Court Opinion

ID: 9471156
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:26:01.882744+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:17.465720
License: Public Domain

GODBOLD, Chief Judge,
dissenting, with whom KRAVITCH, Circuit Judge, joins.
This is a troubling decision. It is obvious that there must be a “separate offense” exception to Massiah. But the “separate offense” exception does not fit this case. The opinion of the court says that the offenses are separate. It does not tell us why they are separate. In Hoffa the separate offense was a charge of jury tampering that had arisen from events occurring during Hoffa’s trial on Taft-Hartley law charges. In Missler the separate offense was obstruction of justice by the defendant who, indicted on a hijacking charge, put out a contract to kill a co-defendant who defendant thought had sung to the police. In Grieco the primary charge was murder, and the separate offense was an offer to pay a prisoner to confess to the murder. In each of these cases the two offenses arose from separate operative facts.
In contrast, in the present case the operative facts overlap, and indeed all the facts of the misdemeanor possession charge are included within the conspiracy charge. Police engaged in surveillance of a marijuana conspiracy that involved bringing marijuana by boat to Panama City, Florida, where it was unloaded onto the dock and trucked to a warehouse near Panama City. There it was to be secreted for some 24 hours and then taken elsewhere by truck. While the marijuana was in the warehouse, Lisenby was arrested in what was described as the “vicinity of the warehouse,” at 1:00 a.m., by an officer surveilling the warehouse, who saw Lisenby, alone and hot and sweaty, drive up, get out of his truck, and then pass out of sight. The officer found marijuana on the bumper of the truck and then marijuana inside the truck. The next day Lisenby was arrested on a charge of misdemeanor possession of marijuana. Before he was arrested officers asked the prosecutor what charge to make, and they were instructed to charge Lisenby with misdemeanor possession because the evidence was not sufficient to connect him with the marijuana in the warehouse. Lisenby retained counsel, who notified the prosecutor of his representation. The prosecutor told defense counsel that he expected to get an indictment against Lisenby on the conspiracy charge. Later, officers secured from Lisenby, in the absence of his attorney, statements incriminating him in the conspiracy, including his participation in unloading the marijuana on the dock and transporting it to the warehouse. The misdemeanor charge was dismissed. The incriminating statements were introduced against Lisenby at his trial on the conspiracy charge.
The prosecution was considerably closer to this case than are we appellate judges. It understood that the offenses were not “separate.” After Lisenby was indicted on the conspiracy charge, he asked for a bill of particulars, and the government responded with a copy of the complaint on which he had been arrested on the possession charge. Before the conspiracy trial began, a pretrial hearing was conducted in which the judge considered the admissibility of both the marijuana found in the van and of the incriminating tapes. The government contended that the “van marijuana” was admissible to show Lisenby’s participation in the conspiracy, i.e., the marijuana in the van in the vicinity of the warehouse circumstantially linked Lisenby to the marijuana within the warehouse. The judge pointed out to the government that if he so ruled the tapes would be inadmissible under Massiah. He then relieved the government from the consequences of its understanding of the facts and its theory of the case by permitting the tapes to be introduced and excluding the validly seized van marijuana that the government wished to introduce to help tie Lisenby to the conspiracy. The trial judge — like the government — did not assert that the two offenses were separate; rather, he thought that the government should not be permitted to urge inconsistent theories of admissibility for the marijuana and the tapes; so he cut the baby in half. *1361He could, and should, have allowed the van marijuana in evidence (as the government asked) and excluded the tapes. Instead he did the opposite; he excluded the van marijuana and admitted the tapes. This ruling stood Massiah on its head.
Differing views of judges about what is the same offense and what are separate offenses under the facts of a particular case is hardly, by itself, a subject for en banc consideration. I am not certain what standards should govern principled decision making where a court must apply Massiah to a defendant on trial for conspiracy who previously has been criminally charged for an act that is part of the conspiracy, and, while he has counsel on that earlier charge, the government has interrogated him in the absence of his counsel concerning the ongoing conspiracy and has elicited from him statements that incriminate him in the conspiracy. I had hoped that en banc consideration would give us some standards. It has not. Rather the court disposes of the case by thrusting it into a convenient pigeonhole into which it does not fit.
Nor has the court faced a second troubling issue. After Lisenby was arrested and his Sixth Amendment right to counsel had triggered, his activity in the conspiracy ceased insofar as the record shows. His activity thereafter was brought about by the government, which arranged for the informer to meet with Lisenby in the absence of his counsel and to seek Lisenby’s assistance in getting evidence against a third party that would tie the third party to the conspiracy (by the third party’s paying the informer money owed for helping in the conspiracy). While engaged in this endeav- or Lisenby made the incriminating statements in question. Massiah required the presence of counsel unless Lisenby was engaged in a separate offense. The government brought itself within the “separate offense” exception by instigating activity by Lisenby, in the absence of his counsel, that caused him to resume his terminated role in the conspiracy. This issue is not squarely within Massiah, nor is it entrapment. But arguably it is within the concept of governmental overreaching. I regret that the court has not seen fit to address this question.