Court Opinion

ID: 9498421
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:17:01.341326+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:49.388841
License: Public Domain

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
Whether it be termed a “contingent fee” or “bounty” — an expression even less palatable and more indicative of this practice — is a matter of semantics and here unimportant. What is important is the *397structure of the agreement that the government has brokered here with its witness, and that structure ultimately leaves the government witness financially motivated in the conviction of the defendants.
Here, as a part of his agreement with the government to serve as an informant, Diaz was to receive up to 20% of any money seized and forfeited as a result of his cooperation. Pursuant to the deal, if (and only if) a conviction or plea was secured, and the seized money forfeited, the informant would get a piece of the forfeiture. The majority says the threat of harm this arrangement poses is minimized because Diaz got paid regardless of whether or not he testified, and that most cases get settled rather than tried. But the case at bar is not most cases. This case was tried, and Diaz’s testimony was an integral part of it. Indeed, as the majority notes, “the government’s case would have collapsed” without it. At bottom, the operative facts of this case are clear: Diaz would get proceeds from the Dawson and Ingram bust only if the defendants were convicted, and he testified for the government in the trial designed to secure that conviction. Put differently, Diaz was paid only if the party for whom he was testifying won the case.
There is little doubt that Diaz’s bounty was “riding on the outcome” of the Dawson and Ingram prosecution. Diaz testified to the arrangement on direct examination by the government, admitting that he “could get up to 20 percent 1.’ Even the government concedes that “Diaz stood to receive up to 20% of any money seized and forfeited resulting from Diaz’s cooperation.” Appellee Br. at 33. What’s more, Diaz knew almost exactly how much was seized from the defendants at the time he testified. We know this because he offered testimony as to the exact dollar figure seized from Dawson and Ingram at the bust — $269,000.2 Thus, not only was Diaz able to give his financial motivation in the defendants’ conviction a rough dollar figure, but he also, by providing testimonial evidence as to the amount of currency the government seized from Dawson and Ingram, helped make the government’s case for forfeiture itself.
Nor is it unclear whether the government pursued the forfeiture of those seized assets. The government sought those assets from the outset, as page three of the November 19, 2002, indictment against the two defendants clearly sets forth forfeiture allegations, naming “$280,000 in United States currency” subject to forfeiture pursuant to Title 21, United States Code, Section 853. That $280,000 figure included “more specifically funds in the amounts of $4239.00, $4273.00 and $269,005.00,” as page one of the June 16, 2004 Motion of the United States for Entry of Preliminary Order of Forfeiture — filed on the heels of the defendants’ February 4, 2004 conviction — reveals. Nor is there any doubt that those assets were in fact ultimately forfeited, as the district court entered preliminary orders toward that end against both *398Dawson (Minute Order, August 25, 2004) and Ingram (Minute Order, June 6, 2004). While it may be unclear whether Diaz takes his 20% proceeds in cash or cashier’s check, we may say with sufficient certainty that the conviction of Dawson and Ingram will get Diaz paid.
As the majority acknowledges, there is a rule against paying witnesses an additional fee, if the party for whom they testify wins the case. See Maj. Op. at 394. The majority, however, would limit this rule to one of professional conduct rather than extend it to admissibility of evidence, see Tagatz v. Marquette Univ., 861 F.2d 1040, 1042 (7th Cir.1988), predicting the threat of the “windfalls” that would surely come on the heels of an exclusionary rule. I do not discount the value inherent in avoiding windfalls, but to appreciate that value is not to say that other values do not here exist. Indeed, they do, and they are nothing less than due process and fairness to defendants.
These values too are important. In United States v. Estrada, 256 F.3d 466 (7th Cir.2001), we expressed reservations about a fee arrangement with a witness that, like here, was dependent on the defendant’s conviction. “Such an incentive structure,” we said, “does little to enhance overall confidence in the criminal justice system.” Id. at 472. Only because there was “overwhelming evidence” of the defendant’s drug involvement did we conclude that the defendant’s sentence did “not carry with it the specter of a miscarriage of justice.” Id. Here, though, as the majority recognizes, the government’s case could not have survived without Diaz’s testimony.
Other circuits have also expressed reservations about this practice although, unfortunately, often in opinions that have long since been ignored if not abrogated or outright overruled. See, e.g., United States v. Waterman, 732 F.2d 1527, 1528 (8th Cir.1984) (holding that a witness agreement contingent upon the outcome of the case “hampered the truth-finding function of the jury to a degree which cannot be reconciled with the fair procedures guaranteed by the due process clause of the fifth amendment”), vacated en banc, id. at 1533; Williamson v. United States, 311 F.2d 441, 444 (5th Cir.1962) (rejecting testimony elicited through an outcome-dependent agreement in keeping with “the duty of the courts in federal criminal cases to require fair and lawful conduct from federal agents in the furnishing of evidence of crimes”), overruled by United States v. Cervantes-Pacheco, 826 F.2d 310, 316 (5th Cir.1987).
Yet the specter of these values persists nonetheless. As our sister circuit noted in United States v. Dailey, 759 F.2d 192, 201 n. 9 (1st Cir.1985), “benefits made contingent upon subsequent indictments or convictions skate very close to, if indeed they do not cross, the limits imposed by the due process clause.” As the Dailey court stated, it could “think of no instance in which the government would be justified in making a promised benefit contingent upon the return of an indictment or a guilty verdict.” Id. at 201. And I certainly acknowledge that this circuit has expressly rejected the doctrine of “outrageous government conduct” first posited by the Court in United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 431-32, 93 S.Ct. 1637, 36 L.Ed.2d 366 (1973).3 See United States v. Boyd, 55 F.3d 239, 241 (7th Cir.1995) (holding that “the doctrine [of outrageous government conduct] does not exist in this circuit”). *399However, should the government continue to utilize these agreements, I am confident that another opportunity to revisit that doctrine will not be long off.
I should be comforted, according to my colleagues, by the merits of vigorous cross-examination and jury competency in ferreting out “testimony given under a powerful inducement to lie.” I find greater comfort, however, in the text of the since vacated Waterman decision. That panel rejected such reliance on the jury’s role in making credibility determinations: “[W]e see no place in due process law for positioning the jury to weed out the seeds of untruth planted by the government. Certainly [the witness] might have lied regardless of the contingency agreement and the jury was generally commissioned to determine the truth of his testimony; but that is no reason for the government to give him further incentive to selectively remember past events in a manner favorable to the indictment or conviction of others.” Waterman, 732 F.2d at 1532. Indeed, the impact on “the truth-finding function of the jury” is what led the panel to find such arrangements in contravention of due process in the first place. Id. at 1528.
While the precedent both within and without this circuit suggests that I might swim against the tide, there are nonetheless sub-currents of which the government should take note before again brokering these bargains. See, e.g., Estrada, 256 F.3d at 472; United States v. Innamorati, 996 F.2d 456, 482 (1st Cir.1993) (upholding admissibility of testimony where payment to the witness “was completed several days prior to trial, and the payment was thus not directly dependent upon the result of [the witness’s] testimony in court”); Dailey, 759 F.2d at 201. The government might also consider the canons of professional conduct, which forbid the practice of predicating witness payment on case outcomes. See Maj. Op. (“Even an expert witness, and a fortiori an occurrence witness, may not be paid more if the party for whom he is testifying wins the ease.”); Cervantes-Pacheco, 826 F.2d at 316 (Rubin, J., concurring) (noting that “employment of a witness for a fee contingent upon victory for the party in whose favor he testifies is a violation of both the Model Rules of Professional Conduct [Rule 3.4] and the Code of Professional Responsibility [DR 7-109]”); Model Code of Professional Responsibility DR 7-109(C) (1980) (“A lawyer shall not pay, offer to pay, or acquiesce in the payment of compensation to a witness contingent upon the content of his testimony or the outcome of the case.”).
I recognize that witnesses can receive immunity or reduced sentences in exchange for their truthful testimony, see, e.g., United States v. Blassingame, 197 F.3d 271, 285 (7th Cir.1999), and I have no quarrel with that practice. It is one thing to accept the myriad and sometimes sordid realities that motivate witnesses to testify; but it is another affirmatively to invite inherently tainted testimony. The danger of these outcome-contingent agreements is real; “[t]he opportunities for abuse ... too obvious to require elaboration.” Williamson, 311 F.2d at 444. Nor is this a matter of quibbling over the exact percentage that the government may pay to secure supporting testimony, for that, as my colleagues rightly note, is not within the province of the judicial department. What is a matter of judicial concern, however, is a defendant’s right to a fair trial, and it is that concern that renders any percentage of moneys paid to a witness improper when such payment depends upon the conviction of another.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.

. Trial Transcript at 180-81:
Q: [W]hat's your understanding as to whether you will receive additional money for your cooperation in this case?
Diaz: They didn't tell me nothing. They just told me that if it was any moneys, I could get up to 20 percent.
Q: Any money seized, that you can get up to 20 percent of the money that’s seized, is that your understanding?
Diaz: Yes.

. Trial transcript at 181:
Q: How much money was seized in the first case?
Diaz: 269,000
Q: Is that this case that you are talking about, the money for which you are testifying now?
Diaz: Yes.

. In Russell, the Supreme Court suggested that there may be "a situation in which the conduct of law enforcement agents is so outrageous that due process principles would absolutely bar the government from invoking judicial processes to obtain a conviction.” Id.