Opinion ID: 546225
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Prejudicial Effect on Scarfo's Co-Defendants

Text: 242 Ciancaglini, Staino, the Narduccis, and the Pungitores argue that the admission of evidence implicating Scarfo's attorney, Robert F. Simone, Esq., in the Rouse extortion so prejudiced Scarfo's co-defendants as to require reversal of their convictions. Although appellants differ in how they frame their arguments, they each allege that the government intentionally set out to inflame the jury by undermining Simone's integrity. They argue that because Simone functioned as lead defense attorney, this prosecutorial misconduct caused extreme prejudice to all of the appellants, as the jury inevitably would infer that the entire defense team had participated in the enterprise's criminal activities. In a similar vein, Ciancaglini and Joseph Pungitore maintain that Simone, in his capacity as lead defense counsel, labored under an actual conflict of interest which impeded his representation not only of Scarfo, but of Scarfo's co-defendants. In their view, the district court either should have elicited their waiver of the conflict or ordered the government to drop or modify the charges concerning the Rouse extortion. In addition, they believe that it was incumbent upon the district court to monitor more closely the testimony and the prosecutor's closing summation to ensure that prejudicial references to Simone were kept to a minimum. 243 We will review these contentions for plain error because appellants failed to raise them at trial. 82 We find no prosecutorial misconduct or error on the part of the district court. 244 We do not take issue with appellants' basic premise that, as a general rule, a prosecutor should refrain from attacking the integrity and ethical standards of defense counsel. United States v. Young, 470 U.S. at 9, 105 S.Ct. at 1043 (it is improper for an attorney to make unfounded and inflammatory attacks on the opposing advocate.); United States v. Murrah, 888 F.2d 24 (5th Cir.1989) (reversing arson conviction where prosecutor accused defense counsel of hiding expert retained for trial preparation so that expert could not be called as a government witness); United States v. McLain, 823 F.2d 1457, 1462-63 (11th Cir.1987) (finding plain error where prosecutor repeatedly accused defense counsel of intentionally misleading the jurors and witnesses and of lying in court); Bruno v. Rushen, 721 F.2d 1193, 1194 & n. 3 (9th Cir.1983) (per curiam), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 920, 105 S.Ct. 302, 83 L.Ed.2d 236 (1984) (affirming grant of habeas petition on basis of prosecutorial argument which hinted that the defendant's retention of counsel was probative of his guilt and accused defense counsel of fabricating testimony in return for legal fees). 245 However, this ethical constraint does not inhibit a prosecutor from introducing relevant evidence which happens to implicate a defense attorney in the same criminal activities charged against the accused, provided that advance warning is given to the defense so that there is an opportunity for appropriate motions. 83 See United States v. Arzola-Amaya, 867 F.2d 1504, 1516 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 322, 107 L.Ed.2d 312 (1989). The cases cited above are not to the contrary, as the courts' holdings were limited to situations where the prosecutorial attack is irrelevant to the matter being tried and lacks any evidentiary support. Thus, the Murrah court wrote that a prosecutor may not challenge the integrity and ethical standards of defense counsel unless the prosecutor has certain proof of an offense and the matter is relevant to the case being tried. 888 F.2d at 27 (emphasis supplied). Similarly, in Bruno, the court specifically noted that the prosecutor offered nothing from the evidence adduced at trial to support his suspicions that defense counsel had agreed for the sake of profit to aid in fabricating a defense. 721 F.2d at 1194. Thus, neither Murrah nor Bruno suggest that the type of unfounded and inflammatory attack on [an] opposing advocate condemned in Young occurs whenever the government's evidence of a particular offense casts a defense attorney in an unfavorable light. 246 In this case, the evidence concerning Simone was highly probative of the appellants' guilt of the Rouse extortion. Given its extensive forewarnings and the appellants' failure to object throughout the trial, the government had no obligation to restructure its case so as to avoid references to Simone as an unindicted co-conspirator simply because Scarfo chose to retain Simone as his trial counsel. Indeed, we are aware of no cases in which a defendant's choice of counsel has been held to take precedence over the government's discretion in deciding what charges to prosecute and how to present its case. Where a defense attorney faces potential criminal liability for the same activity charged against his client, the attorney's ability to represent effectively the client obviously will be hampered by an actual conflict of interest. Government of the Virgin Islands v. Zepp, 748 F.2d 125 (3d Cir.1984) (finding irreconcilable conflict of interest where defendant was prosecuted for destroying evidence and she and her attorney were the only individuals present at the scene of the crime). In such circumstances, the trial court has a duty to elicit the defendant's knowing and intelligent waiver of the conflict and, if the court deems the waiver ineffective to safeguard the defendant's rights, to take other precautionary measures, including disqualifying the attorney. Zepp, 748 F.2d at 139; United States v. Dolan, 570 F.2d 1177, 1182 (3d Cir.1978) (exercise of the court's supervisory powers by disqualifying an attorney representing multiple defendants in spite of the defendants' express desire to retain that attorney does not necessarily abrogate defendants' sixth amendment rights.). In no case, however, must the government's exercise of prosecutorial discretion yield to the defendant's choice of counsel. 84 247 But here, the appellants cannot even assert a conflict of interest impeding Simone's representation of them because Simone represented only Scarfo. While Simone may have figured prominently in formulating and presenting the unified defense, that does not mean that he enjoyed an attorney-client relationship with every appellant in this case. At most, appellants have alleged that their defense suffered from a prejudicial spillover of evidence implicating Simone. If at trial, appellants believed that the spillover effect of the evidence was likely to influence unfairly the jury's verdict against them, they could have moved for a severance on that ground or requested other curative measures. See United States v. Sandini, 888 F.2d at 307; United States v. De Larosa, 450 F.2d 1057, 1065 (3d Cir.1971), cert. denied, 405 U.S. 927, 92 S.Ct. 978, 30 L.Ed.2d 800 (1972). Their failure to do so is fatal to the claim they raise on appeal. 85 248 In reaching this conclusion, we are influenced by the fact that appellants not only failed to request a severance on this ground at trial, but, in several instances, highlighted the evidence inculpating Simone during their closing summations in an attempt to show bias on the part of government witnesses. For example, defense counsel for Salvatore Merlino, in arguing that Caramandi was biased against the appellants, discussed at length Caramandi's testimony that he cooperated with the government because Scarfo and Simone were conspiring to murder him: 249 At the end of one session of his testimony, [Caramandi] concluded on what he conceived to be a high point, I became a government informant because Nick Scarfo and Bobby Simone were going to kill me. A lawyer in this case was going to kill him. I don't know if Mr. Simone is going to make any comment on the topic, but I think that's a personal affront, not just to Mr. Simone, not just to the defense team in this case, but to the whole system, when a witness is let to go so out of hand that he accuses a lawyer in the presence of the jury of a murder plot.... [T]hat's an example of the depths to which this witness will sink to hurt these fellas. 250 Tr. 11/14/88 at 70. 251 It is difficult for us to conclude that plain error occurred when the appellants themselves specifically urged the jury to consider the allegedly prejudicial material as an adverse element in the government's case against them. 86 252 We have already determined that the evidence concerning Simone was relevant and material to the charges being tried, and therefore, the government's use of it was entirely proper. We further conclude that even if the evidence was harmful to Scarfo's co-defendants, absent an objection or a motion for a severance, the district court had no obligation to order a severance or to restrict the scope of the testimony or the government's latitude in closing argument. The arguments appellants now raise were fully available to them at trial. Possibly, they chose not to pursue the matter, so as not to undermine the unified defense front presented at trial. But whatever the reason for appellants' silence, they have not preserved the matter for appeal or persuaded us that the references to Simone were plain error.