Court Opinion

ID: 9476064
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:46:55.059574+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:06.851024
License: Public Domain

JERRE S. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
My brother Garwood’s opinion is completely sound in its reasoning and conclusions with respect to the constitutional issues in this case. I concur fully with the result and with all of the reasoning as to those issues.
The purpose of this special concurrence is to raise a caveat about the implications of footnote 8 of the panel opinion. It is my view that the procedural protections of defendants charged with crimes against the United States are broader than the protections in the United States Constitution available to defendants charged with crimes against the states. Batson v. Kentucky, — U.S. -, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), is a state case and does not hold to the contrary.
The source of the broader protections against persons charged with federal offenses lies in the well established supervisory power of the federal courts, trial and appellate, to insure that those accused of federal crimes have fair trials. I do not go into detail concerning the nature and scope of this power in this concurrence because it is set out fully in my dissenting opinion in United States v. Leslie, 783 F.2d 541, 566 (5th Cir.1986) (en banc). The federal supervisory power authorizes federal district courts to demand a higher level of fairness in the procedures under which we undertake to convict those charged with federal crimes than the procedures required by the statutes or the due process of law and equal protection of the law provisions of the Constitution. The federal appellate courts are empowered to reverse federal convictions if they find a failure of fundamental fairness, although the failure falls short of constitutional or statutory requirements. I cannot countenance any implication that such a power does not exist and more particularly that it does not exist in federal criminal cases where charges of racial or other similar discrimination are made.
I concur in the result in this case without reservation because there is not the slightest showing of the kind of unfairness by the federal prosecutor in this case which could call forth the application of this established supervisory power.