Court Opinion

ID: 9467225
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:41:59.480911+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:14.029395
License: Public Domain

BOYCE F. MARTIN, Jr., Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I join in Judge Merritt’s dissent. From the conflicting concurrences and dissents that have been filed it is obvious that the Court is widely divided on the issue we face. To me the facts of this case are very simple. As outlined in the decision of the District Court at 444 F.Supp. 1238 (E.D.Michigan 1978), and in the majority opinion, we are faced with a single question of prosecutorial error. No one has alleged that the additional conspiracy count was any more than a correction on the part of an inexperienced Assistant United States Attorney. To characterize this prosecutorial error as vindictiveness is to me unwarranted. Nowhere in Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U.S. 21, 94 S.Ct. 2098, 40 L.Ed.2d 628 (1974), and North Carolina v. Pierce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969), do I find support for the conclusion reached by the District Court and now confirmed by a majority of this Court.
As Judge Merritt pointed out, our system of government vests the United States Attorney with wide discretion in handling criminal charges. So long as he possesses facts sufficient to convince a Grand Jury that a crime has been committed and that the charged defendant has committed that crime, he may proceed to seek an indictment. Once charged, the prosecutor’s responsibility becomes more difficult. Guilt of the charge must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The United States Attorney may attempt to charge an alleged offender as often as he reasonably can.
As Judge Merritt points out so well in Part II of his dissent, the majority has lost sight of the role of a public prosecutor in our society. To impose an additional hearing upon the District Court each time a superseding indictment is filed does nothing more than further defeat the ends of justice. There are many other ways to harness an overzealous prosecutor.
I would reverse the decision of the District Court, reinstate the second complete indictment including the conspiracy count, and direct that the defendants be tried on the charges as quickly as possible.