Case: 13-31078 Document: 00513162268 Page: 25 Date Filed: 08/20/2015 No. 13-31078 error require reversal regardless of harm.” Burgess, 350 F.3d at 471 (emphasis added). This court’s holdings are in accord with those of the other circuits that have addressed the issue. See United States v. Harbin, 250 F.3d 532, 545 (7th Cir. 2001) (trial errors described in Brecht footnote nine require automatic reversal); Hardnett v. Marshall, 25 F.3d 875, 879 (9th Cir. 1994) (hybrid footnote nine error is “assimilated to structural error and declared to be incapable of redemption by actual prejudice analysis”). The Hardnett court added, “[w]e assume that the facts set out in Footnote Nine are illustrative, not exclusive, and that the key consideration is whether the integrity of the proceeding was so infected that the entire trial was unfair.” Id. In addition, the Third Circuit, while refusing to recognize footnote nine as “truly” establishing an exception to harmless error, still did not “foreclose the possibility” that such an exception could exist. Hassine v. Zimmerman, 160 F.3d 941, 959 n.29 (3d Cir. 1998) (quoting Brecht, 507 U.S. at 638 n.9, 113 S. Ct. at 1710 n.9). Most decisions considering the possibility of Brecht footnote nine “hybrid” error have declined to grant relief to defendants, because most of the complaints have involved pure trial error. 23 As the Court noted in Brecht, when the errors occur during the presentation of the case to the jury, they are amenable to harmless error review “because they may be quantitatively assessed in the context of the evidence as a whole, to determine the effect on the trial.” Harbin, 250 F.3d at 544 (citing Brecht, 507 U.S. at 629, 113 S. Ct. at 1710). But “[n]ot every error . . . is easily shoe-horned into one of those neat 23 See, e.g., Hassine, 160 F.3d at 961 (Doyle error not egregious enough to warrant footnote nine exception); Hardnett, 25 F.3d at 880-81 (“the prosecutor’s misconduct did not infect the whole trial”); Cupit, 28 F.3d at 538 (unconstitutional admission of hearsay is “classic trial error[]”). 25 Case: 13-31078 Document: 00513162268 Page: 26 Date Filed: 08/20/2015 No. 13-31078 categories. The ‘nature, context, and significance of the violation,’ for instance, may determine whether automatic reversal or the harmless error analysis is appropriate.” Id. (citation omitted). Courts must therefore decide where, along the spectrum of errors, those which are not clearly trial type or structural may fall. The “unprecedented” Harbin case, 250 F.3d at 539, is instructive. In Harbin, the court allowed the prosecutor to “save” until mid-trial a peremptory juror challenge, which he exercised to replace one juror with an alternate. The replacement juror was not shown to have been biased, nor could any impact on the verdict be proven. Nevertheless, the Seventh Circuit held that the error was precisely the type that “defies harmless error analysis.” Id. at 545. The defendants had been denied a comparable right to excise a juror during trial not only because they had previously used all of their peremptory challenges, but also because they were not even informed of the possibility of delayed exercise. Harbin held that this error affected the fundamental fairness of the trial and demanded a new trial without harmless error proof, because the imbalance in peremptory challenges “gave the prosecutor unilateral discretionary control over the composition of the jury mid-trial.” Id. at 547-48. And it was “simply impossible as a practical matter to assess the impact on the jury of such an error.” Id. at 548. So too here, the breadth of the government’s misconduct and continued obfuscation, as the district court found, makes this the “unusual case” contemplated by Brecht. The online commenting alone, which breached all standards of prosecutorial ethics, gave the government a surreptitious advantage in influencing public opinion, the venire panel, and the trial itself. And by degrees, the district court was led to conclude that what it had previously considered to be isolated missteps was actually evidence of a pattern 26 Case: 13-31078 Document: 00513162268 Page: 27 Date Filed: 08/20/2015 No. 13-31078 of misconduct that permeated every stage of the prosecution. And because the government refused to adequately investigate its errors, covered up what it knew to be misleading omissions, and in some instances lied directly to the court, the district court could neither uncover the extent of the prosecution’s transgressions nor determine the severity of the prejudice suffered by the defendants. The government’s unrelenting efforts thus prevented the district court from evaluating the fairness of defendants’ trial and thrust the prosecution into the rare territory of Brecht hybrid error. Trial errors can be evaluated for harmlessness precisely because the nature and extent of the harm is ascertainable from a review of the record. Brecht, 507 U.S. at 629, 113 S. Ct. at 1710. Here, the ability of trial and appellate courts to evaluate the effect of the anonymous comments has been thwarted by the government’s subsequent lack of cooperation. There is a fundamental imbalance between the knowledge of the prosecutors, on one hand, and the defendants and courts, on the other, concerning the true extent and significance of the ongoing commenting. This case thus presents the unclassifiable and pervasive errors to which the Supreme Court referred in Brecht when it identified a category of errors capable of infecting the integrity of the prosecution to a degree warranting a new trial irrespective of prejudice. Our conclusion is reinforced by overarching standards of prosecutorial conduct and the nature of their breach. 24 Prosecutors maintain the integrity, fairness and objectivity of the criminal justice system in part by refraining from speaking in public about pending and impending cases except in very limited circumstances. The government’s own list of applicable regulations and ethical 24 This is not a conclusion that our “supervisory duty” supports a new trial, but a reflection on the prosecution’s cynical minimization of its wrongdoing. Cf. Rideau, 373 U.S. at 728, 83 S. Ct. at 1420 (Harlan, J., dissenting). 27 Case: 13-31078 Document: 00513162268 Page: 28 Date Filed: 08/20/2015 No. 13-31078 rules demonstrates that the prosecutors’ obligation of silence extends beyond “confidential and grand jury matters” and beyond the “prosecution team” narrowly defined to include only those who participate in a particular case. Further, there is no dividing line between the prosecutors’ professional and private lives with respect to these duties. Had Perricone, Mann, or Dobinski frequented a bar or habitually called in to a radio talk show and blown off steam about the Danziger Bridge prosecution in the terms they used online, their misconduct would have been the same as it is with their anonymous online commentary. The reasons for prosecutorial self-restraint are manifest. Although ‘[s]tatements to the press may be an integral part of a prosecutor’s job, and . . . may serve a vital public function,’ that function is strictly limited by the prosecutor’s overarching duty to do justice.’ Those who wield the power to make public statements about criminal cases must ‘be guided solely by their sense of public responsibility for the attainment of justice.’ Aversa v. United States, 99 F.3d 1200, 1216 (1st Cir. 1996) (quoting Souza v. Pina, 53 F.3d 423, 427 (1st Cir. 1995)). Insulating the prosecution and trial from bias, prejudice, misinformation, and evidence revealed outside the courtroom are crucial to the fairness of our processes. Equally important, the prosecutor must respect the presumption of innocence even as he seeks to bring a defendant to justice. Justice Sutherland eloquently captured the prosecutor’s calling. A government prosecutor is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute 28 Case: 13-31078 Document: 00513162268 Page: 29 Date Filed: 08/20/2015 No. 13-31078 with earnestness and vigor—indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one. Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88, 55 S. Ct. 629 (1935), overruled on other grounds by Stirone v. United States, 361 U.S. 212, 80 S. Ct. 270 (1960). In short, that the prosecutors’ misconduct was so incongruous with their duties buttresses our conclusion that this is the rare case involving Brecht error. The government rejects that conclusion and contends that prejudice must be proven here, citing cases concerning pretrial publicity, jury selection and extraneous influence on impaneled jurors. See, e.g., Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S. 358, 130 S. Ct. 2896 (2010); Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 86 S. Ct. 1507 (1966); Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723, 83 S. Ct. 1417 (1963). Initially, we note that under Fed. R. Crim. Proc. 52(a), the government bore the burden of proving no prejudice. Moreover, the cases cited by the government are of dubious relevance factually and legally. First, the government cannot obstruct the inquiry into online activity and then claim that there is insufficient proof to support the district court’s findings. Cf. United States v. Derrick, 163 F.3d 799, 809 (4th Cir. 1998) (where prosecutorial misconduct largely consisted of discovery violations, and violations had been corrected, any prejudice that might have existed was fully remedied by a new trial order). Second, the true extent of the online misconduct has not yet been fully revealed, and there are strong implications in testimony by Magner and the interviews of Jan Mann and Dobinski and from OPR materials that the online commenting was widely known within the New Orleans USAO and 29 Case: 13-31078 Document: 00513162268 Page: 30 Date Filed: 08/20/2015 No. 13-31078 known within DOJ. 25 Third, the DOJ’s sluggish approach to uncovering and revealing the extent of postings to the district court suggest a prosecution insensitive—at best—to what it now acknowledges are strict governing legal and ethical standards. Fourth, contrary to the government’s assertions, the anonymous nature of the comments does not reduce but increases their pernicious influence. Fifth, cases that concern outside pretrial publicity perpetrated by the press, e.g. Sheppard v. Maxwell and Rideau v. Louisiana, present neither prosecutorial misconduct nor unquantifiable influences on the proceedings. Sixth, the online comments could have affected not only the venire panel and actual jurors but also cooperating defendants and defense witnesses. Finally, the inevitable impression left by the government’s misconduct and ongoing pettifoggery is of a prosecution determined to convict these defendants by any means. In sum, while a demonstration of prejudice is ordinarily a prerequisite for the grant of a new trial, the Supreme Court specifically identified the type of extraordinary errors that will dispense with this burden. 26 Such errors occurred here. Prosecutorial misconduct commenced even before indictments were handed down and continued throughout trial and into the post-trial proceedings, and that misconduct affected the prosecution and trial in ways that cannot be fully evaluated due to the government’s mishandling—to put it politely—of the investigation into cyberbullying. The online anonymous 25The court also found incredible Perricone’s and Mann’s denials that each knew about the other’s postings. Too often, each of them posted in reference to the other’s observations and unfailingly reinforced their prejudiced views. 26Although Brecht itself concerned habeas relief, “similar or even broader exceptions to the harmless error doctrine should logically apply at the district court level or on direct appeal, which do not involve the especially deferential habeas standard of review.” Sonja B. Starr, Sentence Reduction as a Remedy for Prosecutorial Misconduct, 97 GEO. L.J. 1509, 1561 (2009). 30 Case: 13-31078 Document: 00513162268 Page: 31 Date Filed: 08/20/2015 No. 13-31078 postings, whether the product of lone wolf commenters or an informal propaganda campaign, gave the prosecution a tool for public castigation of the defendants that it could not have used against them otherwise, and in so doing deprived them of a fair trial. The district court’s steady drip of discoveries of misconduct infecting every stage of this prosecution, combined with the government’s continued obfuscation and deceit, renders this the rare case in which imposition of the Brecht remedy is necessary.