Opinion ID: 2371982
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Bartkus Exception

Text: The Supreme Court has insinuated an incommodious exception to the principle of dual sovereignty. In Bartkus, Justice Frankfurter suggested that dual state and federal prosecutions might run afoul of the general rule affirming such prosecutions if one authority was acting as a tool of the other, or if the state prosecution merely was a sham and a cover for a federal prosecution. Bartkus, 359 U.S. at 123-24, 79 S.Ct. 676. Although a number of courts have inferred an exception to the dual sovereignty rule from this language in Bartkus, see United States v. Raymer, 941 F.2d 1031, 1037 (10th Cir. 1991); United States v. Bernhardt, 831 F.2d 181, 182 (9th Cir.1987), the exception is considered extremely narrow and difficult to prove. [8] See United States v. Rashed, 234 F.3d 1280, 1282 (D.C.Cir. 2000); United States v. Guzman, 85 F.3d 823, 827 (1st Cir.1996); United States v. Figueroa-Soto, 938 F.2d 1015, 1019 (9th Cir.1991). As articulated by the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Guzman, the exception is limited to situations in which one sovereign so thoroughly dominates or manipulates the prosecutorial machinery of another that the latter retains little or no volition in its own proceedings. Guzman, 85 F.3d at 827. However, even in Guzman, in which the evidence indicated that an agent of the United States traveled to the island of St. Maarten, alerted St. Maarten police to the defendant's presence on a ship smuggling drugs, participated in a search for drugs on board, and testified at trial, the court held that those facts demonstrated, nothing more than the rendering of routine intergovernmental assistance. Guzman, 85 F.3d at 828. The court concluded that [c]ooperative law enforcement efforts between independent sovereigns are commendable, and, without more, such efforts will not furnish a legally adequate basis for invoking the Bartkus exception to the dual sovereign rule. Id. In the instant case, defendant urges this Court to rule that the dual sovereignty doctrine does not apply because of the joint efforts of New York and Rhode Island officials to prosecute defendant. The defendant asserts that [e]ach state acted on behalf of the other[,] and that the conduct of the law enforcement officials merged the prosecutions to such an overlapping extent that they were no longer separate. Accordingly, defendant contends that Rhode Island has waived any right it may have had pursuant to the doctrine of dual sovereignty. Based upon our de novo review of the record in this case, we concur with the motion justice that defendant has not presented sufficient evidence to warrant an application of the Bartkus exception. As the motion justice articulated in his decision, the evidence suggested that the victim, Ricardo Gomez, was kidnapped from Rhode Island and remained, in continuous kidnapped custody until he was killed. Wherever the fatal blow was struck or Ricardo Gomez drew his last breath, the presence of his remains in New York gave that state the strongest prima facie claim of jurisdiction to prosecute the homicide. There is no evidence what[so]ever that Rhode Island prosecutorial authority dominated or manipulated the New York law enforcement officers or prosecutors in their investigation and prosecution of a person accused of murder, over which Rhode Island had at best a highly questionable jurisdiction, so that the New York prosecution was a sham. Nonetheless, defendant submits that certain events demonstrate the extent to which the Rhode Island Attorney General and the New York District Attorney collaborated to bring about successive prosecutions for the murder and kidnapping of Ricardo Gomez. According to the record, defendant and his cohort, Edward Pozo, were both indicted in Rhode Island for extortionate kidnapping and conspiracy in June of 2000. Although Mr. Pozo was extradited to Rhode Island, defendant remained in New York to await trial for the murder of Ricardo Gomez. The defendant insists that the decision by the Attorney General in Rhode Island to extradite Mr. Pozo, and not defendant, implicitly evinces an agreement with the District Attorney in New York to divide the prosecutions for murder and kidnapping between the two jurisdictions. Moreover, defendant maintains that each jurisdiction's offer of immunity to Martha Villalona, defendant's girlfriend, for her alleged participation in the kidnapping, in exchange for her testimony, further illustrates the existence of this alleged agreement. Contrary to the defendant's assertion, however, we do not infer from the evidence that any surreptitious agreement, either express or implied, existed between the prosecutors in Rhode Island and New York to prosecute the defendant successively for murder and kidnapping. We fail to see how the extradition of Mr. Pozo, or the immunity offered to Ms. Villalona, demonstrates a merger of prosecutorial effort arising to such an insidious level as to devastate the sovereignty of either jurisdiction. Despite the defendant's allegations, we agree with the trial justice's findings that: At best, all the defendant shows is mutual cooperation between the two states to investigate and prosecute the defendant for the respective charges, in which each jurisdiction had the greater interest.    The conduct of police and prosecutors    [has been] shown to be nothing more than the type of routine cooperation commended by the court in United States v. Guzman   . The purely speculative conclusory allegations of the defendant    do not demonstrate that either state was acting as the prosecutorial tool of the other.