Court Opinion

ID: 9467257
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:43:05.633759+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:15.275750
License: Public Domain

COLEMAN, Chief Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Except as hereinafter indicated I concur in the foregoing opinion of the Court. I would totally concur if the government had not deliberately stripped Nixon of his speedy trial rights on the counterfeiting charges by dismissing the complaint against him while thereafter persisting in its efforts to find a way to convict him. Additionally, because Nixon was the sole suspect when called before the grand jury and could not at that time have been prosecuted for counterfeiting I believe that his interrogation was immaterial.
If I were to look at the situation as it is eompartmentally viewed in its respective parts by the opinion so excellently written by Judge Roney I would agree all the way and it may be that my reasoning is simply *314wrong. Nevertheless, I feel that in evaluating the constitutional rights of the citizen against the government in a criminal case the picture must be viewed as a whole, else constitutional rights could be nibbled away, one fragment at a time.
With these preliminary observations, I state my views of this case.
On June 29, 1975, the government saw fit to charge Nixon with counterfeiting.
On December 8, confronted with a speedy trial motion, the government evaded the speedy trial guarantee by dismissing the complaint.
It is undisputed that this action was taken because it was the considered judgment of the prosecution that on the evidence it then had a conviction could not be expected.
Even so, the government continued to investigate, hoping to come up with something that would get a conviction. Therefore, it can hardly be doubted that the dismissal was strategical and it must be assumed that had Nixon been given his rights he would have been acquitted.
TWO YEARS after the complaint had been dismissed in response to a speedy trial motion the government had no evidence beyond what it had available at the date of the dismissal. Nevertheless, the prosecutor hit upon the idea that if Nixon were called before a grand jury he would admit his guilt. Nixon appeared and denied guilt.
A year later, the incriminating evidence was discovered. Nixon was indicted, not for the counterfeiting which this evidence supported but for falsely denying his guilt to the 1978 grand jury.
If I were deciding this case individually I would hold that when the grand jury, at the instance of the prosecutor and for the effectuation of his strategy, called Nixon for interrogation about the counterfeiting, as the sole suspect, it was conducting an immaterial investigation because Nixon could not have been tried for the counterfeiting even if he had been indicted.
I agree, of course, that perjury is never to be justified or condoned, whatever the circumstances. I believe, also, that prosecutions for perjury are subject to constitutional restrictions exactly like any other prosecution.
To prove the perjury the government, having defeated Nixon of his speedy trial for that offense, had to prove that offense as the indispensable basis for its perjury conviction. To that extent at least, Nixon’s right to a speedy trial has been successfully circumvented. The government strategy worked.
Everyone would agree, of course, that for perjury to be an offense it must have been committed with reference to a material matter.
Having stated my appraisal of this case I shall not belabor the matter with a protracted discussion of Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972).
I believe that if the government judges its evidence to be insufficient and for that reason evades a speedy trial motion by dismissing the complaint, in the hope that it can compile a better case later, and is thereafter allowed to revive the charges in the manner used in this case the constitutional right to a speedy trial has been violated. I think we are taught that by Klopfer v. North Carolina, 386 U.S. 213, 87 S.Ct. 988, 18 L.Ed.2d 1 (1967). There, a unanimous Supreme Court held that if a prosecutor, by nolle prosequi, over objection, defers trial for an unlimited time, governed by his own discretion, the right to a speedy trial is violated.
And, in any event, when interrogating Nixon the grand jury was pursuing an immaterial matter, United States v. Icardi, 140 F.Supp. 383 (1956).
To the extent stated, and with great deference, I respectfully dissent.