Court Opinion

ID: 9470835
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:17:05.622508+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:07.516744
License: Public Domain

SCHROEDER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding that Wayte failed to establish that he was selected for prosecution because of his exercise of first amendment rights.
The initiation of Wayte’s prosecution was a part of the government’s deliberate policy to prosecute only men who wrote to the government to report their failure to register for the draft, or men whom third parties reported as having disobeyed the registration requirement. This enforcement policy was directed toward persons whom the government viewed as “vocal” non-registrants as opposed to “quiet” non-registrants. 549 F.Supp. at 1379, 1384. The policy thus was designed to punish only those who had communicated their violation of the law to others.
The policy was successful because, as the record here shows, only vocal non-registrants had been indicted at the time this prosecution began. Thousands of others who also violated the law were not prosecuted. There thus is no question, as the majority recognizes, that Wayte made the required showing that similarly situated violators were not prosecuted. Nor, in my view, is there any doubt that Wayte established that the prosecution was impermissi-bly based upon his exercise of first amendment rights.
*1390This court has already held that an enforcement procedure focusing solely upon vocal offenders is inherently suspect. United States v. Steele, 461 F.2d 1148, 1152 (9th Cir.1972). The Seventh Circuit has similarly held that where a vocal dissenter appears to have been singled out for prosecution, the government must accept the burden of proving nondiscriminatory enforcement. United States v. Falk, 479 F.2d 616, 621 (7th Cir.1973) (en banc). The key question before the district court in this case, therefore, was whether the government sufficiently explained the policy by showing it was motivated by other concerns. The district court found that the government failed to make such a showing, after carefully reviewing and evaluating all of the evidence which was submitted by both sides. Its findings must be upheld unless clearly erroneous, and the majority fails to demonstrate that they were.
The majority accepts the government’s argument that its selective policy was justified by its need to establish wilfulness and by its inability to find other violators. Neither theory is plausible.
This is not a case where the offender’s statements were necessary or even useful to establish wilfulness. It therefore is not controlled by United States v. Taylor, 693 F.2d 919 (9th Cir.1982). There, we affirmed the district court’s finding that defendants had failed to establish selective prosecution for participation in an illegal strike. We pointed out that the failure to report to work alone was “an equivocal act” which could have had an innocent explanation. 693 F.2d at 923 n. 5. Failure to register for the draft might similarly be explained by ignorance of the requirement. But this case is unlike Taylor because the undisputed facts show that before initiating prosecution, the government wrote to each suspected violator offering him a chance to comply with the law. Only those who ignored this warning were prosecuted. Thus Taylor hardly compels reversing the district court’s findings in this case, for here the government had a method, independent of suspected violators’ communications, for excluding from prosecution persons who might have an innocent explanation for failure to register.
This also is not a case in which the government showed that financial or other constraints dictated limiting its enforcement policy to vocal violators. See United States v. Wilson, 639 F.2d 500, 505 (9th Cir.1981). Even assuming that budgetary considerations could justify a policy restricting prosecution to those who exercise first amendment rights, no such justification was shown. Rather, as the district court pointed out, quiet non-registrants could easily have been traced. The district court noted that a law student armed only with a telephone was able to obtain lists, from several randomly chosen states, of persons legally required to register; those lists could have been compared with the government’s list of actual registrants to locate violators. 549 F.Supp. at 1381 & n. 6. The availability of alternative enforcement methods is borne out by the fact that the government has now implemented a system for identifying quiet non-registrants. But the present existence of such a system cannot excuse its absence at the time this defendant’s prosecution was instituted. Cf. United States v. Stout, 601 F.2d 325, 328 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 979, 100 S.Ct. 481, 62 L.Ed.2d 406 (1979) (prosecution of vocal violator permissible so long as other violators prosecuted as well).
The effect of the majority’s opinion is to permit the government to prosecute a citizen because he has spoken out rather than because he has violated the law. The result weakens our indispensible but fragile freedom to express unpopular ideas.
I would affirm the district court.