Opinion ID: 771497
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Prosecutorial Vindictiveness [All Appellants]

Text: 40 Appellants claim that after they indicated that they would reject the government's offer of a plea and proceed to trial, the prosecutor vindictively filed informations alleging that they were subject to increased sentences because of their prior drug convictions. Appellants also claim that the prosecutor vindictively sought a superseding indictment adding additional charges in response to their motions to suppress. The district court rejected appellants' vindictiveness claims. 9 41 A prosecutor violates due process when he seeks additional charges solely to punish a defendant for exercising a constitutional or statutory right. See Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 363 (1978). Vindictiveness claims are, however, evaluated differently when the additional charges are added during pretrial proceedings, particularly when plea negotiations are ongoing, than when they are added during or after trial. See United States v. Goodwin, 457 U.S. 368, 380-81 (1982);United States v. Gallegos-Curiel, 681 F.2d 1164, 1167 (9th Cir. 1982). Although prosecutorial conduct that would not have occurred but for hostility or a punitive animus towards the defendant because he has exercised his specific legal rights violates due process in the pretrial setting as it does at other stages, Gallegos-Curiel, 681 F.2d at 1169, in the context of pretrial plea negotiations vindictiveness will not be presumed simply from the fact that a more severe charge followed on, or even resulted from, the defendant's exercise of a right. See id. at 1168. 42 The reason that we do not presume vindictiveness in the pretrial plea bargaining situation flows from the courts' sanctioning of plea negotiations as a means of resolving criminal cases. The Supreme Court, and this court, have recognized that prosecutors will often, as a plea negotiation tactic, threaten increased charges during the course of plea negotiations, and later, if no guilty plea is forthcoming, make good on that threat. Recognizing that such prosecutorial conduct is not meaningfully distinguishable from charging more strictly at the outset and then reducing the charges as a result of plea negotiations, the courts have concluded that threatening and then filing more severe charges as an outgrowth of plea negotiations does not violate due process. See Bordenkircher, 434 U.S. at 363-64; United States v. Noushfar, 78 F.3d 1442, 1446 (9th Cir. 1996). 43 Here, the prosecutor's actions in filing the sentence enhancing informations and in seeking the superseding indictment took place during ongoing plea negotiations. After the government learned of appellants' prior records it withdrew its original plea offer on June 28, 1998. Ten days later, the government offered a revised plea in a letter that also notified appellants that the informations would be filed the next day. The informations were based on appellants' prior convictions, of which the prosecutor had no knowledge at the time the original indictment was filed. When increased charges are filed in the routine course of prosecutorial review or as a result of continuing investigation there is no realistic likelihood of prosecutorial abuse, and therefore no appearance of vindictive prosecution arises merely because the prosecutor's action was taken after a defense right was exercised. Gallegos-Curiel, 681 F.2d at 1169. 44 As for the superseding indictment, appellants ask us to infer vindictiveness from the fact that the government sought the second indictment only after appellants filed their motions to suppress and indicated their intention to proceed to trial. Again, these events took place in the context of plea negotiations, and the increased charges were themselves the subject of negotiations between the parties: The record reveals that, prior to appellants' filing of their motions to suppress, the prosecutor indicated by letter her intention to seek the superseding indictment, as well as her willingness to refrain from doing so in exchange for a guilty plea on the conspiracy charge. Thus, the fact that the superseding indictment followed closely on appellants' indication that they would pursue their motions to suppress, without more, raises no presumption of vindictiveness. See Noushfar, 78 F.3d at 1446. 45 Moreover, the timing of the superseding indictment is adequately explained by the delays inherent in the plea negotiation process. At a hearing two months after the prosecutor's second plea offer letter, the prosecutor indicated to the district court that she would seek the superseding indictment before trial; at that same hearing, it was disclosed that negotiations on that plea offer were still ongoing at that point with at least one defendant, adequately explaining the belated filing of the superseding indictment, which covered all three appellants (as did the original indictment). 46 In short, on this record, our cases leave no room for appellants' contention that we may presume vindictiveness either from the prosecutor's explicit linkage of the increased charges with appellants' refusal to plead guilty, see Bordenkircher, 434 U.S. at 363-64, or from the fact that the superseding indictment was filed shortly after appellants filed their motions to suppress, see Noushfar, 78 F.3d at 1446 (holding that without more, allegations that additional charges were filed because the defendants had moved to suppress evidence [are] . . . insufficient to create a presumption of vindictiveness). The judgment of the district court on this point was correct under any standard of review. 47