Court Opinion

ID: 9486057
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:37:03.428026+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:10.613983
License: Public Domain

GEORGE C. PRATT, Circuit Judge,
(joined by MINER and ALTIMARI, Circuit Judges), dissenting:
My views as to why the grand jury testimony of Bruno and DeMatteis should have been admitted at trial on the issue of whether or not the “Club” existed are set forth at length elsewhere. See United States v. Salerno, 974 F.2d 231 (2d Cir.1991). I write here to highlight what I perceive to be some *916of the weak points in the position taken by the in bane majority.
Rule 804(b)(1) of the Federal Rules of Evidence would permit receipt of Bruno’s and DeMatteis’s grand jury testimony if the government’s motive to develop the testimony before the grand jury was “similar” to its motive to challenge that testimony at trial.
On remand from the Supreme Court to decide that issue, the panel determined that the government’s motive was similar, primarily because (1) the government had examined both Bruno and DeMatteis extensively on whether a “Club” existed, (2) the government had vigorously examined both witnesses before the grand jury, and (3) the government was seeking at trial to prove the same issue as before the grand jury — the existence of a “Club” of concrete contractors. 974 F.2d at 240-41. The panel sought to apply the plain meaning of “similar motive” as used in rule 804(b)(1), and sought the administrative ease of determining that issue based on what the prosecutor actually did, on the record, before the grand jury.
The in banc majority, however, now concludes, as a matter of law, that the prosecutor’s motive was not “similar”. In doing so, it applies a gloss to the language of the rule that would find a similar motive only when the party against whom the testimony is offered had “an interest of substantially similar intensity to prove (or disprove) the same side of a substantially similar issue”. Op. at 915. As a practical matter, the gloss effectively rewrites the rule from “similar motive” to “same motive”.
Not only is the majority’s test more stringent than the rule itself, it could also prove to be extremely difficult to administer, for on its face this test would require the district judge to compare the “intensity of interest” that the prosecutor possessed before the grand jury with his “intensity of interest” at the trial. Careful examination of those two states of the prosecutor’s mind would require a district judge to conduct an evidentiary hearing not only into what information was available to the prosecutor at the two different times, but also into what he was thinking about that information at both of those times.
The majority sidesteps the problem in this case, however, by accepting at face value the prosecutor’s post hoc, self-serving, un-eross-examined statements as to his own motives, and concluding, as a matter of law, that his motives at the two proceedings were not “similar”. At the very least, this issue of fact should be decided in the first instance by a district judge, not an in banc appellate court.
One final, troubling aspect of the majority’s decision is its acceptance of and reliance on the prosecutor’s assertions that he already had an indictment against the defendants, that no new defendants were being contemplated at the time these witnesses were examined, and that, as a result, probable cause was not even an issue before the grand jury when Bruno and DeMatteis were testifying. If all these things were true, then why was the prosecutor using the grand jury at all? Could it have been simply a discovery device to develop more evidence to present at trial on the indictment he already had? If that were the case, however, the prosecutor’s continuing use of the grand jury would have been improper. See United States v. R. Enterprises, Inc., 498 U.S. 292, 299, 111 S.Ct. 722, 727, 112 L.Ed.2d 795 (1991) (“Grand juries are not licensed to engage in arbitrary fishing expeditions, nor may they select targets of investigation out of malice or an intent to harass.”); In re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum Dated January 2, 1985 (Simels), 767 F.2d 26, 29 (2d Cir.1985) (“The law is settled in this circuit and elsewhere that ‘[i]t is improper to utilize a Grand Jury for the sole or dominating purpose of preparing an already pending indictment for trial.’ ”) (quoting United States v. Dardi, 330 F.2d 316, 336 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 845, 85 S.Ct. 50, 13 L.Ed.2d 50 (1964)); see also 8 James W. Moore et al., Moore’s Federal Practice ¶ 6.04[5], at 6-106 (2d ed. 1993) (“It is not permissible for the prosecutor to subpoena and question potential trial witnesses to an existing criminal proceeding where it is the sole or dominant purpose of such questioning to obtain evidence for use in • the upcoming trial. Simply stated, it is not a legitimate function of the grand jury to serve as a substitute for pretrial discovery.”); 1 Charles A. Wright, Federal Practice & Procedure § 111.1, at 321 (1982).
*917The effect of the in banc majority’s decision will be to leave the determination of whether grand jury testimony may be presented at trial by a defendant entirely in the prosecutor’s control, a result that seems at odds with the main objective of going to trial — permitting the jury, not the prosecutor, to determine what is the truth.
Because I agree with the panel’s original analysis of “similar motive” in rule 804(b)(1), I respectfully dissent.