Opinion ID: 2995047
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Legitimate Prosecutorial Purpose

Text: In upholding the agreement before it, Rumery also relied on the fact that the prosecutor had an independent, legitimate reason to make this agreement directly related to his prosecutorial responsibilities. Id. at 398. This finding was critical because all the Justices that joined the majority (and even more so the four dissenting Justices) recognized the risk that release-dismissal agreements could be abused by prosecutors seeking to protect public officials from civil liability. As Justice O’Connor explained in her concurrence, the availability of release agreements may tempt public officials to trump up charges in order to avoid meritorious civil claims, or tempt them to ignore their public duty by dropping meritorious criminal prosecutions in order to avoid the risk, expense, and publicity of a sec.1983 suit. Id. at 400. In this case, Wargo’s only evidence of a legitimate reason to make [the waiver] agreement directly related to prosecutorial responsibilities is that the idea of a waiver was Dye’s and that the prosecutor told Dye that it would not be considered as part of the prosecutor’s charging decision. Again, however, the latter claim is disputed by the testimony of both Dye and the attorney that represented him in the plea negotiation with the prosecutor. Reading the record in the light most favorable to Dye, we have before us a case where the prosecutor encouraged Dye to sign a waiver agreement with the understanding that his having done so would improve his plea bargain, but that the prosecutor then went back on that verbal promise. The only reason why a prosecutor would use such a strategy is to induce a vulnerable defendant to sign a waiver that would shield public officials from future liability while at the same time not giving up any discretion to prosecute. This is neither a legitimate purpose nor one directly related to prosecutorial responsibilities. Instead, it smacks of bad faith negotiations at best, fraud in the inducement to contract at worst. A waiver obtained by this route cannot, as a matter of public policy, be enforced.