Court Opinion

ID: 9477498
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:25:06.9726+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:54.367389
License: Public Domain

JAMES DICKSON PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge,
concurring, specially:
I concur in the judgment and, with only one reservation, in Judge Russell’s careful opinion for the court. My reservation has to do only, but critically, with that opinion's discussion of the first amendment issues raised by the defendant. While these are ultimately discussed and rejected, there are earlier suggestions that as applied to conduct of the type charged to Morison, the Espionage Act statutes simply do not implicate any first amendment rights. On that point, I agree with Judge Wilkinson’s differing view that the first amendment issues raised by Morison are real and substantial and require the serious attention which his concurring opinion then gives them. I therefore concur in that opinion.
If one thing is clear, it is that the Espionage Act statutes as now broadly drawn are unwieldy and imprecise instruments for prosecuting government “leakers” to the press as opposed to government “moles” in the service of other countries. Judge Wil*1086kinson’s opinion convincingly demonstrates that those statutes can only be constitutionally applied to convict press leakers (acting for whatever purposes) by limiting jury instructions which sufficiently flesh out the statutes’ key element of “relating to the national defense” which, as facially stated, is in my view, both constitutionally overbroad and vague. Though the point is to me a close one, I agree that the limiting instruction which required proof that the information leaked was either “potentially damaging to the United States or might be useful to an enemy” sufficiently remedied the facial vice. Without such a limitation on the statute’s apparent reach, leaks of information which, though undoubtedly “related to defense” in some marginal way, threaten only embarrassment to the official guardians of government “defense” secrets, could lead to criminal convictions. Such a limitation is therefore necessary to define the very line at which I believe the first amendment precludes criminal prosecution, because of the interests rightly recognized in Judge Wilkinson’s concurring opinion. This means, as I assume we reaffirm today, that notwithstanding information may have been classified, the government must still be required to prove that it was in fact “potentially damaging ... or useful,” i.e., that the fact of classification is merely probative, not conclusive, on that issue, though it must be conclusive on the question of authority to possess or receive the information. This must be so to avoid converting the Espionage Act into the simple Government Secrets Act which Congress has refused to enact.
Here, were we writing on a clean slate, I might have grave doubts about the sufficiency of the limiting instruction used in Morison’s trial. The requirement that information relating to the national defense merely have the “potential” for damage or usefulness still sweeps extremely broadly. One may wonder whether any information shown to be related somehow to national defense could fail to have at least some such “potential.” But we do not write on an absolutely clean slate, for this instruction has been approved by this court in both Dedeyan and Truong Dinh Hung as an appropriately limiting one in application of these and related sections of the Espionage statute. While both of those applications were to “classic spy” conduct, the precedential effect of those decisions cannot be disregarded.
Judge Wilkinson expresses the view that because judicious case-by-case use of appropriate limiting instructions is available, “the espionage statute has no applicability to the multitude of leaks that pose no conceivable threat to national security, but threaten only to embarrass one or another high government official.” On this basis he concludes that these statutes can properly be applied to press leakers (whether venally or patriotically or however motivated) without threatening the vital newsgath-ering functions of the press. He supports this with a convincing discussion of the practical dynamics of the developed relationship between press and government officials to bolster his estimate that this use of the statute will not significantly inhibit needed investigative reporting about the workings of government in matters of national defense and security.
By concurring in his opinion, I accept that general estimate, which I consider to be the critical judicial determination forced by the first amendment arguments advanced in this case. But in doing so, I observe that jury instructions on a case-by-case basis are a slender reed upon which to rely for constitutional application of these critical statutes; and that the instructions we find necessary here surely press to the limit the judiciary’s right and obligation to narrow, without “reconstructing,” statutes whose constitutionality is drawn in question.
In the passage quoted by Judge Wilkinson, Justice Stewart observed that “Congress may provide a resolution ... through carefully drawn legislation.” That surely would provide the better long-term resolution here.