Opinion ID: 419603
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Admission of Suppressed Evidence as to Perjury Charges

Text: 26 The government argues, citing to holdings of three sister circuits, that even if the evidence must be suppressed as to the conspiracy and odometer tampering charge, it should be admissible as to the perjury charges because the alleged perjury occurred after the illegal search and seizure. See United States v. Paepke, 550 F.2d 385 (7th Cir.1977); United States v. Turk, 526 F.2d 654, 667 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 823, 97 S.Ct. 74, 50 L.Ed.2d 84 (1976); United States v. Raftery, 534 F.2d 854 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 862, 97 S.Ct. 167, 50 L.Ed.2d 141 (1976); LaFave at Sec. 11.6. But see United States v. Ceccolini, 542 F.2d 136 (2d Cir.1976), rev'd on other grounds, 435 U.S. 268, 98 S.Ct. 1054, 55 L.Ed.2d 268 (1978). We agree with the reasoning of these courts. The government's interest in admitting the evidence in such cases is substantial: if the evidence were suppressed, victims of illegal searches and seizures could commit perjury indiscriminately knowing that the government would be barred from using probative evidence in a subsequent trial. Cf. Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222, 226, 91 S.Ct. 643, 646, 28 L.Ed.2d 1 (1971) (Miranda violation cannot be perverted into a license to use perjury by way of a defense, free from the risk of confrontation with prior inconsistent utterances). At the same time, the admission of the evidence will ordinarily have little if any impact on the deterrent effect of the exclusionary rule. As the Fifth Circuit stated in Turk: 27 When the Government is effectively denied the possibility of direct prosecution on the basis of illegally seized evidence, no significant additional deterrent effect could be realized by suppressing the evidence at a trial of the search victim for a crime committed after the illegal search and with the knowledge that the illegal search occurred. 28 526 F.2d at 667. This is particularly so in cases like the present where, although the illegal search and seizure was carried out by state officials, the perjury counts are being federally prosecuted. We thus hold that the illegally obtained evidence was not suppressible on fourth amendment grounds as to the perjury indictment. 29 But while evidence of this character is not, in the ordinary sense, suppressible at trials for subsequent acts of perjury, there may be ample reason to exclude it at this single trial involving both the perjury counts and the conspiracy and motor vehicle counts. The suppression order as to the latter counts would be meaningless if the suppressed evidence could be presented to the same jury as part of the government's perjury case. Cf. Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968) (limiting instructions do not cure sixth amendment violation where defendant cannot cross-examine as to statement of codefendant admitted only against the codefendant). The illegally acquired evidence here was vast in quantity and highly probative of the conspiracy and motor vehicle charges. An instruction would insufficiently remove the prejudice. Under such circumstances, while the material is technically not suppressible as to the perjury counts, it is excludable from the trial as a whole. 4 We thus affirm the suppression order relative to the perjury counts insofar as it is taken to be an advance ruling forbidding use of the evidence at a single trial involving the conspiracy and motor vehicle counts. Were the government to request a severed trial and the district court to grant it, or were the government to proceed only on the perjury counts, there would cease to be any proper reason to withhold this evidence. We hold only that the district court did not abuse its discretion in barring the admission of the evidence from a proceeding trying both the perjury and the other counts.