Opinion ID: 368287
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the dual role of prosecutor and witness

Text: 23 The defendants both contend that the indictments should be dismissed on the ground that Mr. Taylor appeared as a witness before the grand jury, then failed to withdraw as one of the Government's presenting attorneys. Accepting for purposes of this discussion that defendants' characterization of the Government attorney's actions is accurate, 8 we condemn in principle this practice of serving as both prosecutor and witness. However, since the limited testimony of Mr. Taylor was procedural and not substantive in character (see page 23 below) and was not prejudicial to the defendants, in the circumstances of this case we decline to impose the extreme sanction of dismissal.
24 The professional impropriety of assuming a dual role as advocate and witness has long been acknowledged by both the English and the American bars. 9 The ABA Code of Professional Responsibility states as an ethical consideration: 25 The roles of an advocate and of a witness are inconsistent; the function of an advocate is to advance or argue the cause of another, while that of a witness is to state facts objectively. 10 26 The ABA has also codified disciplinary rules designed to prevent this conflict of roles and to minimize its prejudicial potential when prevention is impossible. DR 5-101(B) and DR 5-102 of the ABA Code prevent an attorney from accepting employment as an advocate in litigation when it is obvious that he will also be called as a witness; if the need for his testimony on behalf of his client becomes apparent after the lawyer has undertaken employment in the litigation, he must withdraw from the role of trial advocate; only in enumerated exceptional circumstances do these requirements not apply, such as where the testimony will relate solely to an uncontested matter or a matter of formality to which no substantial opposing evidence is likely to be offered, or where the lawyer's refusal to serve as advocate would work a substantial hardship on the client because of the lawyer's distinctive value in a particular case. 11 27 The ABA Standards Relating to the Prosecution Function 12 make clear that these rules of professional propriety are no less applicable to an attorney for the Government. Section 3.1(f) of the ABA Standards provides: 28 The prosecutor should avoid interviewing a prospective witness except in the presence of a third person unless the prosecutor is prepared to forego impeachment of a witness by the prosecutor's own testimony as to what the witness stated in an interview or to seek leave to withdraw from the case in order to present his impeaching testimony. 29 The commentary on this provision emphasizes the profession's rules against an advocate's justifying: 30 Use of a third person is virtually the only effective means of impeaching a witness. Assuming a court would permit it, a prosecutor is in a difficult situation if he must seek leave to withdraw and substitute other counsel so that he might take the stand to relate what he claimed the adverse witness had said to him. 31 The Code of Professional Responsibility takes a firm position that a lawyer should avoid testifying in court, when he is the advocate. ABA Code DR 5-102. 13 32 The courts have shared the legal profession's disapproval of the double role of advocate-witness. 14 In particular, the federal courts have almost universally frowned upon the practice of a Government prosecutor testifying at the trial of the case he is prosecuting, whether for 15 or against 16 the defendant, and have stated that the practice should be permitted only in extraordinary circumstances or for compelling reasons. 17 Where the prosecutor's appearance as witness is unavoidable, the courts have stated that, in general, the prosecutor should withdraw from participation in the trial. 18 33 The reasons that have been cited for this judicial and professional reprehension of the testifying prosecutor include the following. First, there is the risk that the prosecutor will not be a fully objective witness: 34 It is obvious that the opportunity for tailoring a witness's testimony to the needs of the Government's case is maximized if recourse is permitted to the testimony of an experienced trial attorney who is interested in the successful presentation of that case. Especially in criminal litigation, where so much is at stake for the defendant, must the Bench and Bar demand adherence to a principle that is designed to ensure objectivity in the presentation of evidence. 19 35 Second, it is feared that the prestige of a Government attorney's office will artificially enhance his credibility. Although jurors of varying degrees of sophistication will, of course, have different conceptions of the awe due to a public officer, it is widely hypothesized that (a) jury naturally gives to the evidence of the prosecuting attorney far greater weight than to that of the ordinary witness. 20 A third consideration is that the prosecutor's testifying might create . . . confusion on the part of the jury as to whether he (is) speaking in his capacity of prosecutor or witness. 21 Such confusion, besides disrupting the normal workings of the judicial mechanism, may result in the fact-finder according testimonial credit to the prosecutor's closing arguments. 22 36 While the above-cited reasons for the advocate-witness rule all reflect a policy of avoiding the slightest risk of prejudice to defendants, the most frequently cited justification for the rule reflects a broader concern for public confidence in the process of justice. The chief fear which underlies the ethical rule, it is commonly acknowledged, is not that the testifying prosecutor actually will overreach a hapless defendant, but that he will Appear to a skeptical public to have done so. 23 The legal profession's disapprobation of the advocate-witness is thus closely related to the injunction in Canon 9 of the ABA Code of Professional Responsibility that (a) lawyer should avoid even the appearance of professional impropriety. 24 Particularly where the lawyer in question represents the prosecuting arm of the Government, the ethical rule serves to implement the maxim that justice must satisfy the appearance of justice. 25 This function of preserving public trust may be especially necessary in proceedings of the grand jury, which more than a few critics have characterized as a mere tool of prosecutors. 26 Even an unarticulated sense among grand jurors or their friends that something was fishy about a proceeding where the prosecutor testified will feed cynics' claims. 37 The foregoing considerations and others 27 demonstrate that the general disapprobation of an advocate's testimony is more than an outdated shibboleth disguised as a rule of professional ethics. Furthermore, the justifications cited for the rule are as pertinent to grand jury proceedings as they are to trials before petit juries, where the rule is most often visible. That the rule applies to prosecutors in grand jury proceedings, as well as in criminal trials, is implicit in § 3.5(b) of the ABA Standards Relating to the Prosecution Function, which provides: 38 The prosecutor should not make statements or arguments in an effort to influence grand jury action in a manner which would be impermissible at trial before a petit jury. 39 The Commentary to § 3.5 amplifies this directive: 40 A prosecutor should not, however, take advantage of his role as the ex parte representative of the state before the grand jury to unduly or unfairly influence it in voting upon charges brought before it. In general, he should be guided by the standards governing and defining the proper presentation of the state's case in an adversary trial before a petit jury. (Emphasis added.) 41 The standards for presenting the state's case to a petit jury 28 clearly preclude the prosecutor's testifying, except in the limited circumstances referred to in DR 5-101(B) of the ABA Code (see note 11 above).
42 The issue before this court, however, is not whether professional sanctions would be appropriate against a Government attorney who both assisted the prosecution and appeared on the witness stand in the same grand jury proceeding. The issue is whether such conduct requires the legal sanction of dismissing the resulting indictments. 43
44 Defendants argue that this court should impose a per se rule mandating dismissal for any prosecutorial testimony in grand jury proceedings, regardless of actual prejudice to the defendant resulting therefrom. In support of this argument, defendants rely primarily on a decision out of the Northern District of Texas, United States v. Treadway, 29 which appears to impose such a rule. However, to the extent that decision deals with the issues raised in this case, we decline at this time to follow it. 45 It should first be noted that in the analogous situation where a prosecutor testifies at trial and then fails to withdraw, the great weight of American authorities have held that such conduct, while reprehensible, does not warrant the sanction of reversal and new trial. 30 As this court has noted in the civil context, the Code (of Professional Responsibility) does not delineate rules of evidence but only sets forth strictures on attorney conduct. 31 Thus, it is the settled rule in this Circuit and in most jurisdictions that an attorney is not incompetent as a witness at trial, 32 but that admission of such testimony is a matter largely for the discretion of the trial court. 33 In the federal courts particularly, the strong judicial reprobation of a prosecutor's testimony at a criminal trial has never hardened into a per se prohibition of the practice: 34 prosecutorial testimony alone is not sufficient for reversal, absent additional instances of Government misconduct. 35 46 In light of this established principle that an automatic grant of new trial is not in general an appropriate legal sanction for a prosecutor's testifying at trial, 36 a compelling legal mandate is necessary if this court is to impose the analogous sanction of per se dismissal, where an indictment issues from grand jury proceedings in which the prosecutor has taken the witness stand and failed to withdraw. There are three sources for such a mandate mentioned in the federal cases: the Constitution; Rule 6(d) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which enumerates persons authorized to be present at grand jury proceedings; and the public policy of assuring fairness in the processes of justice, which underlies the supervisory powers of the federal courts. 37 47 Defendants do not argue, nor do we find, that the prosecutorial conduct here rises to the level of a constitutional violation. 38 Thus we need not consider whether a prophylactic rule of dismissal would be justified under the power to make what has been termed a constitutional common law 39 of remedies for violation of constitutional rights. 48 Instead defendants argue that a per se rule of dismissal is required under Rule 6(d) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Rule 6(d) provides: 49 Attorneys for the government, the witness under examination, interpreters when needed and, for the purpose of taking the evidence, a stenographer or operator of a recording device may be present while the grand jury is in session, but no person other than the jurors may be present while the grand jury is deliberating or voting. 50 Defendants urge this court to follow the lead of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which has held that the presence of an unauthorized person (under Rule 6(d)) results in a Per se invalidity of the indictment. 40 51 However, the question whether to adopt this sanction of dismissal does not arise until it has been established that the alleged intruder filled none of the authorized roles listed in Rule 6(d). 41 Here the whole ethical dilemma arises not because a person fit none of the listed roles, but because one person allegedly played two of those roles: both attorney for the government and witness under examination. After that person withdrew from the witness stand, as a matter of professional ethics he ought to have withdrawn also from his role as attorney for the government, to avoid any appearance of professional impropriety. But a professional impropriety does not work a metaphysical dissolution of his actual status as government counsel: the many cases in which trial courts have permitted testifying advocates to continue their participation at trial 42 demonstrate that their testimony could not by itself deprive them of legal authority to represent their clients. Nothing in the plain language of Rule 6(d) or in its legislative history indicates that the rule was intended to have such an effect; the Rule's concern is to exclude persons with no authorized roles not to implement the profession's proscriptions against conflicting roles. In sum, reprehensible though it might be for one who has served as a grand jury witness to remain as attorney for the government, Rule 6(d) does not prevent such conduct as a matter of law. 52 Defendants might have pressed the argument that this court should impose a prophylactic rule of dismissal in the exercise of its inherent supervisory authority over federal criminal proceedings. 43 This general power of supervision enables the federal courts to establish standards of fair play higher than those minimal historic safeguards for securing trial by reason which are summarized as 'due process of law' and below which we reach what is really trial by force. 44 Further, the policy underlying the supervisory power that (t)he protection of its own functions and the preservation of the purity of its own temple belongs only to the court 45 is in general harmony with the most widely cited rationale for the disapproval of the prosecutor-witness, that the unseemly appearance of the practice tends to undermine public confidence in judicial processes. 46 53 However, to attempt to serve a public interest in the purity of the grand jury proceeding, by the per se sanction of dismissing indictments, is to disserve another public interest by frustrating prosecutions of criminals. The question whether to impose a prophylactic supervisory rule traditionally presents this choice between two evils: on the one hand, the evil that the Government should play an ignoble part, and on the other that some criminals should escape. 47 54 In balancing these evils in cases of alleged prosecutorial overreaching during grand jury proceedings, the federal courts have clearly established the principle that the dismissal of an indictment on the basis of governmental misconduct is an extreme sanction which should be infrequently utilized. 48 Thus, in United States v. Bruzgo, 49 which treated allegations of prosecutorial misconduct more extreme than those in the case before us, this court affirmed the refusal to apply such a sanction. In Bruzgo the defendant claimed that the prosecutors had threatened a grand jury witness, a close associate of the defendant, and had called the witness a thief and a racketeer, allegedly moving the grand jurors to such a passion that they hissed the witness. Accepting these allegations as true, and condemning the prosecutor's actions, this court nevertheless concluded that their conduct was not sufficient to invalidate an indictment which was otherwise supported by the evidence. 50 This court reached the same conclusion in a similar case, United States v. Riccobene, 51 where the prosecutor had told grand jurors that they would not hear from a key Government witness because the proposed defendants were  'connected with organized crime and could harm him.'  52 55 In view of the extreme character of this sanction of per se dismissal, we are not persuaded that so broad-gauged a remedy is necessary to supplement existing disciplinary procedures. 53 While we acknowledge the public interest in avoiding even the appearance of impropriety in prosecutors' conduct of federal grand jury proceedings, defendants have not shown that the conduct of which they complain added substantive matters or was anything but an isolated incident unmotivated by sinister ends. 54 A later case might require a different result. There has been no showing here that the practice of prosecutorial testimony has become so entrenched and flagrant in this Circuit as to require a prophylactic rule of dismissal. 55 Therefore, we decline to stretch the ill-defined contours of the supervisory power to impose such a rule in this case. 56 56
57 Even in the absence of a per se rule of dismissal, dismissal of the indictment might be justified if defendants suffered actual prejudice from the Government attorney's appearance on the witness stand and subsequent failure to disqualify himself. However, the district court found no such prejudice in this case, and we agree that there was none. 58 The district court concluded, based on its examination of pertinent portions of the record, that the Government attorney's presentations from the witness stand on August 15, 1977, and September 6, 1977, did not amount to independent substantive evidence: 59 (A) fair reading of the transcript of August 15, 1977, reveals, and the Court so finds, that he was acting . . . as an attorney; explaining a proposed indictment; identifying the parties named in the indictment; reviewing evidence presented to the Grand Jury which supported the indictment. 60 It is clear that he was not then . . . giving material or substantive evidence. 61 . . . (the September 6 'testimony') was the supplying or explaining to the Grand Jury the indictment which they would be asked to return that same day. There is an explanation as to how the various dates used in the indictment were arrived at. 62 The basic structure of the examination was that, starting with each overt act in the conspiracy, to ask Mr. Taylor how the particular date was arrived at. 63 Reading the transcript as a whole, it appears to this Court that he was in fact summarizing evidence which the Grand Jury had had presented to it by other witnesses. 57 64 Our reading of the pertinent portions of the grand jury transcripts bears out the district court's above-quoted conclusion that the Government attorney's testimony added no new material evidence. Although the testimony summarizes contestable substantive evidence, it focusses primarily on the structure of the proposed indictment. We need not decide whether such testimony falls within exceptions (1) and (2) of DR 5-101(B) in the ABA Code, as relat(ing) solely to an uncontested matter, or relat(ing) solely to a matter of formality. It is enough for present purposes that this testimony could not have had independent material significance in the jurors' minds when they considered whether they wanted to indict defendant. 58 65 This case is in this respect distinguishable from the facts of the Treadway case on which appellants chiefly rely. There the prosecutor-witness provided independent substantive evidence which was needed to prove a material element of the offense charged in the indictment; 59 here the testimony discloses that it was merely a summary of prior evidence. Furthermore, it was alleged in Treadway that the prosecutor's testimony was inaccurate in several respects. 60 Defendants here do not allege that the prosecutor falsified or distorted any substantive facts underlying the indictments to which defendants later pleaded Nolo contendere. We are also satisfied that the testimony was phrased in neutral terms, without possibility for inflammatory effect. 66 In sum, although Treadway was decided on the basis of a per se rule of dismissal, it is factually distinguishable from this case because here it is possible to ascertain that no actual prejudice to defendants could have resulted from the prosecutor's testimony. For this arguable injury to the grand jury process, it appears at this time that more appropriate remedies exist than a windfall dismissal for unharmed parties. 61 67