Court Opinion

ID: 9492223
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:35:19.744062+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:11.119657
License: Public Domain

JON O. NEWMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the Court’s opinion:
The Court’s opinion, which I reluctantly join, obscures what I consider the most troubling aspect of this case: this state-initiated prosecution has been brought in a federal court because it could not lawfully be brought in a state court. Police officers of a village in New York state seized narcotics incident to an arrest based on a warrant that had previously been vacated. New York law prohibits the use of such evidence. See People v. Jennings, 54 N.Y.2d 518, 446 N.Y.S.2d 229, 430 N.E.2d 1282 (1981) (fruits of arrest based on vacated warrant must be excluded, regardless of good faith of arresting officer). To circumvent this state law prohibition, federal authorities elected to use the limited prosecutorial and judicial resources of the federal government to charge and convict the defendant of possessing less than three grams of crack cocaine.
I agree with the Court that the Supreme Court’s decision in Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1, 115 S.Ct. 1185, 131 L.Ed.2d 34 (1995), requires us to rule that, on the facts of this case, the use of the seized evidence does not violate the Fourth Amendment. But that case upheld a conviction that Arizona authorities, unimpeded by any state law restriction, chose to bring. It did not involve the use of federal law enforcement resources to circumvent a state’s regulation of its own law enforcement personnel.
Nevertheless, the law is settled that federal standards govern the prosecution of federal cases in federal courts. See Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669 (1960) (invalidating state officers’ seizure that violated federal standards); United States v. Pforzheimer, 826 F.2d 200, 202-04 (2d Cir.1987) (upholding federal conviction obtained with evi-*31denee seized by state officers in violation of state law but lawfully seized under federal law). And whatever authority we have to supervise the administration of criminal justice in the federal courts, see Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U.S. 141, 146, 94 S.Ct. 396, 38 L.Ed.2d 368 (1973); Mesarosh v. United States, 352 U.S. 1, 14, 77 S.Ct. 1, 1 L.Ed.2d 1 (1956), including discouraging prosecutorial misconduct, see Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 648 n. 23, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 40 L.Ed.2d 431 (1974), does not extend to overseeing a federal prosecutor’s decision lawfully to invoke federal jurisdiction for conduct that violates federal law.
Though powei'less to disturb this conviction despite its unworthy motivation, we are not obliged to refrain from questioning the wisdom of using the federal forum to enable state officials to avoid state law restrictions. Federal law penalizes the possession of even small quantities of crack cocaine, but the conclusion is inescapable that the prosecution of this three-gram possession case, developed solely by local police officers, would have been left for state court prosecution were it not for the fact that state law arrest restrictions barred a state, but not a federal, prosecution. The dangers of using federal law enforcement resources to circumvent state law procedural requirements have recently been forcefully pointed out. See Task Force on the Federalization of Criminal Law, American Bar Association, The Federalization of Criminal Law 27-30, 43-45 (1998). Federal prosecutors who today secure one more conviction may in the future find a diminished reception for their plea in more substantial cases that their limited resources justify some relaxation of normally applicable procedural requirements. If sufficient federal manpower exists to help the Village of Spring Valley circumvent New York’s restrictions on an arrest based on an invalid warrant in a three-gram possession case, it must be more abundant than I had thought.
I am obliged to concur. I am not required to approve..