Opinion ID: 218749
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: The Denial of an Evidentiary Hearing on the Issue of Whether Derivative Evidence Was Used Against Rector

Text: [W]hen presented with a Kastigar challenge, a court's task is to determine whether any of the evidence used against the defendant was in any way derived from his compelled immunized testimony. Schmidgall, 25 F.3d at 1528; United States v. Hampton, 775 F.2d 1479, 1485 (11th Cir.1985). The government has the burden of proving that all of the evidence it obtained and used against the defendant, including the testimony of other witnesses, was untainted at every step of the investigation by immunized testimony. See Schmidgall, 25 F.3d at 1528 (citing Hampton, 775 F.2d at 1489). Even if the government did use immunized testimony in its case against Rector, an indictment or conviction may be upheld on a finding that the use of such tainted evidence was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Schmidgall, 25 F.3d at 1529. The district court made several legal errors in deciding that the hearing it conducted was sufficient for it to conclude that the government had not violated its agreement not to use derivative evidence against Rector. One of those errors is that, at the government's urging, the court considered the derivative evidence issue only as to the evidence to which Rector had objected during the trial. That is contrary to our decision in United States v. Gregory, 730 F.2d 692 (11th Cir.1984). In that case, as in this one, the district court required the government to show an independent source for only the evidence that the defendants had identified and objected to. We found no support for affirmance of that practice in light of Kastigar, and this Court's application of Kastigar in United States v. Seiffert, 463 F.2d 1089 (5th Cir.1972). Id. at 698. We explained that the problem was that [t]he defendants could not be presumed to have knowledge of all of the evidence . . . employed in the government's investigation. Under such circumstances, a ruling only on those items identified by the defendants is not sufficient. Id. ; see also Hampton, 775 F.2d at 1485 ([I]n order to sustain [an] indictment, the government [has] the burden of establishing that all of the evidence presented to the grand jury (and ultimately all of the evidence to be utilized at trial) was derived from legitimate, independent sources.). We remanded for an evidentiary hearing to determine whether the government could prove that all of the evidence it introduced at trialnot just the evidence the defendants objected to was derived from a source independent from the testimony that was compelled under a grant of immunity. Gregory, 730 F.2d at 698. Our Gregory decision requires a remand for a full evidentiary hearing in this case at which the government will have the burden of showing that it did not violate the terms of its proffer agreement with Rector. The government must show how it acquired all of the evidence admitted [against Rector] below. Gregory, 730 F.2d at 698 (quoting Seiffert, 463 F.2d at 1092). Although the government included portions of interviews conducted and copies of subpoenas issued before Rector's proffer as part of the materials it submitted to the district court, that was not enough to carry its burden. Those materials did not rule out the possibility that some of the information that Rector supplied was used to develop some of the evidence presented against him at trial. The inquiry that Gregory and decisions like it require can seldom be satisfied by a mere document dump. And even if it could be, the defendant must be given adequate time to pick through the dump. Rector's counsel was given only 30 minutes to review all of the in camera materials that the government had submitted to the court. There is another problem with the procedure that was followed. Despite Rector's request, the hearing on the Kastigar issue was not an evidentiary one, at least not in the sense that testimony was taken (although documents were submitted). As we have explained, [u]nless the government relies solely upon evidence obtained prior to the immunized testimony, the principles of Kastigar generally require (as a practical matter) a showing that prosecuting officials and their agents were aware of the immunity problem and followed reliable procedures for segregating the immunized testimony and its fruits from officials pursuing any subsequent investigations. Hampton, 775 F.2d at 1490 (citation omitted). It is undisputed that the government attorneys and agents were unaware of the derivative use problem and made no effort to keep the information Rector provided and its fruits away from those who prosecuted him at trial. We know that they made no effort to do that because at the August 16, 2007 hearing the government took the position that it had been completely free to use derivative evidence against Rector. The AUSA told the court, among other things, that it was perfectly okay for the government to use Rector's information in a classic derivative way by confronting another witness with it in order to persuade him to plead guilty and testify against Rector. That classic derivative use of Rector's testimony would have violated the proffer agreement as the district court and this Court have interpreted it. See Schmidgall, 25 F.3d at 1528 (Prohibited indirect derivation includes using immunized testimony to help shape the questioning of another witness.). We know that the government's attorneys and agents took no precautions to ensure that the information Rector supplied was not used to develop evidence against him because that is what the AUSA told the district court at the August 16, 2007 hearing. She forthrightly admitted that if the government had known the proffer agreement barred derivative use of Rector's statements against him, the government would have had to create a taint box, which it did not do in this case because no one does it. By no one does it, we assume she meant that the government had been careful in other cases to draft immunity agreements to permit derivative use, something it neglected to do in Rector's case. There is another fact that stands up and shouts from the transcript. Before she knew that the district court would rule otherwise, the AUSA conceded to the district court that we did what the Government always does in these cases, and that is, we followed in a derivative way; that is, used these things for leads and so forth. That statement can be interpreted as an admission that the government did violate the proffer agreement, as the district court and this Court have interpreted it. The AUSA's statement may be subject to another interpretation but, at the very least, if she fails to testify and credibly explain that statement, the government will not be able to carry its burden of proving that it made no derivative use of Rector's information. [36] In view of all of these circumstances, a thorough evidentiary inquiry, including testimony from all of those who built and presented the case against Rector, is necessary for the district court to determine whether the government has carried its burden of proving that there was no derivative use. The district court did find, alternatively, that any violation of the proffer agreement was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. That finding was premised, however, on the mistaken belief that the derivative use inquiry was limited to the evidence to which Rector had objected. No reliable harmlessness determination can be made until a full evidentiary hearing is conducted into the derivative use issue as to all of the evidence used against Rector. Only after that hearing will the district court be able to reliably determine which evidence the government has failed to show was obtained independently and whether the admission of that evidence was harmless. We realize that the evidentiary hearing will be a burden on the district court and the attorneys for both sides, but that is what the law requires under the particular circumstances of this case. [37] We will vacate the district court's order denying Rector's motion to dismiss the counts on which he had been convicted and will remand his case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.