Opinion ID: 1233930
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: .Government's Duty to Disclose

Text: We touched on this issue in our en banc decision, rejecting the government's contention that the district court failed to give substantial weight to the government's evaluation of the assistance that Burns had provided. Burns II, 500 F.3d at 765 n. 7. We pointed out that although the commentary to § 5K1.1 requires the district court to give substantial weight to the government's evaluation of the extent of the defendant's assistance, the government's recommendation is not controlling, however, and it is the district court's responsibility to determine an appropriate reduction. Id. (quoting United States v. Haack, 403 F.3d 997, 1005 (8th Cir.2005)). We concluded by saying that we would not consider final departures substantially at variance with unexplained government recommendations to be de facto proof of discretionary abuse. Id. Turning to the specific question on which we requested supplemental briefing, we conclude that the government is under no obligation to apprise the district court with respect to the bases underlying its recommendation of a particular downward departure under § 3553(e) in the absence of a showing that its recommendation was based upon an unconstitutional motivation such as the defendant's race or religion. Cf. United States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456, 463-64, 116 S.Ct. 1480, 134 L.Ed.2d 687 (1996); Wade v. United States, 504 U.S. 181, 185-86, 112 S.Ct. 1840, 118 L.Ed.2d 524 (1992); United States v. Moeller, 383 F.3d 710, 712 (8th Cir.2004). As the Court noted in Armstrong, [t]he Attorney General and United States Attorneys retain `broad discretion' to enforce the Nation's criminal laws. They have this latitude because they are designated by statute as the President's delegates to help him discharge his constitutional responsibility to `take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.' 517 U.S. at 464, 116 S.Ct. 1480 (citations omitted). In holding that the district court had erred in compelling the government to file a § 3553(e) motion, we stated that it is not the sentencing court's function to look behind the prosecutor's substantial assistance decisionmaking in this fashion. The prosecutor's evaluation of the quantity and quality of a defendant's assistance, like a prosecutor's decision to prosecute, `is particularly ill-suited to judicial review.' Moeller, 383 F.3d at 713 (citation omitted). We conclude that the reasoning set forth in those cases applies with equal force to the question before us in this case. There has been no allegation, much less a showing, of any unconstitutional motive on the government's part in declining to go beyond the reasons it provided to the district court in explaining its reasons for its 15 percent departure recommendation. Whether elaborating more fully on the reasons for its recommendation might have been a more prudent course to follow was for the government to decide.