Opinion ID: 1993046
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Dana Mellecker

Text: Appellant Mellecker was charged with one count of unlawful entry, D.C.Code § 22-3102, supra note 2, for failing to quit the Farragut West Metro station during a demonstration on behalf of the homeless on December 5, 1987. When he, too, was denied diversion, see supra note 3, he filed a motion to dismiss for selective prosecution, requesting an evidentiary hearing and raising the same challenges that Fedorov and Donne had raised. The motion relied on the Wayte and (Elizabeth) Smith test for selective prosecution and contained proffers similar to those submitted in Fedorov's and Donne's motions: that (1) Mellecker was eligible for diversion; (2) he was similarly situated with all those charged with unlawful entry and eligible for diversion; (3) a paralegal at the United States Attorney's office had stated that that office had a policy against diverting the Farragut West demonstrators; (4) Mellecker's diversion interview had been perfunctory; and (5) Ms. Winfree, Chief of the Misdemeanor Trial Section of the United States Attorney's Office, had informed student counsel in another Farragut West case that the United States Attorney had a policy against diverting individuals who engage in political demonstration. Mellecker also filed supplemental information which more fully described the study of unlawful entry cases that Fedorov and Donne had cited. According to this information, the D.C. Law Students in Court program had examined the court jacket in every unlawful entry case in the District of Columbia from January 1, 1985 to January 1, 1988. During that period, approximately 2,000 persons had been arrested for unlawful entry. Forty percent were no-papered or dismissed while others were papered on other charges. The remaining sample of 953 cases consisted of 275 persons classified as political demonstrators, 648 classified as non-demonstrators, and 30 who could not be classified. Of the 275 political demonstrators, none (0%) was admitted to diversion; of the 648 non-demonstrators, at least 27% were granted diversion. [5] At a March 29, 1988 hearing, Mellecker's counsel proffered her own statement in support of the allegation that the United States Attorney had a policy of not diverting otherwise eligible unlawful entrants if they were political demonstrators: The effort was made by me, as counsel for Mr. Mellecker ..., to get [this] Defendant, who, as I say, ha[s] no prior record, no other pending charges, and who [is] charged with unlawful entry, a normally divertable offense, into the diversion program. However, I was advised by an employee of the United States attorney's office that it would be a waste of time, essentially, to bring Mr. Mellecker ... in for [a] diversion interview, because I was told over the telephone, the United States attorney's office has a policy of not diverting protest cases[.] She also proffered the testimony of two witnesses. The first, a student attorney representing another Farragut West demonstrator, was prepared to testify that Ms. Winfree, the Chief of the United States Attorney's Misdemeanor Trial Section, had informed the student attorney that the government has a policy of not diverting protest cases. This witness would also testify about the methodology the D.C. Law Students in Court program had used in its statistical study of the government's diversion practices and about the reliability of this method. The second witness, a statistics professor from Howard University who had assisted in the development of the study and had analyzed the results, would testify about the statistical significance of the finding that not a single political demonstrator charged with unlawful entry had been granted diversion while at least 27% of charged non-demonstrators had been admitted to diversion. At the hearing, the government opposed Mellecker's request for an evidentiary hearing. In response to repeated inquiries from Judge Burnett, the prosecutor would not categorically confirm or deny that the government had a policy of denying diversion to political demonstrators. [6] When the judge directly asked the government whether any political demonstrator in the last three years had been admitted to pretrial diversion, the government responded that the office does not maintain statistics and we don't think that it matters whether there has been [a diverted political demonstrator] or not. The government maintained, rather, that Mellecker had failed to show he was a victim of disparate treatment because those with whom he was similarly situatedthose arrested the same day that [he was] arrested,had also been denied diversion. [7] On April 14, 1988, Judge Burnett issued a memorandum opinion denying the motion to dismiss. Explicitly adopting Judge Salzman's analysis in Fedorov's and Donne's cases, Judge Burnett rejected Mellecker's selective prosecution argument, concluding that his proposed class of those similarly situatedthose charged with unlawful entry who were technically eligible for diversionwas far too broad. Rather, the judge agreed with the government that the appropriate comparison group was those who attempted to bar the closing of the Farragut West Metrorail station. Memorandum, Opinion and Order, Burnett, J. at 3 (Apr. 14, 1988). The judge also concluded that, even if the appropriate comparison group should have been broader, Mellecker had failed to show that the government's decision to prosecute was based on invidious discrimination. Judge Burnett reasoned that the government had prosecuted Mellecker because he had refused to leave the Metro station after repeated warnings, not because of the nature or content of his protest activities. The judge used the same reasoning to reject Mellecker's First Amendment claim, concluding that Mellecker had made no showing that the Government's policy with regard to its administration of its pretrial diversion program is intended to keep the defendant[ ] from protesting on behalf of the homeless or that it is in any way based on the content or nature of the message communicated in the demonstration. Appellants Fedorov, Donne, and Mellecker subsequently entered conditional guilty pleas on one count of unlawful entry, preserving their rights to appeal from the denials of their motions to dismiss. Judge Salzman sentenced Fedorov and Donne to six months of probation on condition that they complete fifty hours of community service. Judge Burnett placed Mellecker on one year of probation, to be unsupervised after he had completed twenty-five hours of community service.