Opinion ID: 2654427
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the term of the grand jury,

Text: including extensions, before which such refusal to comply with the court order occurred, but in no event shall such confinement exceed eighteen months. The parties dispute the significance of both Shillitani and § 1826(a) in this case. Their sharpest dissensus, however, concerns the import of our holding in Caucus Distributors, in which we relied on both Shillitani and § 1826(a) to hold that civil contempt fines could not extend beyond the life of the original grand jury and into the term of a successor grand jury. 871 F.2d at 161. Our holding rested on Shillitani's conclusion that the justification for coercive civil contempt vanishes when the contemnor can no longer purge himself: Perhaps our most significant difficulty lies in contemplating how, when witnesses have been subpoenaed, as here, both 'to appear . . . to testify' and to bring documents to a specific grand jury and that jury has been discharged, a court would handle attempts to purge. . . . [A] court would be placed in the anomalous position of determining whether the response of a witness in supplying or failing to supply documents facilitated or frustrated the work of a grand jury that no longer existed. . . . Particularly since it would be relatively simple -- and clear cut -- for a successor grand jury to reimpose coercive 8 sanctions, we prefer not to enter this thicket. Id. at 162. The government suggests that Caucus Distributors is distinguishable from this case in that both the underlying subpoena and the subsequent contempt order were issued during the term of the first grand jury. In its estimation, the original grand jury contemplated in Caucus Distributors is the one before which the subpoena was enforced via contempt sanctions (here, the stillempanelled second grand jury); NITHPO, by contrast, implies that Caucus Distributors instead focused on the grand jury under whose auspices the underlying subpoena was issued in the first place (here, the defunct first grand jury). We find Caucus Distributors inconclusive on this point. Moreover, although the government highlights the language of § 1826(a) limiting confinement to the term of the grand jury . . . before which such refusal to comply with the court order occurred, we conclude that § 1826(a) also does not address the precise question presented in this case. The issue before us is not the proper duration of the contempt order imposed during the second grand jury's term, but rather whether that contempt order, based on NITHPO's failure to comply with a previous grand jury's subpoena, was properly issued at all. The government's position is not without some support in the caselaw. Confronted with a case similar to this one, in which 9 an initial grand jury issued a subpoena duces tecum and the district court granted the government's motion to compel compliance during the term of a successor grand jury, the D.C. Circuit distinguished our holding in Caucus Distributors and held that the first grand jury's subpoena could be enforced during the term of the successor grand jury. In re Sealed Case, 223 F.3d 775, 778 (D.C. Cir. 2000). In the D.C. Circuit's view, because the successor grand jury had indisputably carried the investigation forward, the concerns that we had stated in Caucus Distributors about determining when an investigation has ceased were not implicated. Id. (citing Caucus Distribs., 871 F.2d at 161) (internal quotation marks omitted). The D.C. Circuit, like the government on this appeal, also pointed to our observation in Caucus Distributors that a subpoena issued by one grand jury may be used to obtain evidence for a second grand jury. Caucus Distribs., 871 F.2d at 160 (citing In re Grand Jury Proceedings (Sutton), 658 F.2d 782, 783 (10th Cir. 1981) (upholding a district court order commanding delivery of documents subpoenaed by an expired grand jury)). That isolated sentence, however, cannot bear the weight placed upon it. Because the government in Caucus Distributors did not move to compel compliance before the second grand jury, we did not have occasion, as we do now, to determine the enforceability of the first grand jury's subpoena before a successor grand jury. Indeed, 10 we cited Sutton for this proposition only in describing the underpinning of the government's unsuccessful argument in Caucus Distributors. As an observation[] . . . not essential to the determination of the legal questions then before the court, this statement is therefore non-binding dicta. Arcam Pharm. Corp. v. Faría, 513 F.3d 1, 3 (1st Cir. 2007) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Dedham Water Co., Inc. v. Cumberland Farms Dairy, Inc., 972 F.2d 453, 459 (1st Cir. 1992).4 To the extent that Sutton and Sealed Case approve the use of the contempt power in the circumstances now before us, we disagree with those decisions. Such a rule, allowing the imposition of contempt sanctions even where a contemnor is unable to purge himself of contumacy before the subpoenaing grand jury, would vitiate the coercive rationale for civil contempt. The 4 The government also points to cases in which we have held that the government can transfer materials presented before one grand jury to a successor grand jury. See, e.g., In re United States, 441 F.3d 44, 63 (1st Cir. 2006); United States v. Contenti, 735 F.2d 628, 631 n.1 (1st Cir. 1984). These cases are not germane to the question presented here, however, as they address whether evidence already obtained by the first grand jury is transferable to the second grand jury, not whether the second grand jury can obtain new evidence by enforcing its predecessor's subpoena. We also find distinguishable the Fifth Circuit's decision in United States v. Stevens, 510 F.2d 1101, 1106 (5th Cir. 1975). Although Stevens upheld a civil contempt order based on the appellant's noncompliance with a previous grand jury's subpoena, the first grand jury's subpoena had expressly ordered the appellant to testify before the second grand jury after its empanelment. Stevens therefore addressed the distinct question of whether the first grand jury was authorized to order the appellant's appearance before a grand jury not yet empanelled. Id. at 1104. 11 second grand jury may have taken up the investigation, but the subpoena was issued in the name of, and ordered the production of records before, the first grand jury at a specified date and time. As Judge Hand stated in Loubriel, NITHPO's duty [to testify] . . . was measured by the subpoena, the only process under which [NITHPO] could be required to appear and to testify at all. 9 F.2d at 809. That subpoena did not require [NITHPO's] attendance before any other than the [October 2012] grand jury. Id.; see also In re Grand Jury, August, 1965 (McClintock Merchantile Co.), 360 F.2d 917, 918 (7th Cir. 1966) (finding no basis for anxiety that the respondent can be required to appear . . . before some other grand jury under a subpoena direct[ing] attendance on a certain day, at a certain hour, before the August term, 1965 of the grand jury). It follows as a matter of logic that NITHPO could only comply with the subpoena so long as the issuing grand jury was in existence. In this case, the subpoenaing grand jury was dead to begin with.5 It had expired even before the government moved to compel compliance with its subpoena. The district court's order granting the motion to compel therefore ran afoul of the maxim lex non cogit ad impossibilia -- literally, [t]he law does not compel to impossible ends,6 Black's Law Dictionary 1844 (9th ed. 2009). 5 Cf. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843). 6 This principle is discussed more thoroughly in Herbert Broom, A Selection of Legal Maxims 237-46 (6th ed. 1884). It is perhaps most familiarly embodied in the common-law contractual 12 See Collins, 146 F. at 554. NITHPO could not produce documents before a grand jury that no longer existed, and therefore could, of course, be no longer compelled to discharge a duty which had ended. Loubriel, 9 F.2d at 809; see also In re Grand Jury Proceedings, Thursday Special Grand Jury Sept. Term, 1991, 33 F.3d 342, 347 (4th Cir. 1994) (The subpoenas issued by the September Term 1991 grand jury . . . clearly do not have force as a result of the expiration of that grand jury.); accord In re Special Investigation No. 195, 454 A.2d 843, 846 (Md. 1983) (The grand jury was dead. There was no one to whom the subpoena was returnable. . . . It thus was impossible to enforce the subpoena.). The impossibility of compliance in turn left NITHPO unable to purge itself of contempt. The proverbial key in NITHPO's pocket fit a lock that no longer existed. Cf. Gompers, 221 U.S. at 442. We accordingly take guidance from Shillitani's dictate that civil contempt sanctions are inappropriate when a contemnor has no further opportunity to purge himself of contempt. 384 U.S. at doctrine of impossibility, which excuses a party's contractual performance [w]here the means of performance have been nullified, making performance objectively impossible. 30 Williston on Contracts § 77:25 (4th ed. 2013); see also, e.g., Taylor v. Caldwell, 122 E.R. 309, 314 (K.B. 1863) (The principle seems to us to be that, in contracts in which the performance depends on the continued existence of a given person or thing, a condition is implied that the impossibility of performance arising from the perishing of the person or thing shall excuse the performance.); The Tornado, 108 U.S. 342, 351 (1883) (applying rule of Taylor). 13 371. Because it was impossible for NITHPO to purge itself of contempt, the contempt order served no coercive purpose and was therefore improperly entered. See Loubriel, 9 F.2d at 809 (following discharge of the subpoenaing grand jury, appellant could not be lawfully detained thereafter, merely to compel compliance with the subpoena); Sara Sun Beale et al., Grand Jury Law and Practice § 11:17 (2d. ed. 2013) ([T]he witness's confinement cannot last longer than the session of the grand jury before which the witness was subpoenaed, because the termination of the grand jury's session ends the witness's ability to comply with the court's order, and thus ends the possible coercive effect of the civil contempt sanction.); see also Levine, 288 F.2d at 274. In parting, we note that the government has argued that this conclusion would establish an arbitrary and formalistic rule requiring reissuance of subpoenas upon each transfer between grand juries, which merely creates a trap for the unwary prosecutor and an incentive for would-be contemnors to engage in delaying tactics, as happened here. Of concern to us, however, is that the government's proposed alternative -- allowing reiterative civil contempt sanctions before future grand juries based on noncompliance with an old subpoena -- would render the grand jury subpoena process all but meaningless. Particularly since we and other courts have long recognized that a prosecutor may simply obtain subpoenas issued in blank by the court, fill in the blanks, 14 and have the witnesses served without consulting the grand jury, In re Melvin, 546 F.2d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 1976) -- a point that the government itself stresses on this appeal -- we see no great administrative difficulty in requiring, as a precondition to the use of coercive contempt power, the issuance of a new subpoena for each new grand jury. If the current grand jury or a successor desires information from a recalcitrant NITHPO, the government need do no more than obtain a new, enforceable subpoena. That is a small price to pay for access to one of the most potent weapons in the judicial armamentarium. Project B.A.S.I.C., 947 F.2d at 16.