Opinion ID: 2325528
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Investigation and Prosecution

Text: Appellant emphasizes that Kastigar requires the government to show 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 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Appellant asserts that in this case, the government did not make the required showing as to the investigation and the prosecution of his criminal case because the record from the Kastigar hearing makes clear that the government did not follow reliable procedures to separate the immunized testimony from subsequent investigation and trial preparation. We are constrained to agree. At the Kastigar hearing, the government presented the testimony of Detective Pamela Herndon [5] and former Assistant United States Attorney Pamela Satterfield, the trial prosecutor. The evidence showed that Herndon, who was the lead investigator assigned to appellant's case, attended the CPO hearing and thus was exposed to appellant's immunized testimony. The government therefore was required to account for each step of the investigative chain in order to prove that Herndon's dealings with witnesses and other investigative tasks were unaffected by the immunized testimony. See Hampton, 775 F.2d at 1490. Since it appeared that her investigatory activities could have been motivated by both tainted and independent factors, the government needed to show that it would have taken the same steps entirely apart from the motivating effect of the immunized testimony. Nanni, 59 F.3d at 1432 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Although Herndon acknowledged at the Kastigar hearing that she attended the CPO hearing, she had no actual recollection of . . . attending it and testified that she did not remember anything from the hearing, including appellant's testimony. She denied attending the hearing to gather information to use against [appellant], and stated that she went there to support the complainant. She testified, however, that she did not remember Patricia Parker independently and did not recognize the name of witness David Brox (whose testimony is discussed infra ). Herndon said that she did not maintain a record of the dates and sources of evidence aside from the notes she recorded in the Metropolitan Police Department database. She could not remember how much work she did on appellant's case after the CPO hearing, but testified that she was sure she had conversations with government witnesses other than Parker after the CPO hearing. [6] Herndon testified that she was not aware that there was anything problematic about her listening to appellant's immunized testimony or using what she learned at the CPO hearing, that she could not recall whether she had received any training or instructions to suggest that she was prohibited in any way from using any information she had learned, and that she took no special steps to ensure that she did not use the immunized testimony. When asked whether anything that happened in that hearing affect[ed] . . . [her] investigation or participation in the prosecution of [appellant], Herndon replied [n]o. The trial court credited Herndon's testimony (and that of the other government witnesses) as truthful. However, given this record, we cannot accept the court's finding that Herndon did not alter her investigation based on [appellant's] testimony. As the government concedes, and as we stated in Aiken, [a] government agent's denials that [she] made use of the immunized testimony, standing alone, are generally insufficient to meet the government's burden. 956 A.2d at 49 (citation omitted). [7] We do not gainsay the trial court's determination that Herndon credibly testified that appellant's CPO testimony had no effect on her investigation of the case, but the issue was not the sincerity of Herndon's belief; it was instead whether the government proved by a preponderance of evidence, beyond Herndon's denials . . . standing alone, Aiken, 956 A.2d at 49, that she made no use of the immunized testimony. The government was required to point to some other evidence to corroborate Herndon's testimony that she did not use the immunized testimony. Schmidgall, 25 F.3d at 1529. [8] We agree with appellant that the government did not meet that burden. We also agree with appellant that given that Herndon was the lead investigator and that David Brox was an important eyewitness, there is more than a reasonable possibility that one of the witnesses she spoke to after the CPO hearing was Brox. We reach a similar conclusion regarding appellant's claim that the government failed to prove that the prosecution was not tainted by at least indirect exposure to his immunized testimony. At the Kastigar hearing, Prosecutor Satterfield testified that she first interviewed Parker on September 28, 2000 (two days after the CPO hearing), shortly before Parker testified in the grand jury on that day. At the time she interviewed Parker, Satterfield knew there had been a CPO hearing. However, she did not recall whether she discussed the hearing with Parker or asked Parker about her own or any other witness's testimony. Satterfield testified that she never read the transcript of appellant's CPO hearing testimony, that neither Herndon nor anyone else had informed her of the substance of appellant's testimony, and that she was not aware of the content of appellant's testimony. Satterfield also testified that she was very aware of the statute that says you are not allowed to use the respondent's testimony in a CPO hearing, and that she was very careful not to ask any questions about that. Satterfield said that she pretty much put blinders on when it came to the defendant's testimony in that CPO hearing, and that she believed that she probably warned Parker and Herndon not to tell her anything about the hearing. Howevernot having met Parker until September 28Satterfield did not attempt to can [9] or in any way record Parker's proffered testimony prior to the September 26 CPO hearing. Furthermore, on cross-examination, Satterfield acknowledged that she may have requested some information about the CPO hearing from the Assistant Attorney General who had handled the CPO hearing, Kristen Hansen. Although Satterfield could not remember speaking to Hansen, a fax cover sheet that Hansen sent to Satterfield on January 8, 2001 (thus, prior to appellant's trial), noted that [u]nder Cruz-Foster, [10] . . . Judge Davis [who presided at the CPO hearing] did hear testimony about the afternoon of August 21 (i.e., dead rat on door). Satterfield admitted that Hansen's statement appeared to be in response to [Satterfield's] asking [Hansen] for something. [11] Moreover, Satterfield estimated that she had handled hundreds of criminal trials, and she agreed that it is [s]ometimes difficult to remember the specifics of one particular case from eight years ago. In concluding that the prosecution was untainted, the trial court credited Satterfield's testimony that she was not directly informed of appellant's testimony. Again, however, [a] government agent's denials that [she] made use of the immunized testimony, standing alone, are generally insufficient to meet the government's burden. Aiken I, 956 A.2d at 49; see also North II, 920 F.2d at 942 (It simply does not follow that insulating prosecutors from exposure automatically proves that immunized testimony was not used against the defendant.). In addition, it is clear from the record that even just a few years after appellant's trial, Satterfield did not have accurate recall about whether she had learned anything about what transpired at the CPO hearing. Recognizing that the prosecutor's prohibited use of appellant's immunized testimony could conceivably include . . . planning cross-examination, and otherwise generally planning trial strategy, United States v. McDaniel, 482 F.2d 305, 311 (8th Cir.1973), and that, as appellant argues, the prosecutor's unwitting exposure [to information about appellant's testimony at the CPO hearing] may have . . . [led] her to ask certain questions during her examination of the witnesses, [12] we must agree with appellant that the government failed to prove that the prosecution was in no way affected by and made no indirect use of his immunized testimony. Cf. United States v. Cozzi, 613 F.3d 725, 730 (7th Cir.2010) (assuming for purposes of appeal that immunized testimony was used since the government had taken no steps to ensure non-use). Our conclusion about the government's failure to prove that it made no use of the immunized testimony in the investigation or prosecution does not end our discussion, however. We still must consider whether the government's presumed use of the immunized testimony, though impermissible, was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt in light of the strength of the government's case against appellant. Aiken I, 956 A.2d at 50. [13] In cases where the immunized testimony contained incriminating information, courts have found it impossible, without canning, to conclude that the investigator's or prosecution's exposure to the statements did not provide investigatory leads or shape the trial preparation or presentation of evidence in a way that was materially prejudicial to the defendant. However, as the trial court in this case recognized, this case is a far cry from the situation in North I and North II and similar cases cited above, where government witnesses were exposed to incriminating immunized testimony[,] making it difficult to determine whether exposure to the immunized testimony may have affected their testimony. Here, by contrast, appellant's CPO hearing testimony was limited in scope and length (it covered just over twenty transcript pages); he denied all of Parker's allegations of assault, stalking, and threats; and he made no inculpatory statements. [14] To put it as the trial court did, appellant's testimony was not helpful to the government, was inconsistent with the government's evidence, and did not lead to the discovery of any evidence against [appellant]. Cf. United States v. Anderson, 450 A.2d 446, 451, 452-53 (D.C.1982) (reasoning that where a defendant had fully confessed his criminal activity to the state grand jury, it was reasonable to assume that the testimony might have been used indirectly in focusing the state's investigation, deciding to prosecute, or in planning trial strategy, such as cross-examination, but that [n]o such assumption is possible in this case because appellee's testimony is devoid of any helpful or incriminating evidence); United States v. Caporale, 806 F.2d 1487, 1518-19 (11th Cir.1986) (reasoning that although the prosecutor had read the immunized testimony before filing the indictment, the issue was whether he used the testimony in any way to build a case against the defendant, and concluding that since the immunized testimony was self-serving and of no real value in the subsequent investigation, there was no Kastigar violation). We also agree with the trial court's observation, made at the outset of the Kastigar hearing, that investigation may not be a good term in this kind of a case (meaning, we assume, that the extent of post-immunized-testimony investigation required in this domestic violence case was limited). Cf. Anderson, 450 A.2d at 452 (reasoning that it was clear that the compelled testimony did not cause the investigation to focus on appellee because appellee had always been the subject and focus of the investigation). As the government argued at the Kastigar hearing, there is in this case little basis for concluding that the government went in a new [investigative] direction based on anything that happened at the CPO hearing. [15] As appellant appears to recognize, the real issue here is whether Herndon's or Parker's discussions with Satterfield may have been shaped or affected by their memory of appellant's immunized testimony or by anything they remembered or focused on because of the testimony discussions that may have affected Satterfield's questioning of Parker or other witnesses, or Satterfield's preparation of trial exhibits. We conclude that to discern whether the government's presumed use of appellant's immunized testimony was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, we must focusas appellant does [16] on how the immunized testimony may have shaped or affected the evidence the government presented at trial.