Opinion ID: 204000
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Denial of Bucci's discovery request

Text: In the district court, Bucci sought discovery from the Government in order to support his vindictive-prosecution claim. The district court denied that request. We review that decision for an abuse of discretion. See United States v. Lewis, 517 F.3d 20, 23 (1st Cir.2008) (reviewing selective-prosecution claim).
In light of the presumption that a prosecutor has acted in good faith in exercising his discretion to make charging decisions, courts require a defendant seeking discovery first to come forth with some objective evidence tending to show the existence of prosecutorial vindictiveness. See, e.g., United States v. Wilson, 262 F.3d 305, 315 (4th Cir.2001); United States v. Sanders, 211 F.3d 711, 717 (2d Cir.2000). These courts derive this standard from United States v. Armstrong , see 517 U.S. at 468, 116 S.Ct. 1480, in which the Supreme Court addressed discovery sought in support of a selective-prosecution claim. See Wilson, 262 F.3d at 315-16; Sanders, 211 F.3d at 717. This is the standard that the district court applied in Bucci's case, and we adopt it here.
In order to obtain discovery, then, Bucci first had to advance some evidence tending to establish his vindictive-prosecution claim. He failed to do so. In support of his discovery motion, Bucci relied on the statements of law enforcement and government officers reporting whosarat.com contained in ... newspaper articles, documents, and security reports. While the reported statements of these officers expressed serious concern about the danger to informants posed by postings made on Bucci's website, Bucci set forth no evidence suggesting that this concern ever affected the prosecutors making the specific charging decisions in his case. To obtain discovery, Bucci must do more than simply identify a potential motive for prosecutorial animus. Sanders, 211 F.3d at 718. He must connect any vindictive animus to those making the challenged charging decisions in his case. See United States v. Goulding, 26 F.3d 656, 662 (7th Cir.1994). Bucci also relied on evidence regarding the Government's opposition to a pretrial motion Bucci's co-defendant, Catherine Bucci, filed in this case seeking early disclosure of statements made by Government witnesses. In opposing that request, the Government noted that, while it generally would not oppose early disclosure, in this case it would not agree to it because of the Government's concern that Bucci was trying to intimidate Government witnesses through whosarat.com. In opposing Catherine Bucci's motion, however, the Government was only asserting a legitimate litigation strategy. The fact that it was based in part on the effects the information posted on Bucci's website might have on this specific prosecution did not suggest that prosecutors filed the superseding indictments against Bucci to retaliate against him for operating the website. See United States v. Segal, 495 F.3d 826, 833 (7th Cir.2007) (A prosecutor cannot be said to act vindictively by taking into account a defendant's perceived efforts to intimidate witnesses.). In support of his discovery request, Bucci further relied on the general circumstances attendant to his prosecution, asserting that the prosecutor all along had enough evidence to charge him with the added offenses and increased amount of marijuana, but did not bring those charges until after Bucci started whosarat.com. Assuming that the Government had enough evidence to indict Bucci initially on the increased charges, this fact alone is insufficient to establish that the Government later filed the superseding indictments to punish Bucci for whosarat.com. See United States v. Roach, 502 F.3d 425, 444-45 (6th Cir.2007) (rejecting argument that the fact that the Government could have brought charges initially, but did not do so, indicated the prosecutor's vindictiveness), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 128 S.Ct. 2051, 170 L.Ed.2d 797 (2008). Moreover, evidence of suspicious timing alone does not indicate prosecutorial animus. United States v. Cooper, 461 F.3d 850, 856 (7th Cir.2006) (quotations omitted). In any event, the district court noted that the sequence of events in this case is not so remarkable as to justify discovery. We agree. Bucci began operating his website in August 2004. It was six months later that the Government filed the first superseding indictment, and another six months before the Government filed the second superseding indictment against Bucci. These superseding indictments were not so close in time to Bucci's starting the whosarat.com website to provide strong evidence that the prosecutor acted vindictively. See United States v. Marrapese, 826 F.2d 145, 147 (1st Cir.1987) (noting two events that were well removed in time were not strong evidence of actual vindictiveness). For all of these reasons, we cannot conclude that the district court abused its discretion in denying Bucci discovery in support of his vindictive-prosecution claim.