Court Opinion

ID: 9484227
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:44:32.030778+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:50:05.786911
License: Public Domain

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
With respect, in order to reach its result, the court constructs a conspiracy from entirely equivocal facts and then faults the government for not doing the same. Electronic equipment fails, and, even if it were not the common experience of humanity that it did, the court offers no explanation of how Mr. Zibolski and Mr. Calhoun could have possibly caused static to appear on a tape. (If a tape is erased, it contains nothing, not static.) It is, moreover, a reasonable inference that one rarely sees prosecutions presenting these kinds of circumstances because these kinds of circumstances are themselves unusual. The court also finds it somehow suspicious that Mr. Zibolski and Mr. Calhoun repaired to the room where the recording equipment was located immediately after the material events in issue. But this behavior is completely consistent with an entirely innocent motive, namely, a desire to secure evidence that will support what one knows to be true. '
It is not our task, of'course, to decide whether Mr. Zibolski and Mr. Calhoun,in fact contrived a plan to cover up their own errors. What we have to decide is whether the government was substantially justified in believing that they did not and in prosecuting Mr. Smith. As the court today itself recognizes, our question is whether the government was “justified to a degree that could satisfy a reasonable person.” Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U.S. 552, 108 S.Ct. 2541, 101 L.Ed.2d 490 (1988). What the court holds today, in essence, is that no reasonable fact-finder could conclude that Mr. Zibolski and Mr. Calhoun had not contrived a case against Mr. Smith. It seems manifest to me that reasonable persons could differ over that question.
The result that the court reaches today puts an unreasonable burden on an agency charged with important responsibilities that directly affect the safety and welfare of the travelling public. I cannot conscientiously join in that holding.
I therefore respectfully dissent.