Opinion ID: 63
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Pre-Trial Suppression Motion

Text: Prior to the trial, Grass and Brown filed a motion to suppress the tapes of the Noonan conversations, arguing that the government had obtained them in violation of the 1998 McDade Amendment, the provisions of which we describe below, by reason of AUSA Daniel, a government lawyer, having violated the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct by using Noonan as his proxy to elicit information from Grass and Brown about the subject matter of the government's investigation prior to their indictment but at a time when Daniel knew that they were represented by counsel with respect to that investigation. After holding a suppression hearing, the District Court issued an opinion on January 13, 2003, denying Grass's and Brown's motion. The Court held that AUSA Daniel had not committed an ethical violation by using Noonan as a confidential informant, and that, even if he had done so, suppression was not an appropriate remedy for the violation. See United States v. Grass, 239 F.Supp.2d 535, 549 (M.D.Pa.2003). We review a district court's denial of a suppression motion for clear error as to the underlying facts, but exercise plenary review with respect to legal findings made in light of the district court's properly found facts. United States v. Coles, 437 F.3d 361, 365 (3d Cir. 2006) (citing United States v. Givan, 320 F.3d 452, 458 (3d Cir.2003)). At the time of the alleged violations, Rule 4.2 of the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct, known as the no-contact rule, provided: In representing a client, a lawyer shall not communicate about the subject of the representation with a party the lawyer knows to be represented by another lawyer in the matter, unless the lawyer has the consent of the other lawyer or is authorized by law to do so. Pa. R. Prof'l Conduct 4.2. [19] Rule 8.4(a) provides that an attorney has engaged in misconduct if he violates the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct through the acts of another. Pa. R. of Prof'l Conduct 8.4. Pursuant to the McDade Amendment an attorney that the federal government employs is subject to the ethical rules in each state where such attorney engages in that attorney's duties to the same extent and in the same manner as any other attorney in that state. 28 U.S.C. § 530B(a). Accordingly, AUSA Daniel, a federal prosecutor in this Pennsylvania-based prosecution, was bound by Rule 4.2 at all times relevant to this appeal, and he ethically was not permitted to violate Rule 4.2 through the acts of a surrogate. The government does not dispute seriously that at the time the Noonan conversations were recorded, Brown was a party within the meaning of Rule 4.2 as that rule is interpreted in Pennsylvania, or that Brown was represented by counsel and AUSA Daniel was aware of that representation. The question before us then is whether AUSA Daniel was authorized by law to use a confidential informant to communicate with a represented suspect in the course of a pre-indictment investigation. Relying largely on our decision in United States v. Balter, 91 F.3d 427 (3d Cir.1996), the District Court answered this question in the affirmative. In Balter, we found that a federal prosecutor did not violate New Jersey's no-contact rule [20] when he used a confidential informant to contact a represented person in the course of a pre-indictment investigation. We reached that conclusion because the rule did not apply to a criminal suspect prior to the commencement of adversarial proceedings against the suspect, and that even if the rule did apply, pre-indictment investigation by prosecutors is precisely the type of contact exempted from the Rule as `authorized by law.' See id. at 435-36. After noting that New Jersey case law supported this latter point, we stated: Prohibiting prosecutors from investigating an unindicted suspect who has retained counsel would serve only to insulate certain classes of suspects from ordinary pre-indictment investigation. Furthermore, such a rule would significantly hamper legitimate law enforcement operations by making it very difficult to investigate certain individuals. Id. at 436. We then observed that decisions of every other court of appeals to have considered a similar case have supported this conclusion except for a decision of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Id. (citing United States v. Powe, 9 F.3d 68 (9th Cir.1993); United States v. Ryans, 903 F.2d 731 (10th Cir.1990); United States v. Sutton, 801 F.2d 1346 (D.C.Cir.1986); United States v. Dobbs, 711 F.2d 84 (8th Cir.1983); United States v. Weiss, 599 F.2d 730 (5th Cir.1979)). The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit concluded in United States v. Hammad, 858 F.2d 834, 839-40 (2d Cir.1988), that a federal prosecutor overstepped the boundaries of legitimate pre-indictment investigation by preparing a false grand jury subpoena to aid a confidential informant elicit admissions from a represented suspect. Brown contends that Balter is distinguishable from this case because it dealt with the New Jersey rather than Pennsylvania ethical rules, was decided prior to the enactment of the McDade Amendment, and the government's conduct in the present case is far more egregious than the government's conduct in Balter. We find these distinctions unavailing. To begin, New Jersey's no-contact rule is virtually identical to Pennsylvania's, and both states have derived their version of the rule from the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct. [21] See Balter, 91 F.3d at 435 n. 4. We recognize that Brown correctly points out that we supported our holding in Balter that pre-indictment investigations by prosecutors were authorized by law with a citation to a decision from an intermediate New Jersey state appellate court for which there is no analogous Pennsylvania decision. See id. at 436 (citing State v. Porter, 210 N.J.Super. 383, 510 A.2d 49, 54 (1986)). But our conclusion in Balter did not rest solely on the New Jersey state court decision and we do not believe the absence of an analogous Pennsylvania decision renders any less compelling our observations regarding the negative consequences that would follow from an outcome contrary to that we reach here. We recognize that Congress passed the McDade Amendment in part to combat perceived abuses by federal prosecutors and require them to comply with state no-contact rules. See generally Note, Federal Prosecutors, State Ethics Regulations, and the McDade Amendment, 113 Harvard L.Rev.2080 (2000). But Congress did not enlarge on the type of conduct that state rules forbid. Our inquiry therefore would be no different if AUSA Daniel had been a state prosecutor and we were entertaining an appeal from a state court conviction. Nevertheless Brown argues that the McDade Amendment supersedes cases such as Balter by making a particular state's rules, rather than general principles of ethics, applicable to the conduct of the federal prosecutor, and that, accordingly, AUSA Daniel ran afoul of Rule 4.2 because of the absence of a Pennsylvania statute or court decision expressly authorizing the conduct in which he engaged. Appellant's Op. Br. at 69. But we reject his argument because we do not believe the McDade Amendment prohibits federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania from using a well-established investigatory technique simply because the Pennsylvania courts have not considered whether such conduct is permissible. After all, the Pennsylvania courts have not held that such conduct is impermissible. [22] Finally, though we acknowledge that the government's conduct in investigating Brown gives us pause, we do not regard it as so egregious that it falls outside the realm of acceptable pre-indictment investigation. Although the government created a fictitious letter addressed to Noonan's counsel that Noonan showed to Brown in order to guide the topics of the March 30 conversation, Brown voluntarily agreed to the March 30 meeting with Noonan, the government's letter did not invoke the authority of the District Court or contain any forged signatures, the letter was not addressed to Brown, and the letter in no way purported to compel any action or inaction on Brown's behalf. Accordingly, we agree with the District Court that AUSA Daniel did not violate Rules 4.2 and 8.4(a) of the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct. Inasmuch as Brown, or for that matter any other government agent, did not commit an ethical violation in this case with respect to the fictitious letter or the March 30 meeting, the District Court properly denied Brown's pre-trial suppression motion. [23]