Court Opinion

ID: 9439065
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 06:20:13.249176+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:26:07.986554
License: Public Domain

RANDOLPH, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in the majority’s opinion insofar as it upholds the district court’s “transfer” of the defendant for prosecution as an adult. The balance of the opinion deals with the appeal from the district court’s order regarding the United States Attorney’s certification of a “substantial Federal interest,” 18 U.S.C. § 5032. I cannot join this part because, in my view, we do not have appellate jurisdiction to decide the matter: the order is not a final decision; it does not fall within the collateral order doctrine; we do not have pendent jurisdiction over it; and certification is not a “jurisdictional” prerequisite to the transfer order. I will take up each of these points in sequence.
First, the “courts of appeals ... shall have jurisdiction of appeals from all final decisions of the district courts,” 28 U.S.C. § 1291. A “final decision” is one that “ends the litigation on the merits and leaves nothing for the court to do but execute the judgment.” Catlin v. United States, 324 U.S. 229, 233, 65 S.Ct. 631, 633, 89 L.Ed. 911 (1945). There is no such “final decision” here. The case has not even gone to trial. And so to sustain appellate jurisdiction, we must slip the appeal into an exception. This is easy enough for the transfer order. The law of the circuit dictates that “transfer” orders fit "within the limited collateral order exception to § 1291’s final judgment rule. See In re Sealed Case, 893 F.2d 363, 366-68 (D.C.Cir.1990); Cohen v. Beneficial Indus. Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 545-47, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 1225-26, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949). Certification orders cannot be squeezed through that opening, which brings me to point two.
Appealable, final collateral orders share several characteristics, one of which is that “denial of immediate review would render impossible any review whatsoever,” United States v. Ryan, 402 U.S. 530, 533, 91 S.Ct. 1580, 1582, 29 L.Ed.2d 85 (1971). In criminal cases — apart from those dealing with the constitutional right to bail — the collateral order exception has been invoked when an order deprives the defendant of some “right not to be tried.” Midland Asphalt Corp. v. United States, 489 U.S. 794, 800, 109 S.Ct. 1494, 1499, 103 L.Ed.2d 879 (1989). Transfer orders may be of that sort. District court orders passing on the validity of the Attorney General’s certification are not. If defendants are entitled to judicial review of such orders, the review may be had after conviction and sentencing. The certification requirement of § 5032 no more confers upon a defendant a “right not to be tried” than does the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a speedy trial, or the due process prohibition *217against vindictive prosecution, or the requirement that grand juries not be influenced by government violations of Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. While violation of those proscriptions ordinarily demands dismissal of the indictment, a district court’s refusal to dismiss may not be raised in an interlocutory appeal. See Midland, Asphalt Corp., 489 U.S. at 798-802, 109 S.Ct. at 1497-1500; United States v. Hollywood Motor Car Co., 458 U.S. 263, 264-70, 102 S.Ct. 3081, 3082-85, 73 L.Ed.2d 754 (1982); United States v. MacDonald, 435 U.S. 850, 852-61, 98 S.Ct. 1547, 1548-53, 56 L.Ed.2d 18 (1978).
My colleagues acknowledge that the certification order “would not appear to be subject to interlocutory review on its own.” Maj. op. at 210. That eminently correct observation, shared by one other circuit (see United States v. Juvenile Female, 869 F.2d 458, 460 (9th Cir.1989)), should have put an end to the appeal from that order. If not the collateral order doctrine, what other basis is there for asserting appellate jurisdiction? Some federal appellate courts, ours included, have devised a doctrine of “pendent” appellate jurisdiction in civil cases. See, e.g., Swint v. Chambers County Comm’n, 514 U.S. 35, 44-45 n. 2, 115 S.Ct. 1203, 1209 n. 2, 131 L.Ed.2d 60 (1995); Jungquist v. Sheikh Sultan Bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, 115 F.3d 1020, 1026 (D.C.Cir.1997). This enables a court of appeals to reach out and review orders over which it has no independent jurisdiction. But pendent appellate jurisdiction has no place in criminal cases, where the final judgment rule is “at its strongest.” Hollywood Motor Car Co., 458 U.S. at 265, 102 S.Ct. at 3082. The Supreme Court could not be clearer on the point — in criminal cases, would-be pendent claims “are appeal-able if, and only if, they too fall within Cohen’s collateral-order exception to the final-judgment rule.” Abney v. United States, 431 U.S. 651, 663, 97 S.Ct. 2034, 2042, 52 L.Ed.2d 651 (1977); see also MacDonald, 435 U.S. at 857 n. 6, 98 S.Ct. at 1551 n. 6; United States v. Rostenkowski, 59 F.3d 1291, 1301 (D.C.Cir.1995); United States v. Crosby, 20 F.3d 480, 487 (D.C.Cir.1994); Juvenile Female, 869 F.2d at 460; Note, The Proper Scope of Pendent Appellate Jurisdiction in the Collateral Order Context, 100 Yale L.J. 511, 520 (1990).
Now to point four. The majority’s theory, as I understand it, flows from a line of cases such as Mansfield, Coldwater & Lake Michigan Railway v. Swan, 111 U.S. 379, 382, 4 S.Ct. 510, 511-12, 28 L.Ed. 462 (1884), which holds that a federal appellate court must first satisfy itself of its jurisdiction and then must make sure that the lower court also had jurisdiction. See, e.g., Bender v. Williamsport Area Sch. Dist., 475 U.S. 534, 541 & n. 4, 106 S.Ct. 1326, 1331 & n. 4, 89 L.Ed.2d 501 (1986). This leads the majority to think that given our appellate jurisdiction over the transfer order, we are obligated to examine the district court’s certification order because the certification order was “jurisdictional.” See maj. op. at 209-212. I part company on two grounds.
First, the majority’s principal authority— United States v. Chambers, 944 F.2d 1253, 1257-61 (6th Cir.1991)—does not support its conclusion. To be sure, Chambers held that a § 5032 certificate from the Attorney General was essential to sustaining the district court’s jurisdiction.1 But the Sixth Circuit also held that the certificate did not have to be filed before trial because it was not a prerequisite to “initiating federal proceedings” against the juvenile offender. 944 F.2d at 1260. (The government there did not file its certificate until the close of its case-in-chief, id. at 1257.) Other courts have reached the same conclusion. See, e.g., United States v. Gonzalez-Cervantes, 668 F.2d 1073, 1077 (9th Cir.1981); United States v. Ramapuram, 432 F.Supp. 140, 143 (D.Md.1977), aff'd, 577 F.2d 738 (4th Cir.1978) (unpublished). In short, Chambers undercuts rather than supports the majority’s essential proposition — that without a valid and proper *218certificate, the district court would have no jurisdiction to review the transfer order.
My next and final ground for disagreement is this — the Attorney General’s certification is not, as the majority supposes, “jurisdictional.” In criminal cases, the jurisdiction of federal district courts stems from 18 U.S.C. § 3231, which confers upon those courts “original jurisdiction ... of all offenses against the United States.” The policy reflected in § 5032 may be one of abstention, of permitting the federal criminal laws to be invoked against juvenile violators only in limited situations. See Chambers, 944 F.2d at 1258. Even so, the text of the Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act does not revoke the existing jurisdiction of the district courts over juvenile violators. If that had been the idea — my colleagues think it was — Congress used a very obscure method of expressing its desire, quite different than the clear language of jurisdiction found in so many other jurisdiction-affecting statutes. The Act, in § 5032, states that the juvenile “shall not be proceeded against in any court of the United States unless the Attorney General” certifies to one of the three exceptions, the last of which mentions “substantial Federal interest.” The words “proceeded against” are not directed to the jurisdiction of the courts. Courts do not proceed against persons. Prosecutors do. And it is prosecutors, or more accurately the Attorney General, who are the addressees of this language. It is therefore scarcely surprising that the majority’s mistreatment of certification as jurisdictional poses vexing problems, problems my colleagues do not bother to answer. There is, for instance, a provision in § 5032 allowing a juvenile to request in writing that he not be tried as a juvenile and that he be “proceeded against as an adult.” Such a written waiver takes the juvenile out of the Act. If we now plug in the majority’s jurisdictional theory, the consequence is that juvenile defendants may confer jurisdiction on district courts by consenting to be tried as adults. What happened to the time-honored principle that parties cannot, by consent, confer jurisdiction on the federal courts? Consider also the majority’s suggestion that certification may be open to challenge for “bad faith.” Maj. op. at 216. Is one to suppose that jurisdiction now turns on the state of mind of one of the litigants? I cannot understand why we should be reaching so far, and in such an unorthodox manner, to bestow the label “jurisdictional.” The Act sets up a system for dealing with juveniles already subject to federal jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3231 because of their alleged “violation of a law of the United States,” 18 U.S.C. § 5031. The certification requirement in § 5032, as the majority itself appears to acknowledge, see maj. op. at 215, merely codifies Congress’s judgment about when the Attorney General may invoke this jurisdiction.
It is not enough to answer that the exercise of federal judicial power depends on a § 5032 certificate. One could say the same about a grand jury indictment. Yet the Supreme Court in Abney, while sustaining its appellate jurisdiction to consider the defendant’s double jeopardy claim, refused to reach his challenge to the sufficiency of the indictment. See 431 U.S. at 663. Indictments are the functional equivalent of § 5032 certifications; both signify that there is a significant federal interest; both invoke the authority of the district court to proceed; both are subject to challenge. Yet indictments cannot be considered “jurisdictional” in any meaningful sense. Simply because some condition or requirement is a prerequisite to criminal proceedings does not make the condition or requirement jurisdictional. A case must be brought within the period of limitations. There must be a speedy trial. The grand jury must be properly constituted. Trial must occur in a specified venue. Some offenses must be tried by a jury. Defendants are entitled to counsel. None of these are considered “jurisdictional.”
We would do well to remember that calling something “jurisdictional” will have lasting, important and perhaps unanticipated effects in future cases. If the Attorney General’s certification is jurisdictional, as my colleagues hold, challenges to it may be raised initially in the middle of trial, or right before sentencing, or on appeal, or in a petition for rehearing, or at any other time. Also, if the certification is jurisdictional, the juvenile defendant may not waive the requirement, even I suppose by pleading guilty. Yet I see no *219good reason — the majority offers none — why a defendant should be permitted to attack a certificate for the first time on appeal, or why a juvenile cannot waive the requirement altogether, or why a § 5032 certificate ought to be considered any more important than the many constitutional and statutory requirements which must be raised at trial and which can be waived.
In short, I believe that rather than succumbing to the temptation to resolve the issue on its merits, the majority should have dismissed the appeal from the district court’s certification order on the authority of Abney v. United States.

. The majority cites two other cases—Impounded, 117 F.3d 730, 733 (3d Cir.1997), and United States v. Juvenile Male #1, 118 F.3d 298, 303 (5th Cir.1997) — supposedly holding that the requirement that a prosecutor certify a substantial federal interest was jurisdictional. Impounded. merely "assume[d] that the § 5032 certification is a prerequisite ,to the district court exercising jurisdiction over the transfer hearing.” 117 F.3d at 733. Juvenile Male #1 made the same assumption. 118 F.3d at 303-04.