Opinion ID: 6500514
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Challenges to Filter Team Procedures

Text: Pelullo first challenges the propriety of the procedures employed by the Wiretap Filter Team and Manno Filter Team, saying they violated his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. He asserts it was improper for Agent Moyer to be on both the Wiretap Filter Team and an investigative team that had regular contact with the prosecution. He claims that error necessarily led to privileged information making its way from the Wiretap Filter Team to the prosecution. Additionally, Pelullo contends the Manno Filter Team’s attorney-client privilege determinations were improperly made by Agent O’Brien, a non-attorney. While rare, governmental intrusion into an attorneyclient relationship has occasionally risen to the level of “outrageous government conduct” violative of the Fifth 41 Amendment’s Due Process Clause.28 United States v. Voigt, 89 F.3d 1050, 1066 (3d Cir. 1996). We have exercised “scrupulous restraint” before declaring government action so “outrageous” as to “shock[] … the universal sense of justice[.]” Id. at 1065 (citation omitted). We thus require defendants to show the government knew of and deliberately intruded into the attorney-client relationship, resulting in “actual and substantial prejudice.” Id. at 1066-67. But nowhere does Pelullo claim the government’s conduct “amount[ed] to an abuse of official power that ‘shocks the conscience’” or otherwise explain how his due process rights were violated. Fagan v. City of Vineland, 22 F.3d 1296, 1303 (3d Cir. 1994) (citing Collins v. City of Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 126 (1992)). He directs us to “no document, no telephone call, nothing that was turned over to the prosecution team that in any way has been used against [him] improperly[.]” (JAB at 2225.) Although Agent Moyer’s presence on both a surveillance team 28 Common-law attorney-client privilege, which Pelullo asserts, has been described as overlapping with the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. See Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391, 405 (1976) (noting the overlap between the right against self-incrimination and the attorney client privilege); In re Foster, 188 F.3d 1259, 1271 (10th Cir. 1999) (“Under Fisher, [the attorney-client] privilege effectively incorporates a client’s Fifth Amendment right; it prevents the court from forcing [the attorney] to produce documents given it by [the client] in seeking legal advice if the Amendment would bar the court from forcing [the client] himself to produce those documents.”). Pelullo, however, only argues a Fifth Amendment due process violation, and he does not invoke his right against self-incrimination. 42 and a filter team may have run afoul of Department of Justice procedures, 29 that alone is not enough to establish a constitutional violation. With respect to the Manno Filter Team, Pelullo is not quite accurate when he says that Agent O’Brien, a nonattorney, performed the initial privilege determinations. O’Brien did screen the materials in the first instance to decide what fell within the scope of the warrant. Manno, 2008 WL 4058016, at . The initial privilege review, however, was performed by AUSA Smith. Id. And even if that were not the case, Pelullo does not present an argument that O’Brien being an initial screener would “shock the conscience.” Finally, in a conclusory fashion, Pelullo also asserts that the errors he alleges are also all in violation of the Sixth Amendment. But the Sixth Amendment does not attach before the indictment. See McNeil v. Wisconsin, 501 U.S. 171, 175 (1991); United States v. Kennedy, 225 F.3d 1187, 1194 (10th Cir. 2000) (“Government intrusions into pre-indictment attorney-client relationships do not implicate the Sixth Amendment.”). Pelullo fails to identify any constitutional deficiencies in the procedures of the filter teams, and we discern no error. 29 A Department of Justice manual provides that “‘privilege team[s]’ should … consist[] of agents and lawyers not involved in the underlying investigation.” U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Justice Manual § 9-13.420 (2021). 43