Opinion ID: 2998236
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: CIPA Substitution

Text: About a month before Dumeisi’s trial began, on December 8, 2003, the government provided him with materials pursuant to the Jencks Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3500. Included in these materials was the grand jury testimony of El-Dilemi, the former IIS officer and government witness who testified at trial about the “spy pen” and his observations of Dumeisi at the IMUN. On a single page of this transcript, El-Dilemi made a statement referencing classified information, which the government had inadvertently failed to redact. Dumeisi’s counsel dutifully returned its copies of the page, but, believing that the classified statement was helpful to Dumeisi, filed both a motion for a pre-trial conference under § 2 of CIPA, 18 U.S.C. App. 3, and a motion to dismiss the indictment for discovery violations. On December 31, 2003, the government filed its CIPA § 6 notice relative to the ElDilemi testimony and requested a protective order prohibiting disclosure of classified information under § 4 of CIPA. After an in camera examination of the classified material, the district court denied Dumeisi’s request for a § 2 conference and found that the government had not violated its discovery obligations under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 16 No. 04-1882 (1976). The court also found that the government’s proposed unclassified summary2 was sufficient so as not to deprive Dumeisi of any potential impeachment value that the information had under Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972). Dumeisi argues that CIPA was misapplied, and that his resulting position with respect to the information at issue deprived him of his rights to confrontation, effective assistance of counsel, and a fair trial. Both parties invited this court to review the classified information in order to evaluate the district court’s decision regarding disclosure of material for abuse of discretion. See United States v. O’Hara, 301 F.3d 563, 569 (7th Cir. 2002). We review questions of CIPA interpretation de novo. Id. at 568. The CIPA’s fundamental purpose is to “protect[ ] and restrict[ ] the discovery of classified information in a way that does not impair the defendant’s right to a fair trial.” Id. It is essentially a procedural tool that requires a court to rule on the relevance of classified information before it may be introduced. See United States v. Wilson, 901 F.2d 378, 2 The unclassified summary of information concerning El-Dilemi follows in its entirety: The United States Government has provided Hazim ElDilemi and/or his family with the following economic and non-economic assistance: 1. The government agreed to provide asylum to El-Dilemi and paid him a total of $1000 in remuneration. The government also paid for El-Dilemi’s airplane ticket to the United States. Upon his arrival in the United States, the government provided El-Dilemi with a receipt for an application for a Social Security number that had been obtained for him. 2. The government also provided immigration assistance to relatives of El-Dilemi. No. 04-1882 17 379 (4th Cir. 1990). As Dumeisi concedes, the CIPA does not create any discovery rights for the defendant. The district court appropriately utilized § 4 and § 6 of the act to deal with the use, relevance, and admissibility of the evidence at issue. Section 2 provides for a pretrial conference to establish timetables for discovery and for the procedures established by other sections of CIPA (i.e., the alternative procedures for disclosing classified information in § 6); the court found it unnecessary to conduct this conference, given that the procedures were already underway. This did not violate Dumeisi’s constitutional rights; he received a summary of the relevant information, which the court found would provide him with “substantially the same ability to make his defense as would disclosure of the specific classified information,” several days prior to trial. To the extent he takes issue with the fact that this information was received only days before trial, we note that “[d]elayed disclosure of evidence does not in and of itself constitute a Brady [or Giglio] violation.” O’Hara, 301 F.3d at 569. Having reviewed the classified evidence, we find that the district court did not abuse its discretion in substituting the government’s summary of classified information regarding El-Dilemi for the actual information. Nor did the court err in denying Dumeisi’s motion for discovery sanctions against the government; the material does not implicate Brady. Finally, the government’s summary related to El-Dilemi did not deprive Dumeisi of its potential impeachment value under Giglio.