Opinion ID: 391003
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Procedural Mechanisms for the Church's Assertion of Interest

Text: 24
25 Our decisions make plain that a federal trial court has ancillary jurisdiction to hear and determine claims closely related to and arising out of the criminal proceedings brought before it. 55 We think this concept of ancillary jurisdiction is flexible enough to accommodate claims relating to seized property, even when made by strangers to the criminal case. 56 We thus conclude that the trial court had jurisdiction to hear the claims made. However, this conclusion does not imply the proper method by which the claim should be presented, and to that question we turn below. 26
27 The means by which third parties have sought to assert their interests in criminal cases have been manifold. 57 Indeed, the Church here chose to employ three of the mechanisms which have been used, with varying success, by other parties in other cases. 58 It first sought to intervene in the criminal case, it then brought a motion for return of property, accompanied by an application for an order temporarily restraining public access to the documents at issue. Finally, it petitioned this court for a writ of mandamus directing the district court, inter alia, to refrain from unsealing for public inspection 59 the documents at issue. 28 Of these methods we think the last employed was neither appropriate nor adequate to the task. It is the trial court and not this court that should engage in the initial consideration of the interests at stake, especially where, as here, the matter is urgent and largely dependent on an extensive record with which the trial judge is intimately familiar. 60 Even assuming mandamus relief is available to non-parties in a criminal proceeding, 61 we think the inevitable delay in seeking a writ and the narrow circumstances under which it will be granted 62 render it inadequate to redress the type of injury here alleged and mandate the identification of some other means by which a non-party's interest may timely be presented to the district court whose actions are alleged to affect that interest. 29 Of the two other methods by which the Church attempted to assert its interests, we think the motion for return of property and the accompanying application for temporary injunctive relief most closely approximated a proper means by which the trial court's ancillary jurisdiction could have been invoked by the Church to present its claims to retain the documents under seal. 63 In our view the Church could have proceeded by simple motion, served on the parties in the criminal case, under the caption of that case. 64 We think such a motion would have served the Church's interests adequately and we treat the Church's efforts in the district court as having commenced such a proceeding. 65 30 It has long been recognized that a summary proceeding initiated simply by motion to the court of trial is ordinarily suitable for the purpose of asserting an interest in the ultimate disposition of property seized in a criminal proceeding. 66 We now hold that it is also appropriate for the purpose of the presumptive owner's assertion of interest in maintaining the confidentiality of documents so seized. 31 The availability of this ancillary, summary proceeding and our treatment of the Church's efforts as having commenced such a proceeding make it unnecessary either to decide the procedural propriety of the methods in fact employed by the Church in its efforts in the district court to retain the documents under seal, or to address the question whether one may ever intervene in a criminal case. 67 Furthermore, because we think the Church was in fact heard on the merits in its efforts to retain the seized documents under seal, 68 and because the district court's rationale for denying relief, insofar as it can be ascertained on this record, turned at least in part on the merits of the interests asserted, 69 we treat the orders appealed by the Church as having reached the merits and will consider the remainder of the issues raised by those appeals accordingly. 32