Opinion ID: 180654
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Constitutionality of the Grand Jury Instructions

Text: We review de novo the district court's denial of Caruto's motion to dismiss the indictment. United States v. Haynes, 216 F.3d 789, 796 (9th Cir.2000). Federal courts draw their power to dismiss indictments from two sources: the Constitution, and the courts' inherent supervisory powers. United States v. Isgro, 974 F.2d 1091, 1094 (9th Cir.1992). Caruto raises only claims of constitutional error, so we limit our consideration to whether the instructions her grand jury received met the requirements of the Grand Jury Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The text of the Fifth Amendment simply provides for the right to indictment by a grand jury and does not explain how the grand jury is to fulfill this constitutional role. [1] United States v. Navarro-Vargas, 408 F.3d 1184, 1188 (9th Cir.2005) (en banc). Such details were either assumed by the framers of the Bill of Rights or left to Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary to flesh out. Id. Our inquiry into what the Constitution mandates is guided by the history of the grand jury in the Anglo-American tradition and by its structural role in our constitutional scheme. Id. at 1186; see generally id. at 1190-1202. `Historically, [the grand jury] has been regarded as a primary security to the innocent against hasty, malicious and oppressive persecution; it serves the invaluable function in our society of standing between the accuser and the accused, ... to determine whether a charge is founded upon reason or was dictated by an intimidating power or by malice and personal ill will.' United States v. Marcucci, 299 F.3d 1156, 1161 (9th Cir.2002) (quoting Wood v. Georgia, 370 U.S. 375, 390, 82 S.Ct. 1364, 8 L.Ed.2d 569 (1962)). The grand jury's ability to fulfill its historical role effectively flows in part from its unusual position in the Constitution's structure. The grand jury belongs to no branch of government, but is a `constitutional fixture in its own right.' Navarro-Vargas, 408 F.3d at 1199 (quoting United States v. Williams, 504 U.S. 36, 47, 112 S.Ct. 1735, 118 L.Ed.2d 352 (1992)). The Fifth Amendment presupposes an investigative body acting independently of either prosecuting attorney or judge. United States v. Dionisio, 410 U.S. 1, 16, 93 S.Ct. 764, 35 L.Ed.2d 67 (1973) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Fifth Amendment may be violated if the independence of the grand jury in performing its historical function is substantially infringed. See Bank of Nova Scotia v. United States, 487 U.S. 250, 255-57, 108 S.Ct. 2369, 101 L.Ed.2d 228 (1988); Navarro-Vargas, 408 F.3d at 1204, 1205 & 1206-07 (holding constitutional grand jury instructions that did not infringe upon functions integral to the role of the grand jury and did not violate the grand jury's independence); Marcucci, 299 F.3d at 1163-64 (holding constitutional instructions consistent with the historical function of the grand jury that informed the grand jurors that they were not merely an arm of the government, but rather an independent body). The citizens called to serve on a grand jury are given instructions by the district court regarding their role and function. Mindful of the grand jury's historical role and the constitutional guarantee of independence in fulfilling it, we turn to Caruto's objections to the specific instructions the district court gave to the grand jury that indicted her.
Caruto first challenges an instruction to ignore potential punishment in deciding whether to indict. Her argument here is necessarily a narrow one, because we have already rejected a constitutional challenge to a similar instruction. In United States v. Cortez-Rivera, 454 F.3d 1038 (9th Cir.2006), we held that there was no constitutional error in a model charge reading: Furthermore, when deciding whether or not to indict, you should not be concerned about punishment in the event of conviction; judges alone determine punishment. Id. at 1040-41. In its instructions to the grand jury that indicted Caruto, the district court delivered the permissible instruction verbatim, then elaborated on its theme, saying: Furthermore, when deciding whether or not to indict, you should not be concerned about punishment in the event of conviction. Judges alone determine punishment. If you think about it for a minute[,] because your function is a preliminary one anyway, it would presuppose guilt for you to be thinking about punishment. A person is still entitled to a trial, and the outcome of that trial is far from certain up until all the evidence has been presented and the trial jury begins to deliberate. So punishment should not concern you in the performance of your duties whatsoever. Caruto contends that the judge's off-script addition to the model chargein particular, the instruction that punishment should not concern you in the performance of your duties whatsoever  (emphasis added)rendered it unconstitutional. She argues that the added emphasis of whatsoever eliminated the limited room ... for a grand jury to consider punishment that she maintains saved the instruction in Cortez-Rivera from unconstitutionality. Cortez-Rivera, 454 F.3d at 1041 (internal quotation marks omitted). Caruto misapprehends the basis for our decision in Cortez-Rivera. In that case we deemed [t]he distinction between `should' and `shall' ... dispositive. Id. at 1041. We concluded, following Marcucci and Navarro-Vargas, that the instruction did not invade upon the grand jury's constitutional role because the instruction used the term `should,' making the instruction permissive rather than mandatory. Id. at 1040-41. It was this permissiveness, not the degree of emphasis in the remainder of the instruction, that le[ft] roomalbeit limited roomfor a grand jury to consider punishment and thus preserved the grand jury's historical prerogative. Id. at 1041 (internal quotation marks omitted). The addition of whatsoever to an already emphatic model instruction did not effectively change its character from permissive to mandatory. Because that is the distinction that matters under our precedent, we must reject Caruto's attempt to distinguish this instruction from the one that we previously upheld. Any error here was harmless, in any event. We recently observed that the Supreme Court, in Bank of Nova Scotia v. United States, 487 U.S. 250, 108 S.Ct. 2369, 101 L.Ed.2d 228 (1988), adopted the standard ... that for errors brought to the district court's attention `prior to the conclusion of the trial,' dismissal of the indictment `is appropriate only if it is established that the violation substantially influenced the grand jury's decision to indict or if there is grave doubt that the decision to indict was free from the substantial influence of such violations.' United States v. Navarro, 608 F.3d 529, 539 (9th Cir.2010). Nothing in this case supports the proposition that the grand jury would have refused to indict Caruto, who imported 34.5 kilograms of cocaine into the United States with the intent to distribute it, even if it had known that she was facing a ten-year sentence. Drug smugglers and dealers are not sympathetic figures. No facts about Caruto or her crime have been identified to us that might have generated sympathy in her particular case sufficient to fend off indictment. Facts that might prompt sympathy in a particular case are not likely to be known by the grand jury anyway, because defense counsel does not have a right to make a presentation to the grand jury, and the prosecutor is not obligated to present exculpatory evidence. United States v. Williams, 504 U.S. 36, 112 S.Ct. 1735, 118 L.Ed.2d 352 (1992). Caruto has given no reason for us to have any serious concern, let alone to have grave doubt, that the grand jury would not have indicted her had the district court's instruction not departed from the model charge. Any error here was harmless.
Caruto next contends, along similar lines, that the district court's elaboration regarding the wisdom of the criminal laws went so far beyond a permissible model instruction as to render the charge here unconstitutional. The model instruction, which we held constitutional in Navarro-Vargas, states: You cannot judge the wisdom of the criminal laws enacted by Congress, that is, whether or not there should or should not be a federal law designating certain activity as criminal. That is to be determined by Congress and not by you. Navarro-Vargas, 408 F.3d at 1202. The district judge recited the model instruction almost word-for-word, then supplemented it with additional commentary, saying: As grand jury, you are not to judge the wisdom of the criminal laws enacted by Congress. What that means is you are not to determine whether or not there should or should not be a federal law designating certain activity as criminal. That is to be determined by Congress and not by you. Are you helpless in this regard? No. You can go to the ballot box at the time of election, and if you disagree with the law, you can vote to change it or vote out of office those who support the law that you disagree with. But in this branch of government, the judicial branch of government, we apply the laws as the other branches give them to us. We don't pass on the wisdom of those laws whether we agree with them or not. I can tell you as a United States District Judge, I frequently have to pass judgment on laws that were I a member of Congress, I would have voted the other way on some of the things, but my function is circumscribed here by that responsibility. So you must follow the law as it is given you by the U.S. Attorney, given from the code books enacted by Congress. Caruto maintains that two of the court's additions rendered this instruction unconstitutional: (1) the suggestion that jurors could go to the ballot box at the time of election, and if you disagree with the law, you can vote to change it or vote out of office those who support the law that you disagree with; and (2) the court's comparison of the grand jury's role to that of members of the judiciary, who are obligated to apply the laws as the other branches give them to us. On the first point, Caruto argues that the court's voting advice improperly limited the grand jury's power by implying that jurors could only oppose laws they disagreed with by voting against them. This implication, Caruto claims, disparaged the grand jury's power to refuse to indict for any reason. This argument fails because the court's additional language did not say that voting was jurors' exclusive recourse or alter the basic message conveyed by the instruction we approved in Navarro-Vargas. Caruto's second point is premised on the theory that the court informed the grand jurors that they were part of the judicial branch, denying them the independence that flows from operating, as the Constitution contemplates, outside of any branch of the government. We disagree with Caruto's understanding of what the court said. In context, it is clear that the court did not assign the grand jury to the judicial branch or any other branch of government. The judge merely drew an analogy between his own duty, as a member of the judiciary, to apply Congress's laws and the grand jury's duty, under the concededly constitutional model instruction, not to question whether or not there should or should not be a federal law designating certain activity as criminal. Neither of the challenged elaborations distinguished the wisdom of the laws instruction given in this case, in any constitutionally significant sense, from the model instruction we previously approved. The motion to dismiss the indictment on this ground was properly denied.