Opinion ID: 200358
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The CJA and Disclosure

Text: 11 Before moving to the merits, we begin with some general context about the CJA and disclosure, which informs the analysis that follows. 12 The CJA provides for the government to pay for attorneys and related services at specified rates (usually well below market rates) on behalf of eligible criminal defendants. The statute applies to anyone who is financially unable to obtain adequate representation. 18 U.S.C. § 3006A(a). Guidelines promulgated by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts have elaborated slightly on this terse statutory definition, by saying that it applies to a defendant whose net financial resources and income are insufficient to enable him to obtain qualified counsel and that the court should consider the cost of providing the person and his dependents with the necessities of life. VII Admin. Office of U.S. Courts, Guide to Judiciary Policies and Procedures § 2.04 (2001) [hereinafter A.O. Guide ]. 1 Inability to pay is not the same as indigence or destitution. Museitef v. United States, 131 F.3d 714 (8th Cir.1997); see 3A C.A. Wright, Federal Practice & Procedure § 732 (2d ed. 1982 & Supp.2002) (defining eligibility as defendant's inability to pay for adequate representation without substantial hardship to himself or his family). The court may request further information or verification from the defendant or court officers, and the prosecution or other interested parties may also present relevant information to assist the court in its determination. See VII A.O. Guide § 2.03. 13 The magistrate judge here engaged in such further fact-finding, by requesting and receiving the summary of Connolly's legal bills. He then found that those prior legal bills and other liabilities were more than double Connolly's assets, and that Connolly was eligible for appointment of counsel under the CJA. Although it is possible to provide retroactive reimbursement for legal bills incurred before the CJA application was submitted, see 18 U.S.C. § 3006A(b), the order explicitly allowed payments only for services provided after March 5, 2002. 14 The magistrate judge also recommended that the district court consider at the close of the case whether Connolly's financial situation had improved. The CJA provides that [w]henever the United States magistrate judge or court finds that funds are available for payment from or on behalf of a person furnished representation, it may authorize or direct that the person reimburse the CJA funds expended on his or her legal defense. 18 U.S.C. § 3006A(f); see United States v. Merric, 166 F.3d 406, 411 (1st Cir.1999) (allowing reimbursement of CJA funds as condition of supervised release where defendant has means to pay); United States v. Fraza, 106 F.3d 1050, 1056 (1st Cir.1997) (citing United States v. Santarpio, 560 F.2d 448, 455 (1st Cir.1977)) (court must hold hearing when determining whether defendant now has means to reimburse CJA funds). The guidelines rely on this opportunity for reimbursement to recommend that, initially, [a]ny doubts as to a person's eligibility should be resolved in his favor; erroneous determinations of eligibility may be corrected at a later time. VII A.O. Guide § 2.04. Thus a decision to grant Connolly's application before trial, and revisit the issue afterwards if there were doubts as to his eligibility, was an ordinary application of the relevant law and rules. 15 The statute itself is silent about disclosure of documents demonstrating a defendant's financial eligibility for CJA status. The Act does require ex parte hearings for certain determinations, such as requests to fund expert services. See 18 U.S.C. § 3006A(e)(1); United States v. Abreu, 202 F.3d 386, 387, 389 (1st Cir.2000). Access to such requests may, of course, disclose defense strategy to the prosecution, and so do not involve the same interests as the issue before us. On the other hand, Congress added a new provision to the CJA in 1996 requiring disclosure of certain basic data about the amounts paid to lawyers under the Act, with specified exceptions. 18 U.S.C. § 3006A(d)(4); Pub.L. No. 104-132, § 903(a) (1996). 2 None of the three documents at issue here includes that type of data. The CJA forms contain only personal financial information about the Connolly family. The sealed statement of legal fees summarizes Connolly's previous private legal bills, which were specifically excluded from CJA coverage. Nothing in the statute states whether these types of documents should be public. 16 The A.O. Guide sets out a general rule of disclosure and gives courts discretion to override it in particular cases: 17 Generally, such information which is not otherwise routinely available to the public should be made available.... 18 Upon request, or upon the court's own motion, documents pertaining to activities under the CJA and related statutes maintained in the clerk's open files, which are generally available to the public, may be judicially placed under seal or otherwise safeguarded until after all judicial proceedings, including appeals, in the case are completed and for such time thereafter as the court deems appropriate. 19 VII A.O. Guide § 5.01(A) (2000). The guidelines specify situations that would justify departure from the general rule, including those where disclosure could reasonably be expected to unduly intrude upon the privacy of attorneys or defendants. Id. 20 The magistrate judge quoted these passages and weighed the competing interests involved. In the exercise of his discretion, he concluded that it was appropriate to seal the documents at issue here, because disclosure would unduly intrude on the privacy of Connolly and his family. He ruled that they would be sealed at least until Connolly exhausted his appeals. We do not consider this order to be a summary dismissal. The magistrate judge weighed the factors with due consideration of the presumption of disclosure embodied in the A.O. Guide. The court thus weighed the public's interest, which exists on both sides of this issue, as well as the defendant's interest. 21 This description of the CJA process raises two important issues. First, it calls into question whether the CJA eligibility documents are judicial documents at all. Not all documents filed with a court are considered `judicial documents.' United States v. Gonzales, 150 F.3d 1246, 1255 (10th Cir.1998). Connolly argues that Congress could easily have delegated the task of determining a defendant's eligibility for CJA aid to a non-judicial officer or to an executive agency. Indeed, states use many different structures to govern their indigent defense programs, some of which are housed within the executive branch and some of which are independent agencies. See generally R.L. Spangenberg & M.L. Beeman, Indigent Defense Systems in the United States, Law & Contemp. Probs., Winter 1995, at 31, 37-41. 3 Current practice under the CJA also delegates many responsibilities in determining eligibility to non-judicial officers. See VII A.O. Guide § 2.03(B) (allowing court to designate other court employees to obtain or verify the facts upon which [the CJA eligibility] determination is to be made). The forms used to apply for CJA assistance are generated by the Administrative Office, and Connolly filed them with the Office of Pre-Trial Services rather than with the clerk of the court or the judge. These facts support a conclusion that the CJA eligibility documents are not essentially judicial in character. 22 Both the constitutional and the common law rights of access have applied only to judicial documents. See El Dia, Inc. v. Hernandez Colon, 963 F.2d 488, 495 (1st Cir.1992) (discussing scope of First Amendment right of access and its limitation to judicial activities); Fed. Trade Comm'n v. Standard Fin. Mgmt. Corp., 830 F.2d 404, 408 (1st Cir.1987) (Those documents which play no role in the adjudication process ... lie beyond reach of common law presumption). There is no general constitutional right of access to information in the government's possession. See Houchins v. KQED, Inc., 438 U.S. 1, 15, 98 S.Ct. 2588, 57 L.Ed.2d 553 (1978) (plurality opinion) (Neither the First Amendment nor the Fourteenth Amendment mandates a right of access to government information or sources of information within the government's control.); Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U.S. 1, 17, 85 S.Ct. 1271, 14 L.Ed.2d 179 (1965) (The right to speak and publish does not carry with it the unrestrained right to gather information.). 23 A determination that the CJA eligibility documents are not judicial documents would dispose of the Herald's claims altogether. See M.A. Franklin, D.A. Anderson, & F.H. Cate, Mass Media Law 770 (6th ed. 2000) (One question that runs through many of these cases is whether the materials at issue are judicial records. If the court decides that they are not, there appears to be no right of access under either the common law or the First Amendment.). While we think that these are not judicial documents, we hesitate to decide the issue here on that basis alone. Disentangling judges' judicial and administrative roles can be tricky, as seen in other areas, such as absolute judicial immunity. See Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219, 227, 108 S.Ct. 538, 98 L.Ed.2d 555 (1988) (This Court has never undertaken to articulate a precise and general definition of the class of acts entitled to [judicial] immunity. The decided cases, however, suggest an intelligible distinction between judicial acts and administrative ... functions that judges may on occasion be assigned by law to perform.); E. Chemerinsky, Federal Jurisdiction § 8.6 (3d ed. 1999) (Although the distinction between a judicial function and an administrative one is often clear, there are many instances in which the characterization of the task is problematic.). While we do not rely on this as the basis for our decision, we note that the administrative process of determining CJA eligibility is far removed from the core of the judicial function. 24 A second issue raised by this review is the distinction between the structure laid out in the A.O. Guide and the blanket prohibitions found in many other cases concerning constitutional rights of access. Courts have disfavored blanket rules which failed to account for individual circumstances. The Supreme Court emphasized this point when it overturned, on constitutional grounds, a Massachusetts law which automatically required the closing of a trial when a victim under the age of eighteen testified concerning certain specified sexual offenses. Globe Newspaper Co. v. Superior Court, 457 U.S. 596, 598, 602, 102 S.Ct. 2613, 73 L.Ed.2d 248 (1982). The Court there recognized that protecting a minor's well-being was a compelling interest, but found that this interest does not justify a mandatory closure rule, for it is clear that the circumstances of the particular case may affect the significance of the interest. Id. at 608, 102 S.Ct. 2613; see also id. at 611, 102 S.Ct. 2613 (O'Connor, J., concurring) (Massachusetts has demonstrated no interest weighty enough to justify application of its automatic bar to all cases, even those in which the victim, defendant, and prosecutor have no objection to an open trial.). Similarly, this court has interpreted a federal law to authorize, but not require, closing certain juvenile proceedings, and determined that there was therefore no need to reach the constitutional question. See United States v. Three Juveniles, 61 F.3d 86, 90-92 (1st Cir.1995). 25 The process for handling CJA eligibility documents such as Connolly's is not a blanket rule denying access. Rather, it strikes a balance under which disclosure is the presumed or default rule, but one which a court may displace by making a case-specific determination. Cf. Providence Journal, 293 F.3d at 12 (Safeguards against prejudice can be implemented on a case-specific basis. Where a particularized need for restricting public access to legal memoranda exists, that need can be addressed by the tailoring of appropriate relief.); Globe Newspaper Co. v. Pokaski, 868 F.2d 497, 506-07 (1st Cir.1989) (rejecting blanket rule in favor of case-by-case tailoring). The magistrate judge acted in accordance with this framework. 26 If a First Amendment right of access applies to this case, then it renders the entire discretion-based framework in the A.O. Guide unconstitutional. A court could meet the stringent First Amendment standard for sealing documents only by articulating an overriding interest based on findings that closure is essential to preserve higher values and is narrowly tailored to serve that interest. Providence Journal, 293 F.3d at 11 (quoting Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court (Press-Enterprise I), 464 U.S. 501, 510, 104 S.Ct. 819, 78 L.Ed.2d 629 (1984)). Despite its presumption of disclosure and its careful guidelines for exercising judicial discretion in overcoming the presumption, the A.O. Guide framework falls below this level of stringency. Constitutionalizing the access question, as the dissent would do, thus displaces the policy established by Congress and the courts. If constitutionalized, the court's discretion would be much more constrained and the balance would tilt much further toward disclosure. Applying the dissent's analysis to future cases would similarly oust legislative and rulemaking determinations about the proper balance between disclosure and privacy in the courts.