Opinion ID: 173199
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Limitation of Evidence

Text: The government can take an interlocutory appeal only with specific statutory authority. United States v. Louisiana Pacific Corp., 106 F.3d 345, 348 (10th Cir. 1997). The Criminal Appeals Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3731, provides in relevant part: In a criminal case an appeal by the United States shall lie to a court of appeals from a decision, judgment, or order of a district court dismissing an indictment or information . . . as to any one or more counts, or any part thereof, [3] except that no appeal shall lie where the double jeopardy clause of the United States Constitution prohibits further prosecution. An appeal by the United States shall lie to a court of appeals from a decision or order of a district court suppressing or excluding evidence . . . not made after the defendant has been put in jeopardy and before the verdict or finding on an indictment or information, if the United States attorney certifies to the district court that the appeal is not taken for purpose of delay and that the evidence is a substantial proof of a fact material in the proceeding. . . . The provisions of this section shall be liberally construed to effectuate its purposes. (Emphasis added). The question here is whether the district court's ruling was, in essence, a dismissal of any one or more counts, or any part thereof, or whether it merely excluded cumulative or prejudicial evidence. An appealable order under § 3731 excluding evidence for the purposes of case management is reviewed for abuse of discretion. See United States v. Zabawa, 39 F.3d 279, 283 (10th Cir.1994). However, an appeal based on the dismissal of a count charged in an indictment raises separation of powers concerns which may render the court's ruling beyond its discretionary case management powers. Id. at 284 (district court's pretrial order limiting the government to prosecuting twenty counts of a seventy-count indictment in an effort to manage its docket went beyond [rulings] subject to the court's discretionary control and impinge[d] upon the separation of powers.). The government maintains the district court's ruling impermissibly interferes with its prosecutorial discretion and reaches beyond the bounds of the court's discretionary control. The Schneiders argue the order's limitation of evidence is not a dismissal of Count 5 but is merely a proper exercise of the court's authority to manage the case to prevent cumulative, unnecessary and misleading evidence. In United States v. Zabawa , the district court limited the government's case to twenty counts of a seventy-count indictment because [i]t would be a waste of judicial resources if the Government were to parade into court thirty-five witnesses whose testimony would be largely redundant and would not impact the potential sentence to which defendants would be exposed. Id. at 283. The government appealed, claiming the reduction in the counts prevent[ed] it from presenting the necessary evidence to convict all defendants. Id. at 284. We recognized a district court has reasonable discretion in appropriate cases to manage its docket, but found the district court's ruling force[d] the government to abandon, at least temporarily, the prosecution of separate crimes it has charged against defendants who are scheduled to be tried. Id. We stated, [u]nless the district court rests its decision on the need to protect or preserve constitutional rights, it may not interfere with the prosecutorial function. Id. We quoted with approval the Seventh Circuit's reasoning in United States v. Giannattasio, 979 F.2d 98, 100 (7th Cir. 1992): A judge in our system does not have the authority to tell prosecutors which crimes to prosecute or when to prosecute them. Prosecutorial discretion resides in the executive, not in the judicial, branch, and that discretion, though subject of course to judicial review to protect constitutional rights, is not reviewable for a simple abuse of discretion. This principle is most often invoked when the issue is whom to prosecute . . . but it has equal force when the issue is which crimes of a given criminal to prosecute. If Dr. Giannattasio committed fifteen Medicare frauds, a judge cannot tell the Justice Department to prosecute him for only five of the frauds, or to prosecute him for five now and the rest later, if necessary. Of course there are judicially enforceable checks on discretion to indict. But they are protections for defendants, not for judges. . . . No rule authorizes the judge to sever offenses in an indictment because he believes that a trial of all the counts charged would clog his docket without yielding any offsetting benefit in the form of a greater likelihood of conviction or a more severe punishment. Zabawa, 39 F.3d at 285. The Schneiders argue Zabawa may be distinguished because the court here did not actually dismiss Count 5. Rather, it merely limited the government to evidence sufficient to prove the charge. The government concedes the district court did not dismiss Count 5 outright but argues it could have charged each named individual in Count 5 as a separate count against the Schneiders. [4] Thus, the inclusion of this charged conduct in one count does not change the substance of the charges or the effect of the district court's ruling. Prior to the 2002 amendment to § 3731, we required the dismissal of an entire count before appellate jurisdiction attached, rejecting the reasoning of those courts who looked to the practical effect of the district court's ruling to determine jurisdiction. See Louisiana Pacific Corp., 106 F.3d at 348 (rejecting a test under which the government can take an interlocutory appeal from an order dismissing a portion of a count if the portion provided a `discrete basis for the imposition of criminal liability.'). We found no basis in the statute for such a test and noted: It is not mere formalism, nor an irrational result, to require the government to plead allegations in separate counts, a minimal burden, in order to preserve its right to take an interlocutory appeal of the dismissal of such counts. . . . The precise manner in which an indictment is drawn cannot be ignored, because an important function of the indictment is to ensure that, in case any other proceedings are taken against the defendant for a similar offence, the record will show with accuracy to what extent he may plead a former acquittal or conviction. Id. at 349 (quoting Sanabria v. United States, 437 U.S. 54, 65-66, 98 S.Ct. 2170, 57 L.Ed.2d 43 (1978)). However, the 2002 amendment now specifically allows appeal from the dismissal of any portion of a count. While the government's reasons for naming one patient each in Counts 2, 3 and 4, but eighteen individuals in Count 5 remains somewhat of a mystery, we do not second-guess the government's permissible choice. [5] The court's ruling effectively dismissed separately charged conduct brought by the government against these defendants. In this way, the district court's order impermissibly intruded upon the authority of the executive branch to design a criminal prosecution in the way it deems most prudent. This is not to say the trial court may not exclude some of this evidence at trial under Rule 403. The power of district courts to manage their dockets is deeply ingrained in our jurisprudence. See, e.g., Link v. Wabash R.R. Co., 370 U.S. 626, 630-31, 82 S.Ct. 1386, 8 L.Ed.2d 734 (1962) (holding that a trial court's power to dismiss for lack of prosecution has generally been considered an `inherent power,' governed not by rule or statute but by the control necessarily vested in courts to manage their own affairs so as to achieve the orderly and expeditious disposition of cases); United States v. Nicholson, 983 F.2d 983, 988 (10th Cir.1993) (District courts generally are afforded great discretion regarding trial procedure applications (including control of the docket and parties), and their decisions are reviewed only for abuse of discretion.). Certainly a district court has reasonable discretion in appropriate cases to manage its docket by granting particular defendants separate trials or disallowing cumulative testimony on a particular charge. Zabawa, 39 F.3d at 284. But such restrictions may be imposed only when they do not foreclose the government from fairly presenting its case. In this instance, Count 5 alleges eighteen incidents in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 841. To convict a doctor for violating § 841, the government must prove: (1) that the defendant distributed or dispensed a controlled substance; (2) that the defendant acted knowingly and intentionally; and (3) that the defendant's actions were not for legitimate medical purposes in the usual course of his professional medical practice or were beyond the bounds of medical practice. United States v. Hurwitz, 459 F.3d 463, 475 (4th Cir.2006) (quotations omitted); see also United States v. Nelson, 383 F.3d 1227, 1231-32 (10th Cir. 2004) (A practitioner has unlawfully distributed a controlled substance if she prescribes the substance either outside the usual course of medical practice or without a legitimate medical purpose.). The government maintains the evidence of the charged conduct is necessary to establish the Schneiders' knowledge and intent to dispense the drugs for other than legitimate medical purposes. The government intends to prove the Schneiders were aware of the patients' overdose deaths but did nothing to change their practices. Thus, it argues, evidence of the charged conduct in Count 5 is necessary. Judicial deference to the decisions of these executive officers rests in part on an assessment of the relative competence of prosecutors and courts. Such factors as the strength of the case, the prosecution's general deterrence value, the Government's enforcement priorities, and the case's relationship to the Government's overall enforcement plan are not readily susceptible to the kind of analysis the courts are competent to undertake. It also stems from a concern not to unnecessarily impair the performance of a core executive constitutional function. United States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456, 465, 116 S.Ct. 1480, 134 L.Ed.2d 687 (1996) (quotations and citations omitted). Because it is unknown at this point how much of this evidence is needed to establish the necessary elements in Count 5 or to negate any explanation of innocent mistake, the court's premature conclusions impermissibly attempted to trim the government's case. The district court erred in its wholesale exclusion of all evidence relating to seventeen of the eighteen allegations in Count 5. [6] It is the government's decision, subject to constitutional protections, whether to charge these allegations in a single count rather than individually. A trial court's case management may not interfere with the government's ability to prosecute criminal activity any more than it can intrude upon a defendant's opportunity to defend.