Court Opinion

ID: 9490546
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:46:35.621176+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:09.801064
License: Public Domain

CARNES, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent from the Court’s holding for essentially those reasons Judge Birch has ably and thoroughly explained in his opinion. Although I agree with most of what is said in that opinion, I write separately for two reasons.
The first is to point out that the Department of Justice has admitted in another court that this case is less about efforts to determine whether Gecas should be deported than it is about efforts to assist foreign countries in prosecuting him. After the panel decision was issued in this case, the United States Attorney’s Office for Arizona filed a brief in the Ninth Circuit on behalf of the United States as appellee in a case in which *1484the appellant had been held in civil contempt for failing to answer questions before a grand jury. The appellant had refused to answer those questions based upon his asserted fear of foreign prosecution. Seeking to distinguish the present case from that one, the United States’ brief explained to the Ninth Circuit:
The Department of Justice sought Gecas’ compelled testimony about his association with Nazi forces during World War II to assist Israel and Lithuania who likely would prosecute him under applicable war crimes statutes. The Justice Department was actively assisting those foreign counties’ criminal investigation by sharing with them information and evidence. The treaty with Lithuania specifically mandated that the United States provide sworn testimony, such as that given by Gecas, to Lithuania. The United States in Gecas was clearly the alter ego of Israel and Lithuania.
After quoting from the Gecas panel opinion to support that characterization of this case, the United States’ brief went on to argue that the case was wrongly decided, anyway.*
I think that the United States’ brief in the Arizona case accurately described this case to the Ninth Circuit. The Department of Justice is “actively assisting” foreign countries in their criminal investigations of Gecas in order to further his prosecution in those countries. The protection afforded by the Fifth Amendment’s Self-Incrimination Clause is sufficient to prevent the United States government from doing indirectly, while acting as the “alter ego” of foreign prosecutors, what it could not do directly.
The second reason I write separat ;ly is to suggest with appropriate deference that this issue, brightly illuminated as it is by the facts of this case, is one that the Supreme Court might wish to review and decide. The issue has percolated enough to cause a circuit split, and has produced in this Court two fine opinions exhaustively exploring every conceivable argument on each side. The closeness of the question is evidenced by this Court’s six-to-five division. Finally, the issue is one of fundamental importance, and it is also of growing quantitive importance in view of the increasingly international nature of crime and of law enforcement cooperation.

The reason I do not cite the case name and number of the brief being quoted is that the briefs in that Ninth Circuit case are under seal. Nonetheless, the case is cited by name and number in Gecas’ reply brief, which quotes from the relevant part of the United States' brief. I have obtained a copy of the United States’ brief from the Ninth Circuit and verified the quotation.
At oral argument in this case, the attorney representing the Department of Justice was questioned about the statements concerning this case contained in the brief filed in the Ninth Circuit. He attempted to explain those statements as merely an Assistant United States Attorney’s characterization of the panel opinion in this case. However, he also admitted that the Assistant United States Attorney who authored the Ninth Circuit brief did so after consulting with attorneys in the Department of Justice, including the Office of Special Investigations, about the Gecas case.