Court Opinion

ID: 9481413
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:18:20.863033+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:18.140934
License: Public Domain

D.W. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur. I wish to emphasize that we are not holding today that a district court may never use its supervisory powers absent a statutory or constitutional violation. As Judge Norris pointed out in his dissent in United States v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., Inc., 719 F.2d 1386 (9th Cir.1983), cert. *1092denied, 465 U.S. 1079, 104 S.Ct. 1441, 79 L.Ed.2d 762 (1984), supervisory powers are intended to deter governmental misconduct and protect the integrity of the judicial process, while constitutional analysis preserves fairness for the individual defendant. Id. at 1394 (Norris, J., dissenting). Dismissal on supervisory powers grounds is based on a combination of the egregiousness of a prosecutor’s present misconduct, the need to discipline him for past misconduct, and the effectiveness of any other available sanctions short of dismissal. Id. at 1395 (Norris, J., dissenting). Here, the holding in Simpson I forecloses our discussion of the first issue, and there has been no evidence of past prosecutorial misconduct. Though there are not other available sanctions, save censure, we still hold that in light of the first two factors, no invocation of the supervisory powers is here warranted.