Opinion ID: 3040311
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: “An Attorney for the Government or Other

Text: Government Agent” Finally, internal government documents must be made by “an attorney for the government or other government agent.” It is undisputed that the police reports at issue were not made by an attorney. Rather, they were made by officers of the San Francisco Police Department. The question is whether the San Francisco police officers who made the reports were “other 374 UNITED STATES v. FORT government agents” within the meaning of Rule 16(a)(2). To answer this question, we must determine the meaning of the terms “government” and “agent,” and the function of the modifier “other.”
The term “government” refers to the federal government in Rule 16(a)(2), as conceded by the majority.
The term “agent” encompasses only a person who acts with the authority or apparent authority of the principal. Black’s Law Dictionary defines “agent” as “[o]ne who is authorized to act for or in the place of another.” Black’s Law Dictionary 68 (8th ed. 2004) (emphasis added). To “authorize” is “to give legal authority; to empower . . . to formally approve; to sanction.” Id. at 143. The term “agent” is sufficiently broad to encompass state or local law enforcement personnel working alongside, or on behalf of, the federal government, as in a cooperative joint investigation. However, the term does not encompass state and local personnel who at the time of their actions had no authority, real or apparent, from the federal government. That is, the term “agent” requires prior or contemporaneous authorization of the agent by the federal government. Reading the term “agent” to require prior or contemporaneous authorization is consistent with other uses of that term in Rule 16. For example, Rule 16(a)(1)(C) speaks of persons who are “legally able to bind the defendant regarding the subject of [a] statement . . . [or] conduct because of that person’s position as the defendant’s director, officer, employee, or agent.” (Emphasis added). This passage mirrors the ordinary definition of “agent” as “[o]ne who is authorized to act for or in the place of another.” In United States v. Taylor, 417 F.3d 1176 (11th Cir. 2005), the Eleventh Circuit employed this UNITED STATES v. FORT 375 definition of “agent” under Rule 16(a)(1)(A). The court held that a former cellmate of the defendant, who wrote a letter to the government six months before trial describing the defendant’s purported jailhouse confession, “was not, at any time, a government agent” under Rule 16. Id. at 1181-82. There is clear symmetry between Rules 16(a)(2) and 16(b)(2). Both sections employ virtually identical language when describing the protected work product of the government (Rule 16(a)(2)) and the defendant (Rule 16(b)(2)). Rule 16(b)(2) allows the defendant to refuse to disclose “reports, memoranda, or other documents made by the defendant, or the defendant’s attorney or agent, during the case’s investigation or defense,” as well as certain statements “made to the defendant, or the defendant’s attorney or agent.” In interpreting Rule 16, the Supreme Court has been guided by “perceptible symmetr[ies]” in its language. Armstrong, 517 U.S. at 462. The majority does not even mention Rule 16(b)(2), let alone consider the implications for that section of its broad reading of “agent” in Rule 16(a)(2). If making and later giving a document to the federal government can make a person a “government agent” within the meaning of Rule 16(a)(2), virtually all of the materials that would otherwise be required by Rule 16(a)(1) to be disclosed can be protected from disclosure by the mere act of giving them to the government. I would be very surprised if the majority would embrace a symmetrical reading of Rule 16(b)(2), in which the same definition of “agent” would provide a criminal defendant the same ability to avoid disclosure of documents otherwise required to be disclosed under Rule 16(a)(1).
The natural reading of the phrase “other government agent” is that it means any “agent of the federal government” other than an “attorney for the government.” See Fed. R. Crim. P. 1(b)(1) (defining “attorney for the government” as an attorney employed or “authorized by” the federal government). How376 UNITED STATES v. FORT ever, the government argues that the word “other” modifies only the word “government” rather than the two-word phrase “government agent.” Under the government’s reading, “other government agent” means agent of some government other than the federal government. If we read “other government agent” to mean “agent for another government,” as the government suggests, there would still be work-product protection for the work of an “attorney for the government.” But there would be no work-product protection for the work of any other agent of the federal government. That is, under the government’s reading, there would be no work-product protection for documents prepared by an FBI agent working on a federal criminal case. This is manifestly absurd. I am confident that the government would not argue for this reading of “other government agent” in a case where documents made by an FBI agent were at issue. See United States v. Jordan, 316 F.3d 1215 (11th Cir. 2003).