Opinion ID: 421796
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Scope of Absolute Prosecutorial Immunity

Text: 26 In Imbler v. Pachtman, the Supreme Court, in an explicitly limited holding, ruled that the prosecutor is immune from a civil suit for damages under § 1983 in initiating a prosecution and in presenting the State's case. 424 U.S. at 431, 96 S.Ct. at 994. These activities, the Court observed, are intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process, and thus [are] functions to which the reasons for absolute immunity apply with full force. Id. at 430, 96 S.Ct. at 995. The Court went no further in Butz v. Economou, where agency officials were accorded absolute protection from suits arising out of [t]he decision to initiate administrative proceedings and the presentation of evidence on the record in the course of an adjudication. 438 U.S. at 515, 517, 98 S.Ct. at 2915, 2916. 19 27 [229 U.S.App.D.C. 185] This court has repeatedly adhered to the principles enunciated in Imbler and Butz, confin[ing] absolute prosecutorial immunity to 'quasi-judicial' actions. McSurley v. McClellan, 697 F.2d 309, 318 (D.C.Cir.1982) (per curiam). 20 The controlling question under this approach is whether the conduct in question is so closely associated with the judicial process that it can be characterized as advocatory: 28 [A] prosecutor receives absolute immunity only when he acts as an advocate, that is, in his role as a participant in the judicial phase of the criminal process. When a prosecutor acts in any other capacity, the rationale for absolute immunity dissolves and the prosecutor receives only the lesser, qualified immunity .... Id. at 319. 21 29 Delineation of the precise scope of protected advocatory conduct beyond the boundaries established in Imbler has proved to be exceedingly difficult. Courts are agreed that purely advocatory functions--conduct implicating, as in Imbler, solely the initiation and prosecution of criminal trial proceedings--triggers absolute immunity. 22 Although there are a number of decisions holding that activity less closely associated with the judicial phase of criminal proceedings [229 U.S.App.D.C. 186] should not receive absolute immunity, 23 there is no clear consensus on how to properly characterize all of the various forms of prosecutorial conduct. 24 This lack of a consensus is plainly attributable to an absence of any settled approach to determining when absolute immunity applies. 25 30 We believe the task of line-drawing where prosecutorial conduct is neither clearly advocatory nor clearly non-advocatory must take as its premise the rationale for absolute immunity: In defining the scope of an official's absolute privilege, courts should be mindful that the sphere of protected action must be related closely to the immunity's justifying purposes. Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 102 S.Ct. at 2696, 2705 (1982). 26 Hence, with an eye to the rationale for granting the prosecutor absolute immunity when he acts within his advocatory role, we briefly undertake to identify and elaborate on some general considerations for analyzing prosecutorial conduct that falls neither clearly within nor clearly without the scope of Imbler. 31 In examining such conduct, we shall look first to whether it was sufficiently adversarial to evoke strong resentment and thus frequent retaliatory litigation. Perhaps the best measure of this is the phase of the proceedings at which the disputed conduct occurs. 27 The prosecutor is far more likely to be the target of vindictive hostility once he has initiated criminal proceedings; in the post-indictment phase of the proceedings, he is generally required to do and say things on the public record that may cast suspicion and ultimately the criminal sanction on some individual. The prosecutor's role in these circumstances is plainly advocatory. 32 But the phase of the proceedings cannot be dispositive. 28 If the activity at issue occurs prior to indictment or if no indictment is ever returned, the prosecutor's conduct may nevertheless be advocatory. There are several important clues that may indicate whether the prosecutor's role at pre-indictment stages approximates his position after an indictment has been returned. The first is the particularity of the [229 U.S.App.D.C. 187] proceedings. 29 Prosecutorial conduct in the course of an investigation that has focused on a specific target may cast a shadow of public suspicion and thus evoke vindictive reactions no less intense than could be expected from an indicted defendant. Another clue is the context of the conduct in question. 30 Activity in the course of judicial or other formal proceedings is likely to involve advocacy directed against some individual or corporation; in these circumstances, the prosecutor can be expected to take an adversarial posture that may well cause antagonism and hostile counter motives. A final clue, albeit somewhat obscure in definition, may be found in the nature of particular prosecutorial actions or decisions. Thus, certain actions of the prosecutor may be so closely related to traditional quasi-judicial functions as to suggest an effective adversarial posture. 31 Decisions involving the selection of evidence, for example, must often be calculated to embarrass and discredit; other prosecutorial decisions, involving the prosecutor's inherent discretion in deciding whether to charge and what charges to bring, must by definition be threatening and coercive. Cf. Goldschmidt v. Patchett, 686 F.2d 582 (7th Cir.1982) (sending of letter threatening prosecution advocatory because it is not the sort of activity which could be performed by a layman with the same effectiveness that a letter from the prosecutor's office would accomplish). 33 Second, we shall look to whether there were prosecutorial safeguards to minimize the necessity for civil damage suits. Here too the phase of the proceedings and the context of the conduct are important. At all points after the decision to seek an indictment there is generally close and direct judicial scrutiny of prosecutorial conduct. 32 Whatever the stage of the proceedings, however, conduct outside the courtroom will generally be subject to relatively little monitoring. 33 Pre-indictment prosecutorial conduct is subject to some measure of judicial scrutiny, 34 and investigatory conduct may be subject to the exclusionary sanction at trial or to professional discipline. But these are often hollow and ineffectual remedies. As the relationship between pre-indictment activity and the judicial process becomes more attenuated, the more important it becomes to take into account the adequacy of the available sanctions to deter abuse. 35 34 In sum, absolute prosecutorial immunity extends only to advocatory conduct. Beyond initiation of criminal proceedings and presentation of evidence in criminal trials, drawing functional lines between advocatory and non-advocatory conduct becomes [229 U.S.App.D.C. 188] very difficult. We have identified various factors--all tied to the justifying purposes for absolute immunity--to guide that line-drawing task in cases where the scope of the immunity has not been clearly settled. None of these factors alone is intended to be determinative, nor must they always be used in combination. Given the variety of prosecutorial conduct, however, they will provide some indication of whether the rationale, and thus the protection, of absolute immunity applies in any particular case. 35