Opinion ID: 55118
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Proffer Agreement

Text: Mathis next asserts statements made to the Government under a proffer agreement should have been excluded pursuant to derivative-use immunity. Mathis contends that his conviction on Count Five should be vacated because the Government obtained and used evidence uncovered directly from his proffer, and not from derivative sources, relying on Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441, 92 S. Ct. 1652 (1972). The district court ruled that because the Government did not grant Mathis any immunity related to the proffer, a Kastigar hearing was unnecessary. We agree. The interpretation of a proffer agreement is generally controlled by principles of contract law. United States v. Pielago, 135 F.3d 703, 709 (11th Cir. 1998). When the district court interprets a contract without reference to extrinsic evidence, we review the interpretation de novo. United Benefit Life Ins. Co. v. United States Life Ins. Co., 36 F.3d 1063, 1065 (11th Cir. 1994). 4 In Pielago, the proffer agreement provided: “The government also expressly reserves the right to pursue any and all investigative leads derived from . . . statements or information and use such derivative evidence in any criminal or civil proceeding against her and/or others.” 135 F.3d at 710. We concluded this provision did not conflict with an earlier provision providing: “No information or statement provided . . . may be used against [her] in this case or any other criminal investigation.” Id. Mathis’s proffer agreement contained almost verbatim the two sentences in Pielago, which were held to allow the government to use anything derived from the proffer agreement except the defendant’s statements and information making up the proffer. Id. Here, the Government used facts derived from the statements and not “statements and information which made up [Mathis’s] proffer.” See id. Thus, the district court’s ruling was not in error.