Court Opinion

ID: 9473287
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:25:10.624731+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:25.889068
License: Public Domain

WILKINSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring separately:
I cannot agree with the court that a defendant may demand pre-trial discovery of a co-conspirator’s statement whenever the government does not intend to call the co-conspirator to testify. I would prefer not to reach this issue, given the absence of any prejudice to the defendant, but as the majority elects to do so, I offer a brief response. First, the majority belittles the risk that a declarant co-conspirator will be harassed or intimidated. Next, it converts a perceived danger of “unfair surprise” to defendants into an inflexible requirement of pre-trial disclosure. The result is a re*1493grettable turn toward rigidity in the law of criminal discovery.
I
I do not share the majority’s conclusion that the interest in protecting a co-conspirator declarant from intimidation is but “tenuously implicated.” In expressing such concerns, I doubt that I am seeing ghosts. The stakes for those accused are high. The co-conspirator’s statement materially assists the prosecution’s case. The co-conspirator, moreover, is well known to those on trial. The dangers of threat or bribe are acute in the conspiracy context, where mutual associates, not all of whom may have been arrested, share common interests in pressing a declarant to disown whatever damaging remarks he may have made.
“Fear of intimidation of witnesses and concern over efforts to suborn perjury were not flights of fancy by those who drafted Rule 16.” United States v. Percevault, 490 F.2d 126, 131 (2d Cir.1974). These fears do not evaporate when the statement is to be introduced through the testimony of federal agents pursuant to the co-conspirator exception to the hearsay rule, Fed.R.Evid. 801(d)(2)(E). However admitted, the adverse impact of the co-conspirator’s remarks remains, along with the incentive to defendants to have them recanted. It is true, as the majority notes, that testimony secured by a defendant repudiating the co-conspirator’s prior incriminating declaration can be impeached. This is equally true, however, where the co-conspirator testifies, yet the possibility of the government’s impeaching its own witness, Fed.R.Evid. 607, did not lead the drafters of the Jencks Act to adopt the result the majority reaches here.
It is no answer to say that a prosecutor concerned about coercion may seek from the trial court a protective order under Fed.R.Crim.P. 16(d)(1), which provides that discovery otherwise available be “denied, restricted, or deferred” upon a sufficient showing. Here, the government would bear the burden of showing within a conspiracy the likelihood of untoward pressure it may not even be in a position to detect. Moreover, the majority's calculation that “the risk of unfair surprise” to defendants outweighs “the risk of perjury” in 801(d)(2)(E) situations renders the government’s chances on a 16(d) motion problematical at best.
Indeed, nothing in Fed.R.Crim.P. 16 authorizes the majority’s result. Rule 16(a)(1)(A) requires the government to disclose to the defendant his own statements which the government intends to offer at trial and which were made to a person then known to the defendant as a government agent. It does not, as the majority acknowledges, confer a right to discover the statements of anyone else, and in particular it makes no mention of co-conspirators. To attempt, as some courts have done, see e.g. United States v. Konefal, 566 F.Supp. 698, 706 (N.D.N.Y.1983); United States v. Fine, 413 F.Supp. 740, 742 (W.D.Wis.1976), to justify discovery of the co-conspirator’s statement as a “vicarious admission” of the defendant is to make one person out of two and beg the question of undue pressure which may result.
II
The respective interests of prosecution and defense can be amply accommodated short of the majority’s result. The court errs in linking the danger of “unfair surprise” with a requirement of pre-trial disclosure. Traditionally, these have been distinct in the law of criminal discovery. Courts have been able to guard against the danger of unfair surprise to defendants without opening statements to discovery upon request.
Pre-trial disclosure of prior statements of government witnesses would appear as necessary to prevention of “unfair surprise” as discovery of the statements of declarant co-conspirators. Yet the Jencks Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3500(a), expressly disallows discovery of witness statements “until said witness has testified on direct examination in the trial of the case.” Under § 3500(b) and (c), a defendant is entitled to *1494receive the contents of any statement relating to the subject of testimony once given, and the trial court may grant a continuance to allow the defendant reasonable time to prepare for use of the statement at trial.
I see no reason not to apply that same approach here. In the great majority of cases, whether the statement be that of a prospective witness or a declarant co-conspirator, the government will disclose early in the interest of simple fairness, in the hope of achieving a favorable plea bargain, or from a desire- to avoid interruption of the trial. In those cases where concern about intimidation prompts the prosecution to delay disclosure until the co-conspirator statement is admitted, the court can grant the defendant a reasonable continuance to assess the co-conspirator statement in the government’s possession and to prepare to respond. Under any scenario, there will be no “unfair surprise.”
Ill
I share with the majority the belief that a criminal trial must be a sober quest for truth and justice and not a game of evidentiary hide and seek. The real question here is a rather speculative one: whether it is more likely that prosecutors will abuse a Jencks-type device to delay- disclosure of co-conspirator statements unjustifiably or whether defendants will use pre-trial discovery to pressure co-conspirators into perjured testimony. Because the balance of bad faith does not for me fall so heavily against the government, I write, with respect, this separate statement of my views.