Court Opinion

ID: 9539214
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 14:00:33.323707+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:37.253189
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-11809   Document: 38-1    Date Filed: 08/07/2023   Page: 1 of 8

                                                [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                 In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                         ____________________

                              No. 22-11809
                         ____________________

       UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                    Plaintiﬀ-Appellee,
       versus
       JAMES LAMOUNT GRAHAM,
       a.k.a.
       JT Money,
       a.k.a.
       James Livingston,

                                                Defendant-Appellant.

                         ____________________
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       2                       Opinion of the Court               22-11809

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Southern District of Georgia
                  D.C. Docket No. 2:20-cr-00047-LGW-BWC-1
                           ____________________

       Before GRANT, TJOFLAT, and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges.
       GRANT, Circuit Judge:
             A jury found James Graham guilty of various drug crimes.
       Now on appeal, Graham attacks his indictment, claiming that the
       grand jury’s probable cause determination was rendered defective
       by the district court’s special procedures related to the Covid-19
       pandemic. Under these procedures, grand jurors met in three
       separate federal courthouses, but were joined together by
       videoconferencing. He also argues that the wiretaps used to gather
       evidence against him did not meet the statutory necessity
       requirement.
               We affirm. The Covid-19 accommodations that Graham
       criticizes introduced no fundamental error into his prosecution;
       indeed, he does not claim that they affected the grand jury’s
       decision in any way. As for the statutory necessity claim, the
       district court did not clearly err in deciding that the wiretaps were
       necessary.
                                        I.
              Graham’s prosecution began in the summer of 2020, during
       the early stages of reopening during the Covid-19 pandemic. At
       that time, the Southern District of Georgia operated under a
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       22-11809              Opinion of the Court                      3

       standing order authorizing certain deviations from its normal
       grand jury procedures. The order permitted members of a single
       grand jury who would “otherwise travel into Savannah for grand
       jury service” to instead convene in three separate federal
       courthouses in the district in groups of ten or less.
               The order imposed several requirements on these separated
       groups. To start, the “designated grand jury spaces in each U.S.
       Courthouse” were to be “connected using telecommunications
       facilities.” Technology had to be in place such that “every member
       of the grand jury [could] both see and hear witnesses.” For
       security, the order mandated that court security officers would be
       “posted outside the designated grand jury spaces at each U.S.
       Courthouse to safeguard the grand jury against intrusion by
       unauthorized persons and to ensure the secrecy of the grand jury’s
       deliberations.”
              Graham was charged with multiple drug-related crimes.
       Before trial, Graham moved to dismiss the indictment based on a
       challenge to the grand jury’s procedures. He also moved to
       suppress evidence that the government obtained using wiretaps of
       his telephone, claiming that the wiretaps were unnecessary and
       thus disallowed. The district court denied both motions.
              A jury convicted Graham on all counts. The court
       sentenced him to 170 months of imprisonment and five years of
       supervised release and imposed other fines and assessments.
       Graham now appeals, reviving both his grand jury and evidentiary
       challenges.
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       4                      Opinion of the Court                  22-11809

                                         II.
              We review the denial of a motion to dismiss an indictment
       for abuse of discretion, resolving issues of law de novo. United
       States v. Cavallo, 790 F.3d 1202, 1219 (11th Cir. 2015). We review
       the court’s wiretap necessity finding for clear error. United States v.
       Maxi, 886 F.3d 1318, 1331 (11th Cir. 2018).
                                        III.
               Graham argues that the standing order violated both his
       Fifth Amendment right to a grand jury and the restrictions set out
       in Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(d). Rule 6(d)(1) offers a
       list of people—attorneys for the government, a witness who is on
       the stand being questioned, and the like—who “may be present
       while the grand jury is in session.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(d)(1). Rule
       6(d)(2) further restricts who “may be present while the grand jury
       is deliberating or voting.” But Graham’s concern is not who was
       present at the grand jury—it is who he says was not. He interprets
       Rule 6(d) to require that his grand jurors all be “present” in the
       same room, and he gestures at the cybersecurity risks of
       communicating with technology. Because the grand jurors were
       separated into three different courthouses, he says, his indictment
       was fundamentally corrupted.
              But Graham’s argument is missing one key component:
       prejudice. A showing of prejudice is generally required before an
       indictment may be dismissed because of a problem with the grand
       jury. Bank of Nova Scotia v. United States, 487 U.S. 250, 254 (1988).
       After all, Rule 52(a) commands that courts disregard any “error,
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       22-11809                  Opinion of the Court                               5

       defect, irregularity or variance which does not affect substantial
       rights.” Id. at 254–55 (quoting Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(a)). In rare
       circumstances, such prejudice may be presumed—when “the
       structural protections of the grand jury have been so compromised
       as to render the proceedings fundamentally unfair.” Id. at 256–57.
       Such a “fundamental” error “gives rise to the constitutional right
       not to be tried” because “it causes the grand jury no longer to be a
       grand jury, or the indictment no longer to be an indictment.”
       Midland Asphalt Corp. v. United States, 489 U.S. 794, 802 (1989). The
       foremost examples of fundamental error are racial and gender
       discrimination in the selection of grand jurors. See Bank of Nova
       Scotia, 487 U.S. at 257.
              When this sort of structural error is not at play, courts
       generally consider two things to evaluate potential prejudice:
       whether “it is established that the violation substantially influenced
       the grand jury’s decision to indict” and whether there is “grave
       doubt that the decision to indict was free from the substantial
       influence of such violations.”1 Id. at 256 (quotations omitted); see

       1 One other test has also applied. In Mechanik, the Supreme Court confronted

       a post-trial denial of a challenge to a grand jury proceeding. United States v.
       Mechanik, 475 U.S. 66, 68–69 (1986). It held that the petit jury’s later guilty
       verdict, by itself, showed that “any error in the grand jury proceeding” was
       “harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. at 70. Bank of Nova Scotia, by
       contrast, restricts part of its analysis to cases in which “a court is asked to
       dismiss an indictment prior to the conclusion of the trial.” 487 U.S. at 256.
       This Court has acknowledged some difficulty in squaring these two cases. See
       United States v. Jennings, 991 F.2d 725, 729 (11th Cir. 1993). We need not
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       6                       Opinion of the Court                   22-11809

       also Cavallo, 790 F.3d at 1219; United States v. Jennings, 991 F.2d 725,
       728–29 (11th Cir. 1993); United States v. Exarhos, 135 F.3d 723, 726–
       27 (11th Cir. 1998).
              Graham falls far short of these standards. Even if he were
       correct that grand jurors must all be present in the same room to
       comply with Rule 6 (a question that we do not consider), that kind
       of violation of Rule 6 is not a fundamental error allowing for
       prejudice to be presumed. The fact that the grand jurors met in
       three secure locations and communicated via videoconference did
       not change the basic nature of Graham’s grand jury or fatally infect
       his indictment. See Bank of Nova Scotia, 487 U.S. at 257–58 (finding
       no fundamental error despite many Rule 6 violations). It suggests
       no breach of secrecy, impartiality, or independence. See Costello v.
       United States, 350 U.S. 359, 362–63 (1956).
              Graham thus must show prejudice, but at no point does he
       allege—or even speculate—how the violation he alleges could
       have affected his indictment. He claims no flaw in the presentation
       of evidence, no security breach, and no prosecutorial misconduct.
       Nor did he seek discovery about his grand jury proceedings. With
       no allegations—much less evidence—of any influence on the
       indictment, we cannot conclude that the grand jurors’ physical
       separation “substantially influenced” their decision to indict or

       consider that problem here because a petit jury convicted Graham on all
       counts, which means that Mechanik’s reasoning also supports our decision.
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       22-11809               Opinion of the Court                         7

       created “grave doubt” about the indictment’s integrity. See Bank of
       Nova Scotia, 487 U.S. at 256.
              No doubt, one can imagine how the use of
       telecommunication facilities could affect a grand jury in some way.
       But Graham must have been harmed by error in his grand jury or
       his indictment—hypotheticals will not do. Nothing in the record
       here suggests any prejudice to Graham. Nor do the briefs. So even
       if there were any error—and we are not suggesting that there
       was—it was harmless to Graham.
              In short, the court did not abuse its discretion. Dismissal of
       an indictment is “an extreme sanction which should be
       infrequently utilized,” and nothing about this grand jury
       proceeding supports dismissal. United States v. Pabian, 704 F.2d
       1533, 1536 (11th Cir. 1983) (quotation omitted).
                                        IV.
               When requesting a wiretap, the government must include
       in its application “a full and complete statement as to whether or
       not other investigative procedures have been tried and failed or
       why they reasonably appear to be unlikely to succeed if tried or to
       be too dangerous.” 18 U.S.C. § 2518(1)(c). But it need not “show
       a comprehensive exhaustion of all possible techniques.” United
       States v. Van Horn, 789 F.2d 1492, 1496 (11th Cir. 1986). The law
       only demands an explanation of “the retroactive or prospective
       failure of several investigative techniques that reasonably suggest
       themselves” for “this particular investigation.” Id.; United States v.
       Perez, 661 F.3d 568, 581 (11th Cir. 2011) (quotation omitted).
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       8                      Opinion of the Court                22-11809

              The district court did not clearly err in deciding that the
       government met this standard. Graham argues that the wiretap
       cannot have been necessary because the government already
       obtained some evidence from surveilling a few of Graham’s drug
       deals and that he was unlikely to reveal new information on the
       phone. But if having some evidence of a crime were enough to bar
       a wiretap as unnecessary, no wiretap order could ever be issued
       because evidence is required to get a wiretap in the first place. And
       in any event, the government’s investigation expanded beyond just
       Graham’s individual drug deals—it sought to uncover the inner
       workings of the whole drug trafficking organization. The wiretaps
       could advance this broader goal. See Perez, 661 F.3d at 581–82.
              A review of the wiretap affidavits themselves shows that
       they provided more than enough explanation to comply with the
       law. After describing the investigation’s history and goals, the
       affidavits comprehensively outlined the “Need for Interception”
       and discussed “Alternative Investigative Techniques.” They
       exhaustively detailed why previous sources of information and
       reasonable alternative methods—including physical surveillance,
       cameras, interviews, undercover agents, subpoenas, search
       warrants, trash searches, and more—would not suffice. Such
       thorough and specific affidavits easily satisfy the legal
       requirements. See United States v. Goldstein, 989 F.3d 1178, 1195–96
       (11th Cir. 2021).
                                        V.
             We AFFIRM.