Court Opinion

ID: 9493571
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:11:56.808841+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:54.634168
License: Public Domain

REINHARDT, Circuit Judge,
with whom Chief Judge HUG and Circuit Judges GRABER and W. FLETCHER join, dissenting:
The majority confesses to being “somewhat queasy” about today’s decision, and rightly so: no case, until today, has suggested that the government may conduct videotaped depositions of key prosecution witnesses for use as substantive evidence at trial while simultaneously eliciting incriminating statements from a defendant outside his counsel’s presence. The majority insists that its “clean and clear rule” — that “adversary judicial proceedings” may be initiated only “by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information, or arraignment” — is both compelled by Supreme Court precedent and consistent with “every other circuit to consider a similar issue.” Maj. op. at 675. But no Supreme Court case, and none of the lower court decisions cited by the majority, even remotely envisioned the circumstances that we are faced with in this case, where, rightly or wrongly, “the trial had begun — and prosecution witnesses [had been] called to the stand— prior to the indictment.” United States v. Hayes, 190 F.3d 939, 948 (9th Cir.1999) (Silverman, J,, dissenting), reh’g en banc granted, opinion vacated, 201 F.3d 1255 (9th Cir.2000) (emphasis added). Because the judicial authorization of the videotaped depositions in this case constituted the commencement of “adversary judicial proceedings” in any meaningful sense of those words, I would hold that Hayes’s right to counsel had attached by the time the government dispatched its undercover agent to extract his recorded confessions on May 5, 1996. Accordingly, I would reverse Hayes’s conviction and sentence as unlawfully obtained in violation of Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201, 84 S.Ct. 1199, 12 L.Ed.2d 246 (1964).
I.
The Supreme Court has held repeatedly that “once adversary proceedings have commenced against an individual, he has a right to legal representation when the government interrogates him.” Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 401, 97 S.Ct. 1232, 51 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977); see also United States v. Henry, 447 U.S. 264, 100 S.Ct. 2183, 65 L.Ed.2d 115 (1980); Massiah, 377 U.S. 201, 84 S.Ct. 1199, 12 L.Ed.2d 246. “Adversary proceedings” typically commence “by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information, or arraignment.” Brewer, 430 U.S. at 387, 97 S.Ct. 1232. However, “this was not the typical case.” Hayes, 190 F.3d at 948 (Silverman, J., dissenting). In this case, the government took the extraordinary step of initiating adversary judicial proceedings — in the form of judicially authorized videotaped depositions preserved for use as substantive evidence at Hayes’s trial — prior to Hayes’s formal indictment. In *677short, the adversary proceedings had begun.
Rule 15 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure permits either “party” in a criminal case, in “exceptional circumstances” and “in the interest of justice,” to take and preserve testimony by deposition for use as substantive evidence at trial. Fed.R.Crim.P. 15(a). The rule specifies that “the scope and manner of examination and cross-examination shall be such as would be allowed in the trial itself,” and it refers throughout to the “defendant” and the “case.” Id. at (a) and (d). The'government concedes that Rule 15 plainly contemplates a post-indictment occurrence at which the defendant’s right to counsel has indisputably attached, and that seems correct because, prior to indictment, there is no “defendant,” “case,” or even “party.” In Hayes’s case, however, at the government’s request and for the government’s convenience, the depositions were conducted prior to his formal indictment. In the majority’s view, the fact that the depositions were ordered and conducted prior to Hayes’s indictment is wholly dispositive of the Sixth Amendment question, because “the government remained an investigator rather than a prosecutor.” Maj. op. at 673. However, this analysis is inconsistent with what actually happened in Hayes’s case and with the text and purpose of Rule 15.1
As Judge Silverman recognized in his dissenting opinion, unlike civil depositions, Rule 15 depositions are not taken for discovery or investigatory purposes but “for the unabashed purpose of preserving testimony for use against [a defendant] at trial.” Hayes, 190 F.3d at 948 (Silverman, J., dissenting); see also Moore’s Federal Practice § 615.02[1] (3d ed. 1999) (“Unlike depositions taken in civil litigation, criminal depositions are intended to preserve testimony ... and are not meant as discovery devices.”); United States v. Cutler, 806 F.2d 933, 936 (9th Cir.1986) (same); United States v. Drogoul, 1 F.3d 1546, 1551 (11th Cir.1993) (same). That is precisely what occurred here. It is not surprising that only one week after Hayes’s indictment was returned, the government filed a “Motion to Admit Deposition Testimony of Material Witness at Trial.” The majority’s assertion that the government remained an “investigator” rather than a prosecutor during the taking of the depositions is simply incorrect. Rule 15 depositions are fully useable as substantive evidence at trial, and nothing prevents the government from obtaining a conviction on the basis of Rule 15 depositions alone.2 In fact, the Third Circuit has characterized Rule 15 depositions as a “critical stage of the prosecution” during which due process rights are implicated. United States v. Gifford, 892 F.2d 263, 265 (3d Cir.1989).
Because Rule 15 depositions literally become a part of the defendant’s trial from the moment they are taken, defense coun*678sel’s presence during the taking of the depositions is not a discretionary courtesy but a constitutional necessity. The magistrate understood as much when he appointed counsel to represent Hayes following his order granting the government’s motion to depose material witnesses. The majority appears to suggest that Hayes’s only entitlement to appointed counsel for the Rule 15 depositions derived from the Criminal Justice System Act, and not from the Constitution. See maj. op. at 674 (citing 18 U.S.C. § 3006A). But that cannot be so. If it were, then the government, without violating the Sixth Amendment, could have deposed the material witnesses and convicted Hayes on the basis of their deposition testimony alone, even if Hayes had been unrepresented by counsel at the depositions.
The cases upon which the majority chiefly relies as support for its allegiance to a “bright-line rule” cannot control the resolution of this case, because the depositions at issue here are altogether unlike any of the pre-indictment events that the Supreme Court has been called upon to consider. Although the Court has declined invitations to extend the Sixth Amendment right to counsel to pre-indictment events such as police-station identifications, see Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U.S. 682, 92 S.Ct. 1877, 32 L.Ed.2d 411 (1972) (plurality opinion); prison administrative detention, see United States v. Gouveia, 467 U.S. 180, 104 S.Ct. 2292, 81 L.Ed.2d 146 (1984); and the failure by police to inform a suspect of his attorney’s efforts to contact him, Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412, 106 S.Ct. 1135, 89 L.Ed.2d 410 (1986), in no case has the Court considered the constitutional consequences of anything resembling the court-ordered, pre-indictment taking and preserving of actual trial testimony. Moreover, the factors that the Court has examined in determining which pre-trial events mark the initiation of adversary judicial proceedings point strongly towards the attachment of the right to counsel in this case. The Court has explained that the “right to counsel exists to protect the accused during trial-type confrontations with the prosecutor.” Gouveia, 467 U.S. at 190, 104 S.Ct. 2292 (emphasis added). In extending the right to counsel to certain “critical” pretrial proceedings, the “test utilized by the Court has called for examination of the event in order to determine whether the accused required aid in coping with legal problems or assistance in meeting his adversary.” United States v. Ash, 413 U.S. 300, 313, 93 S.Ct. 2568, 37 L.Ed.2d 619 (1973). The Court has acknowledged the significance of the “changing patterns of criminal procedure and investigation that have tended to generate pretrial events that might appropriately be considered parts of the trial itself.” Id. at 310, 93 S.Ct. 2568. None of those pretrial events has been more a part of the trial itself than a material witness deposition, which is produced before the jury during trial as substantive witness testimony.
The real difficulty that this case presents is that a procedure for taking trial testimony by deposition in exceptional circumstances, plainly designed for use after indictment, was used before indictment pursuant to the government’s request and the magistrate’s order. This anomaly raises the question whether the possible impropriety of the magistrate’s order might in some way affect the Sixth Amendment implications of the government’s actions in this case. First, I should note that, in light of the text and purpose of Rule 15, it is extremely doubtful that its drafters meant to authorize the taking of material witness depositions before indictment. However, the legality of the taking of the depositions was neither challenged below nor raised on this appeal and, in my view, we should not decide that issue nostra sponte, in part because the result would be the same whether or not pre-indictment depositions are permitted under the rule.
If the government’s conduct in obtaining authorization for pre-indictment depositions was unusual but not unlawful — that is, even if the Rules of Criminal Procedure *679do not prohibit the taking of pre-indictment depositions for use as substantive evidence against targets of ongoing investigations — then I have no difficulty concluding that, because the depositions are manifestly “adversary judicial proceedings,” the Sixth Amendment right to counsel must attach regardless of when they are conducted. Once material witness depositions have been ordered, the target or defendant “finds himself faced with the prosecutorial forces of organized society, and immersed in the intricacies of substantive and procedural law.” Gouveia, 467 U.S. at 189, 104 S.Ct. 2292. The government may not circumvent the Sixth Amendment’s protections merely by electing to conduct material witness depositions before, rather than after, indictment.
If, however, pre-indictment material witness depositions are not authorized under Rule 15, and the magistrate’s order in this case was improper, it could be argued that the depositions were of no legal effect whatsoever and therefore did not trigger Hayes’s right to counsel. The majority suggests as much in a footnote, equating the prematurely ordered Rule 15 depositions in this case with the dismissed felony complaint that formed the basis of an unsuccessful Massiah claim in a prior Ninth Circuit case. See maj. op. at 673 n. 6 (citing United States v. DeVaughn, 541 F.2d 808 (9th Cir.1976) (per curiam)). In DeVaughn, the government filed, then dismissed, a felony complaint against the defendant in the same month. Some time later, the government enlisted an undercover agent to record the defendant’s incriminating statements and introduced those statements in a subsequent prosecution. We properly rejected the defendant’s Massiah claim, because no adversary judicial proceedings of any kind were in effect against the defendant at the time the recordings were obtained. See id. at 810.
Here, precisely the opposite is true. Whether authorized or not, material witness depositions were ordered, and they were taken. Although, in the end, the depositions were not used at Hayes’s trial, the government certainly could have used them had it so chosen and had Hayes failed properly to object. Such use, without objection, is far from implausible, as each side might well find something helpful in a particular deposition and each might reasonably conclude that, on balance, the benefit that it derived from the introduction of that particular deposition into evidence outweighed whatever detriment might result. In such a case, we might conceivably decide to correct the trial court’s plain error in admitting the improper deposition testimony, but we might also conclude that the error, if any, was harmless. Or, as is most likely, we might decide (as I believe we should decide here) that we would not raise the issue on our own and resolve an important question that the parties did not wish us to consider. It therefore would be incorrect to characterize prematurely conducted depositions as having “no legal effect”; they could well become a part of a defendant’s trial. To put it differently, the pre-indictment depositions in Hayes’s case may well have been voidable, but they were not void. The violation of Rule 15 did not, by itself, nullify the deposition proceedings.
In short, what practical use will ultimately be made of pre-indictment depositions may depend on what transpires when they are taken. Surely, whether constitutional rights attach as a result of the commencement of the adversary process cannot depend on the possibility that the information obtained through that particular aspect of the process may turn out not to be admitted, or even admissible, at trial. The question that we must resolve is not whether the depositions themselves, if objected to, could have been introduced at Hayes’s trial, but whether the premature initiation of adversary judicial proceedings triggered Hayes’s right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment. In my view, whether the deposition procedure employed in this case was proper or not, *680once the federal court invoked its power and authority to initiate the taking of evi-dentiary testimony for substantive use against Hayes at trial, adversary judicial proceedings had been commenced and Hayes’s right to counsel attached.3
Finally, it bears mention that the majority’s contention that “[ojther circuits are in accord” with today’s holding is both misleading and inaccurate. See Maj. Op. at 672 and n. 4 (collecting cases). First, in no case cited by the majority has a court considered the Sixth Amendment consequences of a pre-indictment judicial proceeding that preserves testimony for substantive use at trial against a target of an ongoing investigation — in short, that commences the adversary process. Second, some of the cases cited by the majority actually reject the majority’s “clean and clear rule” that the right to counsel can attach solely “by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information, or arraignment.” Maj. op. at 675; see Roberts v. Maine, 48 F.3d 1287, 1291 (1st Cir.1995) (“We recognize the possibility that the right to counsel might conceivably attach before any formal charges are made, or before an indictment or arraignment, in circumstances where the government had crossed the constitutionally significant divide from factfinder to adversary.”) (citations omitted) (emphasis added); United States ex rel. Hall v. Lane, 804 F.2d 79, 82 (7th Cir.1986) (“This circuit has carefully left open the question of whether a party in police custody may ever have a Sixth Amendment right to counsel at a line-up held prior to the initiation of formal adversary judicial proceedings .... ”). Moreover, we ourselves have stated previously that the “Sixth Amendment can apply when the government’s conduct occurs pre-indictment.” In re Grand Jury Proceedings (Goodman), 33 F.3d 1060, 1062 (9th Cir.1994). The majority properly may claim to have simplicity on its side, but it can make no such claim regarding precedent — or the Constitution.
In the case before us, the majority’s mechanical and formalistic approach is simply inadequate to evaluate, let alone preserve, the constitutional values at stake. True, the majority’s “clean and clear rule” will vindicate defendants’ Sixth Amendment rights in ordinary cases. But this is not an ordinary case. Here, because the government took the highly unusual step of setting in motion Hayes’s trial before bothering to indict him, the majority’s rule, with its inflexible barrier to the invocation of Sixth Amendment rights, falls short of what the Constitution demands. The plain fact is that Hayes’s right to counsel attached when the magistrate ordered the taking of material witness depositions. As a result, the government violated Hayes’s Sixth Amendment rights when it sent its agent to elicit and record his incriminating statements on May 5,1996.
II.
Neither the government nor the majority disputes Hayes’s claim that, if his right to counsel did attach by way of the Rule 15 deposition order, the undercover recordings were obtained unlawfully. That is because, once it is understood that adversary judicial proceedings were in fact initiated against Hayes, “this case falls squarely within the prohibitions of Massiah.” Hayes, 190 F.3d at 948 (Silverman, J., dissenting). In Massiah, the Supreme Court reversed the petitioner’s conviction and suppressed his incriminating statements to a cooperating witness because they had been “deliberately elicited” by the government after adversary proceedings had been commenced and in the absence of his counsel. Massiah, 377 U.S. at 206, 84 S.Ct. 1199. The Court has reaf*681firmed Massiah’s prohibition in subsequent cases. See Brewer, 430 U.S. 387, 97 S.Ct. 1232, 51 L.Ed.2d 424; Henry, 447 U.S. 264, 100 S.Ct. 2183.
In this case, Sam Koutchesfahani, the government’s cooperating witness, initiated the May 5 encounter with Hayes. He wore a recording device at the government’s behest. Throughout the conversation, Koutchesfahani questioned Hayes about how he intended to respond to the government’s evidence against him. In fact, Hayes’s encounter with Koutchesfa-hani was nearly identical to the encounter that formed the basis of the Massiah case itself.
' Because Hayes’s incriminating statements to Koutchesfahani were obtained in clear violation of the Massiah rule, they should have been suppressed.
III.
Hayes’s conviction and sentence must be reversed unless the government can establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the Massiah violation was harmless. See Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). The government’s case depended in large part on the testimony of witnesses who had received either immunity from prosecution or promises that the government would recommend sentencing reductions in exchange for their cooperation. Aware of the credibility problems of its central witnesses, the government placed great reliance on Hayes’s own recorded statements. The government played the undercover recording in its entirety to the jury and devoted much of its closing statement and rebuttal to arguing for Hayes’s guilt based on his taped statements, asking the jurors, for example: “Does that sound like somebody who’s innocent?.... Does that sound like an innocent man? That sounds like a man who’s trying to cover up his crime. Then he admits on the tape that he took the money.”
Multiple references to the undercover recordings during closing would have carried particular force, as they were among the final statements made to the jurors before deliberation. Moreover, because the defendant’s statements “come from the actor himself, the most knowledgeable and unimpeachable source of information about his past conduct,” they constitute “the most probative and damaging evidence that can be used against him.” Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 296, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). In these circumstances, it is “impossible to say ... beyond a reasonable doubt” that admission of Hayes’s statements was harmless. Id. at 302, 111 S.Ct. 1246. Therefore, Hayes’s conviction and sentence must be reversed.
IV.
Today’s holding adheres to a convenient formalism that is incapable of accommodating the highly unusual circumstances of this case. The majority’s insistence on a bright-line rule, without exception, not only works an injustice against Hayes, but may prevent this court from responding appropriately to some as-yet-unforeseen pre-indictment event with even more disturbing Sixth Amendment implications. Because I believe that the government’s use of an undercover agent to subvert Hayes’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel resulted in a conviction that was unconstitutionally obtained, I respectfully dissent.4

. The organizational structure of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure suggests that Rule 15 does not contemplate pre-indictment depositions. The rules are organized chronologically, beginning with the rule that describes a complaint. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 3. The rules then follow a time line from that point through the arrest or summons on complaint, initial appearance, indictment, arraignment, pre-trial procedures, trial, and judgment. Rule 15 is located in the section entitled "Arraignment,” which follows directly the section of the rules governing “Indictment and Information.” (Within the "Arraignment” section. Rule 15 follows rules concerning joinder of indictments for trial.) Accordingly, the structure of the rules indicates that depositions under Rule 15 are intended to take place after a defendant has been indicted and thus underscores the adversarial nature of the Rule 15 proceedings.

. The majority's assertion that "adversary judicial proceedings had been initiated against the witnesses,” but that “none had been initiated against Hayes,” maj. op. at 673-74, is puzzling, to say the least. The witnesses' deposition testimony was preserved for use against the targets of the investigation, not for use against the witnesses themselves. Rule 15 depositions are designed and authorized as a substitute for live trial testimony against the defendant. They have no other purpose.

. Consistent with DeVaughn, the case on which the majority relies, had the order for depositions been withdrawn or overruled before indictment, the defendant's Sixth Amendment rights would have lapsed — i.e., not attached with respect to future events — until some form of adversary proceedings were reinstituted.

. Because we must first reach the sufficiency-of-the-evidence question, I concur with the majority’s decision on that point. I do not, however, reach any other issue not discussed in this dissent.