Court Opinion

ID: 9479151
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:09:52.739175+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:51.522631
License: Public Domain

KEITH, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur fully in Judge Guy’s excellent majority opinion. As Judge Guy aptly demonstrates, upon review of (1) the government’s response brief to Runnels’ motions to dismiss; (2) the government’s response brief to Runnels’ motion for judgment of acquittal; (3) the government’s statements made during oral argument on Runnells’ motion for judgment of acquittal; and (4) the government’s closing argument, it is readily apparent that the government simply did not proceed on any theory other than a deprivation of “intangible rights.” Moreover, as Judge Guy also points out, the government never offered the “economic benefit” theory until that theory appeared in the opinion by the original panel. I write separately only to make it clear that I do not at all find it difficult “to blame the government for trying to come through the door we opened for them.”
Whether or not the original panel advanced a “two theories” argument in its opinion is not relevant to the government’s attempt to offer such an argument at this juncture. The government, after all, was in the best position to know on which theories the case, in fact, proceeded. Moreover, the prosecution of criminal cases is not a game in which the government “wins” by preserving convictions by any means which present themselves. Instead, the government has an affirmative obligation to both fairly state the record and to argue the law in good faith. Indeed, the government’s responsibility in this area is even greater than that of other litigants. The government prosecutor, as a proxy for the community, is charged with representing the principles which are as important to society as convicting the guilty, if not more so. The admonition of Justice Sutherland that “while [the prosecutor] may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones,” Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88, 55 S.Ct. 629, 633, 79 L.Ed. 1314 (1935), applies as forcefully to appeals as it does to trials. While the government’s decision to proceed strictly on the then viable “intangible rights” theory cannot in any way be faulted, its post-hoc argument that this case proceeded on two theories is not excusable.