Opinion ID: 4535302
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Merits of the Hyde Amendment Application

Text: Having dispensed with those threshold issues, we now turn to the merits of the Hyde Amendment award. For the reasons we explain below, we conclude that AUSA Hallowell, acting on behalf of the Government, satisfied the high ethical and professional standards to which we hold prosecutors, and the District Court mistakenly extrapolated from errors on the part of DHS to make findings about the prosecution that the record cannot support. 27 We start with two clarifications about the applicable legal framework and then explain why the Government’s position was neither frivolous nor in bad faith. 11
The Hyde Amendment applies where, “in a[] criminal case[,] . . . the position of the United States was vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith.” 18 U.S.C. § 3006A app. The District Court examined a wealth of case law on the Amendment and accurately summarized much of the applicable legal framework. But we must clarify two aspects of that framework at the outset, one concerning “the position of the United States” and the other the requirement that that position be “vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith.” 11 Although Reyes-Romero argued in the District Court that the Government’s position was also vexatious, the Court found only frivolousness and bad faith, and Reyes-Romero has not specifically argued vexatiousness on appeal. To the extent that argument is implicit in his others, however, we reject it on the same grounds. Vexatiousness embodies two elements: (i) “that the criminal case was objectively deficient, in that it lacked either legal merit or factual foundation”; and (ii) “that the government’s conduct, when viewed objectively, manifests maliciousness or an intent to harass or annoy.” Manzo, 712 F.3d at 810 (citation omitted). The former roughly corresponds to frivolousness and the latter to bad faith, so our analysis here essentially covers all three grounds for a Hyde Amendment award. 28
States” Notwithstanding its reference to “the position of the United States,” 18 U.S.C. § 3006A app., the Hyde Amendment is not a tool to combat misconduct by the federal government writ large. It applies only “in a[] criminal case,” id., which directs us to focus on “the government’s position underlying the prosecution,” Manzo, 712 F.3d at 810 (emphasis added) (quoting Gilbert, 198 F.3d at 1299). The Amendment thus reaches “prosecutorial misconduct” affecting the “case as an inclusive whole,” id. (citations omitted), not misconduct in distinct government proceedings nor isolated “errors” by individual law enforcement officers in the course of the investigation or prosecution, id. at 813. Our sister circuits share that view. The Second Circuit, for instance, reads “the position of the United States” for Hyde Amendment purposes “to mean . . . the government’s general litigation stance: its reasons for bringing a prosecution, its characterization of the facts, and its legal arguments.” United States v. Bove, 888 F.3d 606, 608 (2d Cir. 2018). The Ninth Circuit reads the Amendment as requiring an assessment of “the government’s litigating position as a whole,” not of “other types of bad conduct by government employees during the course of an investigation.” United States v. Mixon, 930 F.3d 1107, 1111 (9th Cir. 2019); see id. at 1112 (requiring “serious misconduct on the part of prosecutors” (emphasis added)). Several others have agreed, see, e.g., Monson, 636 F.3d at 439– 40 (holding that a ruling for the defendant under Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978), which “constitutes a finding that law enforcement deliberately lied or recklessly disregarded the truth,” “does not necessarily mean that . . . the prosecution 29 against the defendant was frivolous or vexatious”), and we are aware of no precedential appellate decision taking a different approach. In sum: The Hyde Amendment demands we “[f]ocus[] on the prosecutors’ conduct,” Monson, 636 F.3d at 439 (emphasis added), and ask whether the alleged prosecutorial misconduct was so “pervasive” as to “render the government’s litigating position as a whole vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith,” Mixon, 930 F.3d at 1112 (emphasis added). The District Court, however, understood the “position of the United States,” 18 U.S.C. § 3006A app., to include both “the litigation position of the DOJ through th[e] . . . U.S. Attorney’s Office and the actions taken (or not taken) by” DHS officers, App. 26 (emphasis added), including as far back as Reyes-Romero’s administrative removal proceeding in 2011. In assessing Reyes-Romero’s Hyde Amendment application, for example, the Court found that DHS officers “railroaded [him] out of the country in 2011” in a manner that was “lacking in any reasonable factual or legal basis” and was therefore frivolous, App. 28–29, and that the officers’ testimony in 2018 “demonstrate[d] clear bad faith” on their part, App. 29. That understanding was mistaken. It assumes that, because the EAJA’s “procedures and limitations” are incorporated into the Hyde Amendment, 18 U.S.C. § 3006A app., and because the EAJA defines “position of the United States” to include, “in addition to the position taken by the United States in the civil action, the action or failure to act by the agency upon which the civil action is based,” 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(2)(D), the Hyde Amendment must also incorporate that definition. But the EAJA’s substantive definition of “position of the United 30 States” is neither a “procedure[]” nor a “limitation[],” so it cannot be read into the Hyde Amendment. And there are good reasons not to compare EAJA apples to Hyde Amendment oranges. For one thing, we took a contrary view in Manzo, emphasizing “the government’s position underlying the prosecution” and asking whether it was “objectively []reasonable for the government to attempt to prosecute” the defendant. 712 F.3d at 810, 813 (emphasis added) (citation omitted); see also, e.g., Mixon, 930 F.3d at 1111 (defining “position of the United States” under the Hyde Amendment without reference to the EAJA definition); Bove, 888 F.3d at 608 & n.10 (noting that the phrase “position of the United States” “cannot mean precisely the same thing in both” the Hyde Amendment and the EAJA). For another, the EAJA covers a much broader swath of litigation, including civil actions arising from agency enforcement or adjudication. See 28 U.S.C. § 2412(a)(1); see also Taylor v. Heckler, 835 F.2d 1037, 1040 (3d Cir. 1987) (under the EAJA, the “position of the United States” necessarily includes “not only the litigation position . . . but also the agency position [that] made the lawsuit necessary” (alterations in original) (citation omitted)). Yet a criminal prosecution for unlawful reentry does not fit that paradigm: Although a previous removal order is “a necessary element to the [§ 1326] charge,” App. 27, the criminal prosecution is distinct from and collateral to the immigration proceeding that led to the order and thus unlike agency enforcement actions that directly lead to civil actions in federal court. For these reasons, 12 we reaffirm the principles set out in Manzo and 12 In interpreting the “position of the United States” to include actions of DHS and its officers, the District Court also 31 cited two out-of-circuit district court opinions—United States v. Holland, 34 F. Supp. 2d 346 (E.D. Va. 1999), and United States v. Gardner, 23 F. Supp. 2d 1283 (N.D. Okla. 1998)— both of which were decided before we or many of our sister circuits had a chance to construe the Amendment. In Holland, the court considered the defendants’ application for costs and fees to flow not from the Hyde Amendment as bounded by the “procedures and limitations” of § 2412(d), but from a distinct open-ended EAJA provision holding the United States “liable for such fees and expenses to the same extent that any other party would be liable under the common law,” 18 U.S.C. § 2412(b). See 34 F. Supp. 2d at 356–59. As the District Court recognized elsewhere in its opinion, Holland’s analysis deviates from the “consensus among circuits that the Hyde Amendment incorporates only those procedures and limitations in subpart (d).” App. 25. And although the Holland court originally found “vexatious misconduct” on the part of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as well as DOJ, it later vacated that portion of its award after concluding the FDIC had lacked “sufficient notice that . . . fees and litigation expenses might be assessed against it.” United States v. Holland, 48 F. Supp. 2d 571, 581 (E.D. Va. 1999). In Gardner, the district court ruled that the EAJA’s broad definition of “position of the United States” is a “procedure or limitation incorporated into the Hyde Amendment” and therefore that executive agencies like the Internal Revenue Service can be swept into that definition. 23 F. Supp. 2d at 1293–95. But that analysis was not based on a rigorous analysis of the Amendment’s statutory text, has never been cited favorably by any court of appeals, and is contrary to both Manzo and our conclusion today. 32 hold that the “position of the United States” for purposes of the Hyde Amendment refers only to the position taken by the department and officers charged with administering the prosecution—here, DOJ and AUSA Hallowell. To be clear, misconduct by law enforcement officers or other executive departments can be relevant to a Hyde Amendment application if prosecutors leverage that misconduct to further a prosecution that has no factual or legal basis or that is brought for purposes of harassment. But because the Amendment is concerned only with prosecutorial misconduct, see Mixon, 930 F.3d at 1112 (“A defendant is not entitled to attorneys’ fees under the Hyde Amendment due to law enforcement misconduct; rather, the focus is on the prosecutors . . . .”), alleged misconduct by DHS or its officers cannot independently create liability for attorney’s fees and costs.
bad faith” The Hyde Amendment applies where the Government’s litigation position “was vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith.” 18 U.S.C. § 3006A app. (emphasis added). We have taken the Amendment’s use of the disjunctive “or” to mean that each ground must be assessed separately, see Manzo, 712 F.3d at 810–11 (laying out different standards for each), and several of our sister circuits agree, see, e.g., Monson, 636 F.3d at 438–39; United States v. Manchester Farming P’ship, 315 F.3d 1176, 1182 (9th Cir. 2003). While the three grounds meaningfully “overlap,” United States v. Terzakis, 854 F.3d 951, 955, 956 n.3 (7th Cir. 2017), analyzing each on its own helps courts focus only on relevant factors and not on a nebulous sense of government impropriety. 33 When we conduct that analysis on this record and consider the Hyde Amendment case law on frivolousness and bad faith, we conclude Reyes-Romero is not entitled to an award.
frivolous We and our sister circuits have laid extensive groundwork for analyzing frivolousness under the Hyde Amendment. For the Government’s position to be frivolous, the prosecution it pursues must be “groundless[,] with little prospect of success.” Manzo, 712 F.3d at 810 (alteration in original) (quoting Gilbert, 198 F.3d at 1299). Said differently, the position must be “foreclosed by binding precedent or . . . obviously wrong,” id. at 811 (quoting United States v. Capener, 608 F.3d 392, 401 (9th Cir. 2010)), and a prosecution based on an unresolved but reasonable legal argument cannot be frivolous, id. See Bove, 888 F.3d at 608 (frivolousness requires a prosecution that is “[m]anifestly insufficient or futile” (alteration in original) (citation omitted)); Monson, 636 F.3d at 440 (to be frivolous, a prosecution must be “utterly without foundation in law or fact” (citation omitted)). In assessing frivolousness, therefore, we view the prosecution through the lens of the elements of the criminal charge and the evidence required to satisfy those elements. We also find guidance in Hyde Amendment case law addressing vexatiousness, which—though a distinct ground for awarding fees, see supra note 11—overlaps with frivolousness to the extent it too requires that the prosecution be “objectively deficient, [meaning] lack[ing] [in] either legal merit or factual foundation.” Manzo, 712 F.3d at 810. In Manzo, for instance, the defendant argued the government had made “blatantly 34 false” allegations about his receipt of a cash bribe. Id. at 812. In that decision, we assumed he had not received the cash and that the government had knowingly presented false testimony. See id. Even so, we explained, the charges against the defendant “did not require the government to prove that he physically received a cash bribe,” and because the government could “plausibly argue that Manzo was aware of the cash payment . . . and played a role in facilitating it,” it maintained a viable—and thus objectively nonfrivolous—pathway to conviction. See id. Manzo controls here. Reyes-Romero did not contest either element required for conviction under § 1326(a)—that he was removed and later found in the country without the Attorney General’s consent. Rather, he sought to attack the removal order collaterally under § 1326(d), which we have treated as akin to an affirmative defense. See Richardson v. United States, 558 F.3d 216, 222 (3d Cir. 2009); United States v. Charleswell, 456 F.3d 347, 358 (3d Cir. 2006). Yet at every point in the prosecution, from the return of the indictment through the decision resolving the parties’ motions to dismiss, the Government had—at minimum—a reasonable argument that ReyesRomero could not show prejudice under § 1326(d)(3) and thus could not make out the affirmative defense. The District Court even recognized as much, characterizing the Government’s position on prejudice as “largely reasonable and based in law.” App. 42. We agree with the characterization of the Government’s prejudice arguments as reasonable and based in law, and we briefly highlight some of the complexities on which those arguments turned. The first was whether Reyes-Romero’s 35 conviction qualified as a “crime of violence,” 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(F) (incorporating 18 U.S.C. § 16’s definition), and thus an aggravated felony rendering him ineligible for asylum, id. § 1158(b)(2)(A)(ii), (B)(i), and cancellation of removal, id. § 1229b(a)(3). Although § 16(b)’s residual clause has been held void for vagueness, Sessions v. Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. 1204, 1210 (2018); Baptiste v. Att’y Gen., 841 F.3d 601, 615–21 (3d Cir. 2016), those decisions were not in place in 2011, and the Government argued prejudice must be assessed as of the underlying removal proceedings rather than as of the collateral challenge to those proceedings. Even setting § 16(b) aside, Reyes-Romero would remain ineligible for asylum and cancellation if his offense fit within § 16(a)’s elements clause, which in turn depended on whether an offense capable of commission through reckless conduct can satisfy that clause—a difficult and open question the Supreme Court recently agreed to resolve, see supra note 3. A related question was whether Reyes-Romero’s offense qualified as a “particularly serious crime” rendering him ineligible for withholding of removal, 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(B)(ii). At the time of his removal, our precedent held “that an offense must be an aggravated felony in order to be classified as a ‘particularly serious crime.’” Alaka v. Att’y Gen., 456 F.3d 88, 105 (3d Cir. 2006). But we have since revisited Alaka, holding that “the phrase ‘particularly serious crime’ . . . includes but is not limited to aggravated felonies.” Bastardo-Vale v. Att’y Gen., 934 F.3d 255, 266–67 (3d Cir. 2019) (en banc). And the notion that second-degree aggravated assault under New Jersey law could have qualified as particularly serious was not out of the question. See, e.g., Aguilar v. Att’y Gen., 665 F. App’x 184, 185–86, 188–89 (3d 36 Cir. 2016) (per curiam) (upholding the BIA’s designation of that offense as particularly serious). 13 We need not review every step in the District Court’s analysis. It is enough to say we agree that whatever the merits of Reyes-Romero’s arguments on prejudice, the Government’s arguments in response were “reasonable and based in law,” App. 42—or, put another way, were far from “foreclosed by binding precedent or . . . obviously wrong,” Manzo, 712 F.3d at 811 (citation omitted). As a result, the Government at all times maintained a viable path to conviction, making its litigation position nonfrivolous under the Hyde Amendment. Reyes-Romero argues to the contrary, urging us to accept the District Court’s reasoning. We address each argument below. 13 There is also the matter of Reyes-Romero’s evidence showing fear of persecution or torture if returned to El Salvador. The District Court concluded Reyes-Romero had shown a reasonable likelihood of obtaining relief from removal, but it did so only after an extensive review of the evidence and the case law, and only after reaching favorable conclusions on close issues such as the cognizability of Reyes-Romero’s family unit as a particular social group, the relevance of incidents that took place in Honduras, and whether the private violence he feared would qualify as torture for CAT protection. That both the IJ and BIA in Reyes-Romero’s subsequent removal proceeding rejected his applications for relief from removal, see supra note 6, further suggests the Government’s arguments were not beyond the pale. 37 We start with language from Reyes-Romero’s indictment stating that he had been “removed from the United States pursuant to law.” App. 31 (quoting App. 63). Reyes-Romero seizes on that language, arguing that if a removal proceeding violated DHS’s rules or a noncitizen’s rights, the noncitizen was not removed “pursuant to law” and thus cannot be prosecuted for unlawful reentry regardless whether he can show that those errors caused him prejudice. But that argument runs aground on our precedent, which holds that “prejudice is a necessary component under [§] 1326(d)(3).” Charleswell, 456 F.3d at 358. In plain terms, a criminal defendant who concedes the elements of § 1326(a) but cannot satisfy § 1326(d)(3)’s prejudice requirement—which, we have held, generally requires a showing of “a reasonable likelihood that the result would have been different if the error in the [removal] proceeding had not occurred,” id. at 362 (citation omitted)—is guilty of unlawful reentry, and the Government’s prosecution of that charge cannot be “groundless,” Manzo, 712 F.3d at 810 (citation omitted). Reyes-Romero’s argument to the contrary is essentially that when a defendant has a good case on some but not all the elements of an affirmative defense, the Government must concede the rest and consent to dismissal on his terms. That simply is not the law. Although our criminal justice system depends on prosecutors’ discretion to decide which cases to pursue, their choice to pursue an objectively valid prosecution is immune from scrutiny by the federal courts. Put another way, our “constitutional framework” is such that “we cannot read the Hyde Amendment to license judicial second-guessing of prosecutions that are objectively reasonable,” United 38 States v. Shaygan, 652 F.3d 1297, 1314 (11th Cir. 2011)—as this prosecution undoubtedly was. Nor was the Government bound to abandon the prosecution because it shined a light on an administrative removal proceeding that, as the Government acknowledges, was something of a “botched job.” Arg. Tr. 15. To the contrary, “[i]t is the responsibility of the Department of Justice to enforce the law vigorously[,] and it cannot abdicate this duty because of possible embarrassment to other agencies of the government.” U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Justice Manual § 9-2.159 (2018), https://www.justice.gov/jm/justice-manual. Despite signs that DHS might have mishandled Reyes-Romero’s administrative removal, AUSA Hallowell nonetheless maintained a nonfrivolous pathway to conviction throughout the prosecution, and under those circumstances we cannot fault him or the office he represents for continuing to seek such a conviction. As a last resort, Reyes-Romero suggests we deem the prosecution frivolous because prejudice must be “presume[d].” Arg. Tr. 31–32. He relies for this proposition on Charleswell, where we stated that “some procedural defects may be so central or core to a proceeding’s legitimacy, . . . and the difficulty of proving prejudice so great[,] that prejudice may be presumed.” 456 F.3d at 362 n.17 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). That language, however, is dicta in a footnote. We have never given effect to the possibility we left open in Charleswell, nor (to our knowledge) has any other court of appeals. Nor need we address that possibility today; the point, rather, is that where no appellate court has so held to date, we cannot say the Government lacked a “reasonable legal basis” 39 for contending § 1326(d)(3)’s prejudice prong could not be satisfied. Manzo, 712 F.3d at 811 (citation omitted); see id. (“The government should be allowed to base a prosecution on a novel argument, so long as it is a reasonable one, without fear that it might be setting itself up for liability under the Hyde Amendment.” (citation omitted)). It would also be especially perverse to fault the Government for ignoring this possibility here given that Reyes-Romero—who carries the burden on each of § 1326(d)’s elements—failed to mention it until his supplemental reply brief filed months after his initial § 1326(d) motion. In sum, the Government at all times had a legally defensible and factually supported basis for prosecuting Reyes-Romero for unlawful reentry. The “position of the United States,” 18 U.S.C. § 3006A app., therefore, was not frivolous. 14 14 In analyzing a Hyde Amendment application, the district court’s task is to “make only one finding . . . based on the case as an inclusive whole” rather than engaging in “[a] count-bycount analysis.” Manzo, 712 F.3d at 810 (citation omitted). Here, that task is straightforward because Reyes-Romero was charged with only one offense. We therefore have no occasion to address the implications of a multicount prosecution where only one or some counts are viable. Cf. United States v. Heavrin, 330 F.3d 723, 730 (6th Cir. 2003) (noting that a Hyde Amendment award may be appropriate “[e]ven if the district court determines that part of the government’s case has merit” so long as “the government’s ‘position’ as a whole was vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith”). 40
bad faith Nor did the Government initiate or prolong Reyes- Romero’s criminal prosecution in bad faith. On this issue, too, we benefit from a well-developed line of precedent. Bad faith requires more than “bad judgment or negligence”; it demands “the conscious doing of a wrong because of dishonest purpose or moral obliquity.” Manzo, 712 F.3d at 811. And in assessing whether the “position of the United States was . . . in bad faith,” 18 U.S.C. § 3006A app., we may not “delve into the minds and motivations of individual prosecutors,” Manzo, 712 F.3d at 813. Instead, we must “engage in an objective inquiry,” Manzo, 712 F.3d at 811 (citing Shaygan, 652 F.3d at 1313–14), asking whether “[u]nder th[e] circumstances” the government’s litigation strategy was “objectively unreasonable” in light of the facts and “binding case law.” Id. at 813. And in doing so, we must be wary to leave prosecutors the breathing space necessary to pursue justice with vigor. A Hyde Amendment award is not available simply because a defendant was acquitted or because the government engaged in “contentious and hard-fought” litigation tactics. United States v. Schneider, 395 F.3d 78, 88 (2d Cir. 2005). To the contrary, “government attorneys are entitled to be zealous advocates of the law on behalf of the . . . people of the United States,” and “[w]hile a prosecutor is not at liberty to strike foul blows, he may strike hard ones . . . —indeed, he should.” United States v. Knott, 256 F.3d 20, 29 (1st Cir. 2001) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The District Court identified seven points throughout the prosecution that in its view constituted “evidence of bad faith,” 41 App. 36, on the part of AUSA Hallowell and, by extension, DOJ. We address them one by one. Although we generally owe deference to factual findings, any finding that “is implausible based on the record” is clearly erroneous and thus “unsustainable.” Capener, 608 F.3d at 403; see United States v. Heavrin, 330 F.3d 723, 727 (6th Cir. 2003) (reversal of a Hyde Amendment award is required where the reviewing court is left with “a definite and firm conviction” that “a mistake has been made” (citation omitted)).
First, we disagree that the Government relied on “facially invalid waivers,” App. 31, to seek an indictment and proceed with the prosecution against Reyes-Romero. Even if we were to accept that the Government was “mistaken at the time of [the] [i]ndictment,” App. 31, “the Hyde Amendment [is] targeted at prosecutorial misconduct, not prosecutorial mistake,” Capener, 608 F.3d at 401 (alteration in original) (citation omitted). And here, the contents of Reyes-Romero’s A-file gave the Government probable cause to believe that he fell within the facial elements of the § 1326(a) offense. Although a defendant in Reyes-Romero’s position may bring a collateral challenge under § 1326(d), that challenge is akin to an affirmative defense, and it is up to the defendant to assert and prove it. That defense does not turn on whether the removal was “pursuant to law,” App. 31; it requires (among other things) prejudice, Charleswell, 456 F.3d at 358, and there was nothing in the A-file to suggest Reyes-Romero could show a reasonable likelihood of any outcome other than removal. When viewed objectively, therefore, the decision to indict and prosecute Reyes-Romero does not give rise to an inference of bad faith. 42
Nor are we persuaded that Officers Darji and Alicea gave false testimony or that the Government’s refusal to label it as such violated its obligations under Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264 (1959). We start with the most frequently quoted portion of the testimony: Officer Darji’s acknowledgment that the forms in Reyes-Romero’s A-file did not “make any sense.” App. 331. It is not the case that Officer Darji “admitted on the stand that his testimony (given just moments before) was, in fact, nonsense.” App. 32 (emphasis added). Officer Darji had no specific memory of Reyes-Romero’s proceeding, and thus offered testimony only about the “normal practice” in his DHS unit, App. 319. In the leadup to Officer Darji’s oft-quoted admission, the District Court took over questioning and presented him with the irregularities in Reyes-Romero’s forms, asking whether it was “reading those forms correctly.” App. 331. The Court then asked whether “that”—the antecedent of which was the content of “those forms”—“ma[de] any sense,” and Darji admitted it did not. Id. In context, Officer Darji’s comment was a candid admission that he could not explain away the apparent problems with Reyes-Romero’s removal proceeding. And, at least initially, the District Court agreed, summarizing that Officer Darji had admitted that “the process that was used here” did not “ma[ke] . . . sense.” App. 476. The quite different notion that Darji admitted that he had lied in his testimony, however, “is a kind of [factual] Lohengrin,” in that we do not “know whence it came,” IIT v. Vencap, Ltd., 519 F.2d 1001, 1015 (2d Cir. 43 1975). Because that notion finds no support in the record, we reject it. As a result, nothing in Officer Darji’s concession triggered Napue obligations on the part of AUSA Hallowell. Those obligations spring to life only when the prosecutor “knows that his witness is giving testimony that is substantially misleading” and where the misleading nature of the testimony is “obvious.” United States v. Harris, 498 F.2d 1164, 1169 (3d Cir. 1974). A candid admission of the kind Officer Darji gave does not fit those criteria. Nor do the remaining portions of the DHS officers’ testimony. To be sure, both officers, testifying years later and with no specific memory of Reyes-Romero’s removal proceeding, gave testimony that was at times equivocal, confusing, or inconsistent. Officer Darji, for instance, changed an answer he gave about whether a prior signature was required to authorize service of the I-851 on noncitizens. For his part, Officer Alicea gave difficult-to-reconcile answers in response to questions about when in the process the I-851’s contents would be read to the noncitizen in Spanish. But to the extent the officers’ testimony was somewhat “convoluted,” App. 43 (citation omitted), it reflects at least in part the byzantine nature of the administrative removal system and in part the circumstances of their questioning. Given that the District Court assumed the questioning and raised a line of inquiry about the time stamps on the I-851 that Reyes-Romero had not flagged and for which the Government and its witnesses likely had not prepared, it is unsurprising the officers were in some respects ill equipped to explain the contents of Reyes-Romero’s A-file. In short, while we recognize certain weaknesses in the officers’ testimony, we 44 discern no basis in the record to conclude that the officers were deliberately perjuring themselves. At most, they exhibited the kind of inconsistency that is the normal stuff of cross-examination and that might lead a trier of fact to discount their testimony—but not to assume the sort of deliberate dishonesty that would require a prosecutor to correct the record. In our judgment, that distinction is critical here not only because of the effect on AUSA Hallowell’s obligations but also because of the severe reputational, professional, and legal consequences that could flow from a finding that Officers Darji and Alicea deliberately lied under oath. That finding was unjustified here. At bottom, the Napue argument comes to this: that because the District Court ultimately decided not to credit the officers’ testimony, the Government must have been obligated to disclaim it mid-trial. That does not follow. In presenting the testimony of government witnesses, a prosecutor need not “play the role of defense counsel . . . and ferret out ambiguities in his witness’ responses on cross-examination.” Harris, 498 F.2d at 1169. He also cannot supplant the role of the finder of fact in assigning weight to testimony as he deems appropriate. We therefore discern no violation of AUSA Hallowell’s Napue obligations and no basis here to infer bad faith.
We next confront the idea that the Government exhibited bad faith by continuing to litigate exhaustion and judicial review even after the extent of the irregularities in ReyesRomero’s A-file came to light. A review of the record reveals the opposite: that AUSA Hallowell promptly and appropriately abandoned all arguments on § 1326(d)(1) and (2). 45 The initial two-day hearing on Reyes-Romero’s § 1326(d) motion took place in early January 2018. During the second day, the District Court informed the parties it was “highly likely” to rule in Reyes-Romero’s favor on exhaustion and judicial review. App. 474–75. That left prejudice as “the only open issue,” App. 543, on which the District Court requested additional briefing. The parties twice requested more time to submit a schedule for that briefing and did not settle on such a schedule until late January. A month later—and before its supplemental brief was due—the Government moved to dismiss under Rule 48. No doubt the Government expected its motion would be the end of the case. But after the District Court continued to press the Government on the merits of the § 1326(d) motion, it promptly filed a brief in mid-March making its position clear: It would “not rely on or adopt th[e officers’] testimony” and, if pushed to litigate the § 1326(d) motion, “w[ould] not present argument on any elements . . . other than the issue of prejudice.” App. 755. And it reinforced that position at the next hearing. AUSA Hallowell’s response was prompt, unambiguous, and consistent with the best traditions and standards of his office. That it occurred “over two months” after the initial hearing, App. 32, was a product of the parties’ agreed briefing schedule, the Court’s unexpected reservations about the Government’s motion to dismiss, and its ongoing inquiry into the effect of a dismissal on future immigration proceedings. The Government was still “act[ing] promptly to correct [any] error,” United States v. Lain, 640 F.3d 1134, 1139 (10th Cir. 2011), and its response is inconsistent with a finding of bad faith. 46
We likewise see no signs of bad faith in AUSA Hallowell’s inability to tell the District Court whether, if the prosecution were dismissed, DHS would detain Reyes-Romero or seek reinstatement of the 2011 removal order. In asserting that he could not “speak for DHS . . . or what [it] would do” in future immigration proceedings against Reyes-Romero, App. 617, AUSA Hallowell was faithfully representing our precedent to the District Court. See United States v. Igbonwa, 120 F.3d 437, 443–44 (3d Cir. 1997) (holding that an AUSA cannot bind DHS in future immigration proceedings absent DHS’s consent). Had the Court granted the Government’s motion to dismiss, any relevance of the 2011 order would have been left to DHS in the first instance (in deciding whether to pursue a new NTA or seek reinstatement) and, if necessary, to other administrative adjudicators and a different Article III court. To be sure, it is possible for an AUSA, after having obtained “prior authorization from [DHS],” Justice Manual, supra, § 9-73.510, to come to a binding agreement with respect to future immigration proceedings against a noncitizen defendant. But an AUSA lacks the power to do so on his own. More important, whether and under what circumstances he reaches out to DHS to explore such an arrangement is committed to his discretion—he is not bound to do so. And even if he does seek authorization from DHS, he cannot demand that the agency give it, and if the agency declines the AUSA cannot be held responsible. When viewed through an objective lens, therefore, the absence of such an arrangement between DOJ and DHS with respect to future proceedings against Reyes-Romero also does not support an inference of bad faith. 47 Two related issues must be addressed. First, we do not consider significant that DHS and DOJ were to some extent “intertwin[ed] . . . in this case,” App. 37 (emphasis omitted), insofar as DOJ and DHS kept in contact about Reyes-Romero or a line-level DHS official was present at counsel table for all but one of the hearings before the District Court. Coordination between DOJ and other executive departments is by no means unusual, but it does not obviate the line between those departments or between a criminal prosecution and subsequent administrative proceedings. We therefore see no support for the notion that the Government here attempted to use its collaboration with DHS as both a sword and a shield against ReyesRomero. Second, we are equally unpersuaded that the AUSA exhibited bad faith by focusing on the criminal offense with which Reyes-Romero was charged, the evidence necessary to prove that offense, and the elements of Reyes-Romero’s affirmative defense. Those were, after all, the only live issues over which the District Court had jurisdiction. Even so, AUSA Hallowell did his best to assist the Court in its consideration of matters well beyond that jurisdiction, most notably the effect that various dispositions might have on future immigration proceedings against Reyes-Romero. The AUSA’s responsiveness, candor, and professionalism in answering unanticipated questions bespeak good faith on his part and in the “position of the United States,” 18 U.S.C. § 3006A app. And in general, the AUSA offered candid and accurate assistance to the tribunal; was forthright about the weaknesses in the case; and, once he had received additional evidence bolstering Reyes-Romero’s arguments on prejudice and once the prosecution had exhausted more time and resources than was expected, sensibly 48 reevaluated it and decided dismissal was in the best interests of justice. There is much to commend in the way the prosecution litigated this case, and certainly nothing of the “dishonest purpose or moral obliquity,” Manzo, 712 F.3d at 811 (citation omitted), required to justify a Hyde Amendment award.
We now come to a central premise of the Hyde Amendment award: that the Government’s motion to dismiss was motivated by, and evidence of, bad faith. There is good reason for skepticism: It is ironic indeed that the government’s decision to move to dismiss a criminal case with prejudice would be held up as proof of ill will toward the defendant. Normally, if circumstances arise making it clear that the Government’s case is weaker than it once appeared and the “Government act[s] promptly to correct [that] error,” a court will be hard pressed to find bad faith. Lain, 640 F.3d at 1139. The District Court recognized this dynamic, correctly stating that if an AUSA “conclude[s] that a criminal prosecution should not proceed” and moves to dismiss, that is an appropriate exercise of prosecutorial discretion and precisely “how we want the system to work.” App. 635. But it proceeded to find that motion was evidence of bad faith on two grounds. The first was that the motion was designed “to shield the 2011 Removal Order from an adjudication of invalidity” and thereby interfere with future immigration proceedings against Reyes-Romero. App. 36. In other words, because the Government agreed the prosecution should be dismissed, it had no 49 non-malicious reason for refusing “to not oppose the bare granting of Reyes-Romero’s motion to dismiss.” App. 4. Implicit in that analysis is that there is no meaningful difference between (i) exercising discretion to dismiss the prosecution because of some “litigation risk” on the prejudice prong, App. 646, and (ii) conceding outright that Reyes-Romero has satisfied the prejudice prong. Not so. A prosecutor may have probable cause to believe an element of an affirmative defense is triable but still conclude that, because of the closeness of the question as well as other considerations such as expenses and the time a defendant has already been in custody, the interests of justice would not be well served by continuing to pursue the prosecution. That is, indeed, how the system should work. And, most critical, the Government must be free to do so without having to concede away the merits of the criminal charge or any affirmative defenses, which would have been the effect of endorsing Reyes-Romero’s § 1326(d) motion. Nor can we agree that the Government was “[n]ever asked . . . to stipulate to ‘prejudice’” and could have opted to “‘not oppose’ the granting of Reyes-Romero’s motion.” App. 15–16. Because dismissal under § 1326(d) requires prejudice, see 8 U.S.C. § 1326(d)(3); Charleswell, 456 F.3d at 358, the Government cannot agree to a § 1326(d) dismissal without acknowledging that the prejudice requirement has been met. And given the closeness of the prejudice question, see supra pp. 35–37 & n.13, it strikes us as objectively reasonable that the Government elected not to do so. The second ground for the finding that the Government moved to dismiss in bad faith was that the reasons it offered in support of its motion were pretextual. After a review of the 50 record, we conclude the Government’s reasons were sensible and consistent. It explained, for instance, that its motion to dismiss was motivated in part by a desire to preserve litigation resources. That is no surprise given that the single-count prosecution had already lasted months and generated many hearings and briefs. True, the Government “then expended substantial resources on continuing to oppose Reyes-Romero’s motion to dismiss” while its own motion remained pending. App. 39. But that was only because the Government’s motion was held open, requiring that it continue to litigate the merits of Reyes-Romero’s § 1326(d) defense. The Government’s explanation can be viewed as contradictory only if we assume there was no difference between acceding to Reyes-Romero’s motion and proceeding on the Government’s motion—an idea we have already rejected.
Next, we see no evidence to support the idea that the latein-the-game production of color copies from Reyes-Romero’s A-file suggests bad faith on the Government’s part. Under the line of cases springing from Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), prosecutors have an affirmative duty to disclose material evidence favorable to the defendant. Dennis v. Sec’y, 834 F.3d 263, 284 (3d Cir. 2016) (en banc). But there is no question that AUSA Hallowell, after having received the color copies, promptly shared them with Reyes-Romero’s counsel and with the District Court. That he did so was consistent with his Brady obligations as well as good faith in the management of the prosecution. Nor is there anything to suggest the Government exhibited bad faith by producing the color copies months into the 51 prosecution rather than at the outset. To begin, our precedent on the timing of Brady disclosures requires only that the government “make[] [the] evidence available during the course of a trial in such a way that a defendant is able effectively to use it.” United States v. Moreno, 727 F.3d 255, 262 (3d Cir. 2013) (citation omitted). Reyes-Romero was certainly able to use the color copies of the forms to his benefit; those copies fed into the District Court’s decision granting his § 1326(d) motion. More to the point, there was no reason why AUSA Hallowell— or, for that matter, Reyes-Romero’s counsel, who was given an opportunity to access or request the original files—could have anticipated that the color copies would contain meaningful, relevant evidence that the black-and-white reproductions did not. Under those circumstances, AUSA Hallowell lacked “actual or constructive possession” of the information contained in the color copies, Hollman v. Wilson, 158 F.3d 177, 180 (3d Cir. 1998), and accordingly that he did not request or produce them earlier in the litigation does not give rise to an inference of bad faith. We end by addressing the assertion that the production of black-and-white copies was “a clear implication of conscious wrongdoing,” App. 40, on the part of unnamed DHS officials. Because the Hyde Amendment is concerned only with prosecutorial misconduct, even such unscrupulous conduct by an independent executive department could not be laid at the prosecution’s feet without a reasonable and logical basis for doing so. Moreover, a review of the record here reveals nothing apart from speculation suggesting that DHS’s production of blackand-white copies was intended to shield Reyes-Romero’s A-file from scrutiny—rather than, for instance, being the 52 product of an outdated photocopier or cost-saving printing procedures. So thin a reed cannot justify a Hyde Amendment award.
Finally, we disagree that the criminal proceeding was “unnecessarily drawn out by the various litigation tactics taken by the Government.” App. 43. The time between Reyes- Romero’s motion to dismiss and the decision granting that motion was roughly seven and a half months. If that period is longer than in the typical § 1326 prosecution, the reasons are many, including the ongoing evolution of Reyes-Romero’s arguments on prejudice, mutual delays in the briefing schedule, complicated legal and factual questions and, above all, a willingness on the part of the District Court to hold outstanding motions open and solicit supplemental briefing. Those reasons for delay are unexceptional and understandable. But unwarranted delay on the part of the Government was not one of them.