Court Opinion

ID: 9467385
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:47:36.325474+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:19.253492
License: Public Domain

WIDENER, Circuit Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
While I concur in the result obtained by the majority in affirming the conviction of the misdemeanor of fleeing and eluding a police officer, I respectfully dissent to overturning the conviction of the felony of assaulting an officer in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 111.
As the majority correctly notes, Bordenkircher “held that a prosecutor does not violate due process by threatening to increase charges in the course of plea bargaining and then following up on that threat after plea negotiations break down.” P. 253. Applying Bordenkircher to our case, if the government had threatened to prosecute Goodwin for assaulting the officer during the plea negotiations which did take place, and then had indicted Goodwin for that crime when the plea negotiations broke down, such conduct would have been approved under Brodenkircher. But because of the lack of a threat by the prosecutor to indict, the majority sets aside the conviction because “the circumstances surrounding the felony indictment [the assault on the officer] give rise to a general risk of retaliation.” P. 253. The court now holds that while an expressed threat of retaliation will not suffice to set aside a conviction because of Bordenkircher, merely a general risk of retaliation without the expressed threat will suffice. If we analyze what the prosecutor did in Bordenkircher, we see that in that case he deliberately threatened the defendant with indictment for an additional offense in order to discourage trial, and to encourage a guilty plea, and the prosecutor expressly so advised the defendant before trial. Bordenkircher at 358, n.l, 98 S.Ct. at 665 n.l. In our case, there is no intimation that the prosecutor was acting with vindictiveness in seeking the indictment for assaulting the officer, and the majority so finds. P. 252. Neither did he make any attempt to discourage any exercise of Goodwin’s right to trial by jury. Thus, what the majority now adopts is a per se rule, the effect of which is that a prosecuting attorney must see to it that formal charges are initially filed for the most serious offense of which a defendant may be guilty or else forever forfeit the right to so prosecute him if the defendant contests the prosecution in any way.
I doubt that we should follow our Johnson case so far and that it is any authority for the proposition relied upon following the decision in Bordenkircher. An en banc court is not needed, of course, to accept a superseding opinion of the Supreme Court, and, as we had to, we have so held in Marzullo v. Maryland, 561 F.2d 540 (5 Cir. 1977).