Court Opinion

ID: 9460303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:47:08.849915+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:34.231942
License: Public Domain

SNEED, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I am in full agreement with my brethren with respect to the necessity of a new trial because of the government’s failure to disclose adequately its relations with the witness DeVito. I respectfully dissent, however, from that portion of their holding that dismisses Count 4 of the second indictment.
My brethren believe that the Due Process Clause, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969), requires that Count 4 be dismissed. I dissent because in my view the application of the reasoning and technique of Pearce to the facts of this case as they relate to Count 4 is neither required nor wise.
Judge Aldrich emphasizes that the trial court was aware, prior to its initially suggesting the imposition of a three-year sentence, that Gerard had carried a gun during the commission of the principal offense. It will contribute to the understanding of the issues that separate us to set forth the colloquy, as it relates to the court’s prior knowledge, which occurred between the court and counsel for Gerard at the time sentencing was actually imposed.
Mr. Michaelson: . . . Your Honor’s intention the last time was to give a three-year sentence, yet your Honor had before him the very same factual situation.
The Court: No, I didn’t. I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to contradict you flatly. At that time I had in the probation report a note concerning this gun proposition. At that time it was not charged and I didn’t think that it was appropriate for me to consider it except as it might have reflected upon the other counts. It was treated lightly, you might say, and I think your treatment was the same way. So I didn’t take that factor into specific account.
Now that I have heard all the evidence and have come to my own conclusions about it, I think that I have to take it into account.
In Pearce, as well as in its companion case, Simpson, Warden v. Rice, the Supreme Court was concerned with eliminating vindictiveness in the imposition of sentence following a second trial, which the defendant had obtained as a result of a successful collateral attack on his first conviction. The heart of the Court’s position was expressed in the following lines:
Due process of law, then, requires that vindictiveness against a defendant for having successfully attacked his first conviction must play no part in the sentence he receives after a new trial. And since the fear of such vindictiveness may unconstitutionally deter a defendant’s exercise of the right to appeal or collaterally attack his first conviction, due process also requires that a defendant be freed of apprehension of such a retaliatory motivation on the part of the sentencing judge.
In order to assure the absence of such a motivation, we have concluded that whenever a judge imposes a more severe sentence upon a defendant after a new trial, the reasons for his doing so must affirmatively appear. Those reasons must be based upon objective information concerning identifiable conduct on the part of the defendant occurring after the time of the original sentencing proceeding. And the factual data upon which the increased sentence is based must be made part of the record, so that the constitutional legitimacy of the increased sentence may be fully re*1308viewed on appeal. (Footnotes omitted.) 395 U.S. 711 at 725, 726, §9 S.Ct. 2072, 2080, 23 L.Ed.2d 656.
It is obvious that the foregoing language cannot be applied literally to the facts of this case. Here there has been no prior conviction, no appeal from or collateral attack on a prior conviction, no second trial, and only one completed sentencing proceeding. Moreover, the record before us quite adequately precludes any inference of vindictiveness on the part of the trial court in imposing the consecutive one-year sentence with respect to Count 4. The trial court, at the time it rejected the initial plea bargain with respect to the three-count indictment, quite properly could consider Gerard’s possession of a firearm only to the extent that such possession bore on the three counts then before it. It is consistent with the record to assume that this was the extent to which it was considered.
The situation was quite different at the time sentence was imposed following Gerard’s conviction on the four counts. The trial court presumably was then under an obligation to impose a sentence with respect to each count. My brothers appear to believe that the accrual of this duty, made necessary by the superseding indictment and conviction thereon, does not represent “new facts” which, under Pearce (Rice), will justify an aggregate sentence greater than that the trial court previously indicated it was prepared to accept. It is obvious, however, that in this ease the superseding indictment, joined with the development of the facts at the trial concerning that count, Gerard’s conviction thereon and the duty of the trial court to impose sentence pursuant to Rule 32, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, do constitute “new facts” within the ordinary meaning of those words. Moreover, these facts should be more than sufficient to justify the imposition of a consecutive one-year sentence based on the fourth count.
The purpose of the majority’s proscription is apparently to discourage trial judges from punishing defendants who, when confronted by the terms of the plea bargain, choose instead to stand trial. While this objective has been expressly recognized by this Court in United States v. Stockwell, 472 F.2d 1186 (9th Cir. 1973), in that case the trial court had made plain to the defendant that the sentence it would impose following trial could be greater than would be imposed following a plea of guilty. Under such circumstances a requirement that there be an affirmative showing that a post-trial sentence was prompted neither by vindictiveness nor a desire to punish the defendant for rejecting the offered plea was entirely proper.
It is important to understand what the majority here condemns. It does not appear inconsistent with their approach for the trial court to have directed that the one-year sentence was to run concurrently; nor, apparently, would it have been improper for the trial court to have imposed two-year sentences with respect to the three counterfeiting counts and then imposed a one-year consecutive sentence on the fourth count. What appears to be forbidden is an aggregate sentence greater than that which the trial court indicated it was prepared to accept prior to the addition of the fourth count.
However, the majority’s holding fails to take into account a crucial difference between the facts before us in Stockwell and those involved in the instant case. The distinction has as its source the superseding indictment, which added the fourth count and which originated with the prosecutor, not the trial judge. If it was a proper indictment, the defendant should not expect to receive, if convicted on all counts, a sentence no greater than that which the trial court had earlier suggested as being appropriate under the original three-count indictment. Because no meaningful sentence could be imposed under the reasoning of the majority, and because the prosecutor’s position is said to be “little different” from that of the trial judge, it is arguable that the issue before us in this case is in fact the propriety of the new fourth *1309count being included in the superseding indictment rather than the appropriateness of the sentence imposed by the trial court with respect to that new count.
It is difficult to understand the purpose of a principle which requires that prosecutors include all possible counts in their initial indictment even in the absence of concealment of facts from the defense. The extent to which this principle creates mischief can be illustrated dramatically by comparing two situations that appear to be functionally equivalent, but which will be treated differently unless the view of my colleagues is narrowly restricted to the facts of this case. The first is where an indictment containing four counts, for example, is obtained prior to any plea bargaining. Following such bargaining, the prosecution offers to drop Count 4 in exchange for a guilty plea on the remaining three. The defendant agrees, but the trial judge upon hearing the prosecution’s recommended sentence rejects the bargain- and permits the defendant to withdraw his plea. The majority recognizes that prosecution thereafter on the four counts is proper. It is unclear, however, the extent to which the trial judge’s discretion will be limited to the sentence he might have initially thought proper prior to the defendant’s withdrawal of his plea. Perhaps the majority would limit the aggregate sentence to that which the trial judge indicated he would impose at the time the plea bargain was rejected, but that is by no means certain. In any event, in light of the opinion in this case a prudent trial judge cannot commit himself to a sentence with respect to the three counts when rejecting a plea if he wishes, without serious question, to retain full freedom of action.
The signals are much clearer when the plea bargain precedes indictment. Assuming that as a consequence of such bargain only a three-count indictment is obtained, and that the trial judge, aware of facts sufficient to support a fourth count, rejects the bargain. It is tolerably plain that my brethren would prohibit the prosecutor from obtaining a superseding indictment with four counts in the absence of “new facts” which were not known to him at the time he obtained the original indictment. It is painfully clear, however, that even were the prosecutor to obtain a new indictment with an added count, there could be no justification under the majority’s approach for an aggregate sentence greater than that which the trial judge may have indicated was proper with respect to the initial three-count indictment. In such a case it is quite doubtful that the trial judge could retain any freedom of action by concealing his estimate of a proper sentence at the time of his rejection of the plea inasmuch as the majority appears to regard the addition of such a fourth count as per se improper.
There are additional difficulties with the approach taken in Judge Aldrich’s opinion. Although I assume that its philosophy would require the invalidation of a count added by a vindictive prosecutor on the basis of facts known only to him, or on the basis of facts known to him and to the defendant and his counsel, this cannot be said with complete assurance. Too much weight appears to have been placed by the majority on knowledge by the trial judge of the facts upon which the additional count rests to permit such an easy conclusion.
There also exists uncertainty about the nature of the facts sufficient to make an “affirmative” rebuttal of the possibility of vindictiveness. Obviously an assertion by the trial judge that he did not directly consider the facts which support the new count in arriving at his initial sentence will not be sufficient. An almost identical assertion was made by the trial judge in this case. It is also unclear whether under the majority’s view the “new facts” must consist of all the operative facts of the additional count or only a portion of such facts. It may be that mere contextual facts will be sufficient to rebut vindictiveness. Perhaps my brethren would require that *1310the “new facts” be unknown at the time of the collapse of the plea bargain to everyone, other than perhaps the defendant and his counsel, and that they consist of all the operative facts of the added count. In sum, the majority, in requiring an affirmative refutation of the mere possibility of vindictiveness, has left us in the dark concerning both the character of the “new facts” that are necessary and the identity of the persons to whom they must be “new”.
It may be that to some my concern with the majority opinion will appear exaggerated. To them, all that the majority requires is that all possible counts be included in an initial indictment. Enough has been said to indicate that the requirements imposed by the majority might not be met so easily. However, even if they can be so satisfied, the consequence is a mischievous distinction between pre-indictment and post-indictment plea bargaining.
Any such distinction moves this Court toward greater supervision of the plea bargaining process than I believe appropriate. The legitimacy of plea bargaining has been recognized by the Supreme Court. Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 749-755, 90 S.Ct. 1463, 25 L.Ed.2d 747 (1969). The prosecutor, a leading actor in this process, is a creature of the executive branch of government; and it is to the executive branch that the people in the long run must look for control of the discretion our system of criminal justice vests in its prosecutors. See Pugach v. Klein, 193 F.Supp. 630 (S.D.N. Y.1961); Note, Prosecutor’s Discretion, 103 U.Pa.L.Rev. 1057 (1955). In the short run, the safeguards of a trial should limit the harm of vindictively imposed additional counts. Insofar as the trial judge is concerned, I would impose the restraints of Pearce {Rice) in the pre-conviction plea bargaining setting only when the trial judge has indicated to the defendant that, unless he accepts the terms deemed proper by the judge with respect to the counts which have been, or would be, charged under the bargained plea, a greater sentence will be imposed following trial and conviction. No such greater sentence should be permissible. However, these are not the facts of the case before us.
The fourth count should not be dismissed.