Court Opinion

ID: 9843061
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:25:32.365199+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:27.154841
License: Public Domain

HILL, Senior Circuit Judge
(concurring dubitante).
I concur in our judgment ordering a remand for additional factfinding on net worth. I concur in so much of the opinion and judgment approving the denial of pretrial detention because I feel especially deferential to the district judge’s findings and conclusions.
I am troubled, nevertheless, by the direction we have taken and are taking. The appellee has not been tried under the indictment. When and if he is he will be entitled to the presumption of innocence and to a jury properly instructed on the burden of proof placed on the prosecution. However, we are given a record, on the question of pretrial detention, vel non, which identifies appellee as a committed member of La Cosa Nostra, pledged to do its bidding. That, alone, would substantiate a finding that he presents a danger of flight; he will flee if his sovereign tells him to flee and his master, La Cosa Nostra, may be endangered by disclosures at his trial.
But that finding was not made by the district court.
*796I am troubled by the weight given to the finding that Patriarca can and will pay for much of the technologically exotic surveillance of himself. We must not announce that, in this country, a financially successful hood whose gotten gains permit him to imprison himself in comfort need not put up with our prison system, but one apprehended before the accumulation of great wealth will not be due our deference.
The ability of the defendant to pay should have nothing to do with the decision as to whether pretrial release conditions constitute the “heroic measures beyond those which can fairly be said to have been within Congress’s contemplation” to which we referred in US. v. Tortora, 922 F.2d 880, 887. The district court should first decide, without reference to who pays, whether the measures to be employed are within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 3142(c)(1). If they are, the court may also consider imposing the cost upon the defendant, but I suggest that they cannot be found to be within the contemplation of the Act because the defendant can afford to pay for them.1
Had the district court found that pretrial detention was required, I have little doubt that its imposition would have received my concurrence.
Leaning heavily upon the better opportunity the district judge has had to evaluate the witnesses, and agreeing with the remand ordered, I concur.

. Perhaps I am too alarmed at the prospect of our making arrangements with criminals along the lines of those made in another country to accommodate a drug cartel leader whose extradition to this country was sought.