Court Opinion

ID: 9468040
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:02:35.551524+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:38.859388
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
In their petition for rehearing, appellants contend that the Court misread United States v. Davila Williams, 496 F.2d 378 (1st Cir. 1974), and United States v. DeJesus Boria, 518 F.2d 368 (1st Cir. 1975), by declining to reverse defendants’ convictions in the absence of any prejudice resulting from the government’s misconduct before and during the second trial. Contrary to appellants’ assertion that the examination of prejudice conducted in DeJesus Boria occurred simply because the governmental misconduct was committed before our opinion in Davila Williams, in DeJesus Boria the Court turned to the question whether “the Government’s conduct was such as to deprive defendant of a fair trial or else was so reprehensible as to require setting aside the exercise of its supervisory powers,” after expressing its unwillingness “to say that in every instance of pre-trial disappearance even with government assistance, the Government must forfeit a conviction.” 518 F.2d at 373. See also United States v. Houghton, 554 F.2d 1219, 1223 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 851, 98 S.Ct. 164, 54 L.Ed.2d 120 (1977), in which the Court addressed “the question of whether there was such deliberate misconduct by the government and prejudice to the defendant as to warrant dismissal of the indictment.”
Moreover, appellants’ assertion that the government’s misconduct precluded them from interviewing Larain and establishing that they were prejudiced by his absence *19misconstrues both the facts and the concept of prejudice articulated in the Court’s opinion. In light of “(appellants’ complete failure to take any actions consistent with a sincere interest in obtaining the informant’s testimony,” at 12, the Court concluded that appellants had not established “that the informant was unavailable at the time of the second trial.” Id., at 15 (emphasis in original). Thus, appellants failed to establish prejudice because they failed to show Larain’s unavailability to testify at the second trial.

The petition for rehearing is denied.