Opinion ID: 2828954
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Prejudice Proven

Text: Alternatively, even if a finding of prejudice is required here, the district court did not err in finding that the government’s misconduct in this prosecution prejudiced the defendants. Although defendants frequently seek mistrials alleging prosecutorial misconduct, their motions are rarely granted. Even when a district court finds that misconduct occurred, it must also normally find that the misconduct in question actually prejudiced the defense. United States v. Bowler, 252 F.3d 741, 747 (5th Cir. 2001). Prejudice, in turn depends on the extent to which the particular misconduct contributed to a guilty verdict. Id. The online activities here were viewed by Perricone as a “public service,” designed among other things to influence the community and put pressure on the various defendants who were being pursued by the AUSO. Dobinski also characterized her encouragement of other commenters about the ongoing trial as a public service. The district court was unable to capture the extent of prejudice during jury selection or trial because the tainted source of the comments had not yet been revealed. On reviewing jury questionnaires for the new trial motion, however, the district court found that seven of twelve seated jurors had visited the Nola.com website in the months preceding trial. Further, according to the district court’s review, jurors who visited the website appeared to have a lower 31 Case: 13-31078 Document: 00513162268 Page: 32 Date Filed: 08/20/2015 No. 13-31078 opinion of NOPD officers’ honesty. Cf. Harbin, 250 F.3d at 545 (prejudice presumed despite no proof of bias by replacement juror). From a practical standpoint, the defendants were prejudiced because the district court found its investigation of jury selection process could not be effectively pursued years later. See, e.g., District Court’s Order and Reasons, December 12, 2013, at 2223 (explaining why an inquiry into juror bias so long after trial is unworkable). Additionally, the district court believed that the government pressured cooperating defendants to seek plea deals and then to shade their testimony against the others. The district court reiterated that government threats of perjury charges against defense witnesses, which had never materialized, prompted several not to testify at the trial. If prosecutorial misconduct must spawn prejudice that is shown to be outcome-determinative, then the congeries of overbearing activities in this trial might not meet that goal. On the other hand, the facts that the government engaged in misconduct, which took place off the record but in public, and that the misconduct was directed at the public but defies investigation because of the government’s tactics, should tip toward a finding of prejudice. On-the-record misconduct can be easily evaluated; the misconduct here cannot. Furtive misconduct should not escape remedy simply because it was furtive. See Sipe, 388 F. 3d at 477 (affirming new trial grant for cumulative prosecutorial errors and omissions). A prosecutor’s status, moreover, enhances the credibility of public comments and magnifies the adverse consequences of the commenter’s inappropriate remarks. The prosecutor’s comments implicate his or her inside knowledge of prosecutorial activity as they explain the significance of particular events during a case. Bias or vindictiveness in the prosecutor’s comments, reflected repeatedly in Perricone’s postings, cast doubt on the integrity of the process, as did Jan’s Mann’s online questioning of the district 32 Case: 13-31078 Document: 00513162268 Page: 33 Date Filed: 08/20/2015 No. 13-31078 court’s motives in a related Danziger Bridge prosecution. Dobinski’s contributions encouraged and approved one-sided reports about the trial. All of these experienced, high-level prosecutors were well aware that they were forbidden, legally and ethically, from making in public the statements they communicated online. They all knew that employment sanctions should be imposed for their activities if undertaken publicly. Although the government does not deny the impropriety of online anonymous comments about pending cases, it downplays their prejudicial effects in several ways. First, the government argues that anonymity diminishes the cloak of authority that would otherwise surround the prosecutor’s pronouncements. Because the online community does not know that a prosecutor is speaking, it cannot be adversely influenced by his inflammatory opinions. Second, the extent of the publicity surrounding the anonymous comments is uncertain because no one knows how many people read online comments to the newspaper of record. Third, these comments amounted to no more than voices in a chorus of public opinion on the Danziger Bridge trial and were no more likely to exert an influence than those of any other chorister. These arguments are not insubstantial, but they are outweighed by the insidious nature of prosecutorial anonymity, the growing influence of online communications to mold public opinion in our society, and the danger of mob reactions. Anonymity provokes irresponsibility in the speaker. A prosecutor may attempt to comment anonymously in a pending case, whether in a bar, on a talk radio show, or online. It is hard to cloak one’s experiences, however, and listeners can easily infer, as a number of readers within the New Orleans USAO evidently did, that someone with “insider knowledge” is making the comments. The speaker thus trades on his air of self-importance and his 33 Case: 13-31078 Document: 00513162268 Page: 34 Date Filed: 08/20/2015 No. 13-31078 special knowledge, while imparting a biased and dramatic flair to his anonymous commentary. Unlike this court’s recent decision in United States v. McRae, 27 that there is no “proof” that members of the venire panel or actual jurors read or were influenced by the online comments exacerbates rather than alleviates prejudice here. Anonymous postings prevent uncovering the extent of improper influence, adding injury to the insult of the biased, inflammatory, and improper communications themselves. Had the comments in this case been delivered by the prosecutors without the shield of anonymity, the extent of the harm would have been quantifiable, but their actions eliminated the measurement of harm. Moreover, the government overlooks that potential harm extends not just to jurors but others involved in the case. It is well to assume that the jurors, once impaneled, followed the district court’s 27 In United States v. McRae, No. 14-30995, 2015 WL 4542651 (5th Cir. July 28, 2015), this court recently denied a new trial request to a former New Orleans police officer convicted of different crimes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The court found no actual or presumed prejudice attending online postings about the case by Sal Perricone. Id. at . That decision is distinguishable for two reasons. Most important, McRae argued only “that the court should presume prejudice where deliberate and egregious government misuse of the media is combined with extensive pretrial publicity adverse to the defendant.” He relied principally on the Supreme Court’s decision in Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S. 358, 130 S. Ct. 2896 (2010), which we have distinguished, and not on Brecht’s identification of “hybrid error.” Indeed, the McRae court does not address Brecht. Second, unlike in this case, the McRae court was not tasked with attempting to uncover the extent of press leaks or government online commenting, nor was it obstructed in doing so by government delays, nor was there cumulative evidence of high-handed prosecutorial tactics, nor was there evidence that members of the jury may have been exposed to the online commenting before the trial, nor were the court’s ultimate conclusions founded in grave uncertainty about the extent of government misconduct or the impact on the trial. Finally, McRae and this case share an important characteristic: each decision affirms the trial court's exercise of its discretion to determine whether the “interest of justice” demands a new trial under Rule 33. See United States v. Wall, 389 F.3d 457, 465 (5th Cir. 2004) (appellate review of district courts Rule 33 decision “is necessarily deferential to the trial court”). The steady trickle of troubling revelations about the ongoing misconduct here undermined “confidence in the jury verdict” even without an explicit connection between the comments and the jury, or between the prosecutors and the case team, that McRae viewed as indicative of prejudice. 34 Case: 13-31078 Document: 00513162268 Page: 35 Date Filed: 08/20/2015 No. 13-31078 instructions not to obtain extrinsic information about the trial. For defendants, for the cooperating defendants who testified for the government, and for defense witnesses, however, there are no such restrictions. Only a naif would think that these people, and their families and friends, were not avidly consuming all available sources of information from the inception of the prosecution through trial. Inflammatory and biased online comments to news articles must have affected the participants’ approaches to their defense, testimony, or decisions to testify. That there was some influence, although unquantifiable under these circumstances, seems inescapable. Most pernicious, these attorneys’ online comments knowingly contributed to the mob mentality potentially inherent in instantaneous, unbridled, passionate online discourse. These prosecutors created an air of bullying against the defendants whose rights they, especially Dobinski, were sworn to respect. That they were several among dozens of commenters, some of whom may have disagreed with their views, does not dissipate the effect of this online cyberbullying. Just as a mob protesting outside the courthouse has the potential to intimidate parties and witnesses, so do streams of adverse online comments. The impact is felt not only by the defendants but by codefendants pressed to plead guilty or defense witnesses dissuaded from testifying. Preventing mob justice is precisely the goal of prosecutorial ethical constraints. The government here should not be able to shelter under a banner of “no prejudice proved” while the prosecutors acted no better than, and indeed tried to inflame, the public. For all these reasons, we conclude that the district court did not err in finding that the defendants were prejudiced by the government’s misconduct. On this basis, too, the defendants are entitled to a new trial. 35 Case: 13-31078 Document: 00513162268 Page: 36 Date Filed: 08/20/2015 No. 13-31078 The government also argues that official and professional discipline were adequate to rebuke Perricone, Jan Mann, and Dobinski and should have sufficed in lieu of a new trial. Like the district court, we disagree. To begin with, whether those who committed misconduct were disciplined simply does not bear on whether the defendants received a fair trial. It is clear from Perricone, Mann, and Dobinski’s testimony, moreover, that none of them is particularly remorseful about the misconduct, and they claimed to believe their individual First Amendment rights were separable from their positions of public trust. Perricone and Jan Mann both resigned from office with benefits as far as the record shows, although they were referred for professional discipline to the State Bar of Louisiana. Dobinski remains in federal employment with only a bare reproof for her online commenting. Their misdeeds are compounded by the government’s insouciant investigation, which leaves open only three inferences concerning this prosecutorial breakdown: the government is not serious about controlling extracurricular, employmentrelated online commenting by its officials; the government feared what it might uncover by a thorough and timely investigation; or the government’s investigation was incompetent. Exerting professional discipline on three individual government lawyers does nothing to solve the systemic problem, and it is not a sufficient answer to the miscarriage of justice in this case.