Court Opinion

ID: 9492606
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:45:03.100742+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:23.244652
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Whether the government violates 18 U.S.C. § 201(c)(2) by paying a witness in exchange for testimony is an issue of first impression in this court. I believe the government’s payment for a witness’s testimony violates § 201(c)(2), and I believe an evidentiary hearing is required for the government to show its payments to Bar-' tels did not constitute such an illegal payment. Because the majority fails to address this issue adequately, I respectfully dissent.
I.
As the majority recounts, Bartels’ testimony at Albanese’s February 1998 trial conflicted with his testimony at LanFran-ca’s March 1997 revocation hearing. Subsequently, at the March 1998 trial that resulted in Albanese’s conviction, both the prosecutor and the defense broached the subject of Bartels’ compensation for his assistance to the government. On direct, the government elicited the following testimony:
Q Have you been paid in the course of your cooperation?
A Yes.
Q How much have you been paid?
A I roughly believe the total amount would be somewhere in the sixties, mid sixties.
Q Mid 60,000?
A 60,000.
Q If I tell you $66,311.36, does that sound about right?
A Yes, sir.
(Tr. Vol. I at 211-12.)
On cross-examination, Bartels clearly indicated that he was being paid for his trial testimony:
Q Now you are getting paid for your time here today?
A Yes, sir.
Q How much do you charge?
A I don’t charge.
Q How much do you get paid for being here to testify?
A I don’t know. I don’t make that decision.
Q Do you get paid whether you tell the truth or not?
*396A I get paid for my time, my services. (Tr. Vol. II at 275.)
II.
In United States v. Singleton, 144 F.3d 1343 (10th Cir.1998) (“Singleton I”), rev’d, 165 F.3d 1297 (10th Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 119 S.Ct. 2371, — L.Ed.2d - (1999), a panel of the Tenth Circuit reversed a criminal conviction on the ground that the prosecutor violated § 201(c)(2) by offering a co-defendant leniency in exchange for truthful testimony. In its en banc opinion reversing Singleton I, the Tenth Circuit concluded that the statute’s reference to “whoever” did not apply to government prosecutors. The court reasoned that an Assistant United States Attorney acting within the scope of the authority of that office is “the alter ego of the United States exercising its sovereign power of prosecution.” See United States v. Singleton, 165 F.3d 1297, 1299-1302 (10th Cir.1999) (en banc) (Singleton II). We confronted the same issue in United States v. Johnson, 169 F.3d 1092 (8th Cir.1999), petition for cert. filed (U.S. June 15, 1999) (No. 84-2449). In that case, Johnson argued the district court should have suppressed the testimony of a number of cooperating witnesses because the government’s cooperation agreements violated § 201(c)(2). We rejected Johnson’s argument, noting the Tenth Circuit’s ultimate rejection of the argument. See 169 F.3d at 1097-98. Unlike the Tenth Circuit, however, we did not go so far as to hold that federal prosecutors were beyond the reach of the federal anti-bribery statute: “We agree that the statute does not sweep so broadly as to prevent prosecutors from offering leniency to an individual in exchange for truthful testimony.” 169 F.3d at 1098.
In my view, this case is controlled neither by our decision in Johnson nor by the string of cases cited by the majority. This court simply has not yet decided whether the practice of paying witnesses for testimony violates § 201(c)(2). In none of the cases cited by the majority did we decide whether § 201(c)(2) prevents the government from purchasing testimony. Moreover, only in Risken is it clear that the witness in question was compensated specifically for testimony rather than for mere information. Compare United States v. Risken, 788 F.2d 1361, 1372-73 (8th Cir.1986) (witness received fee contingent upon defendant’s conviction) with United States v. Einfeldt, 138 F.3d 373, 377 (8th Cir.1998) (trial witness was paid informant), United States v. Gordon, 974 F.2d 97, 98-99 (8th Cir.1992) (witness granted immunity and placed in witness protection program in exchange for “cooperation”; witness paid 25% of any illegally-obtained money he “helped to recover”), and United States v. Quinn, 543 F.2d 640, 646, 651 (8th Cir.1976) (paid informant was never called as witness). I therefore believe this court must confront squarely § 201(e)(2)’s impact on the government’s payment for testimony.
III.
At the outset, I believe § 201(c)(2) cannot be read to exclude government prosecutors. In Nardone v. United States, the Supreme Court considered whether government agents were covered by a statute that allowed “no person” to engage in wiretapping. 302 U.S. 379, 58 S.Ct. 275, 82 L.Ed. 314 (1937). Looking to long-established canons of statutory construction, the Court concluded that the language of the statute must be taken at face value, thereby including government agents within its prohibition. 302 U.S. at 383-84, 58 S.Ct. 275.
The Court began by acknowledging the rule that “general words of a statute do not include the government or affect its rights unless the construction be clear and indisputable upon the text.” Id. at 383, 58 S.Ct. 275. However, the Court determined that the application of the rule excluding the government is limited to two classes of cases. The first is “where an act, if not so limited, would deprive the *397sovereign of a recognized or established prerogative title or interest.” Id. at 383, 58 S.Ct. 275. The second is where reading a statute to include government officers “would work obvious absurdity.” Id. at 384, 58 S.Ct. 275. The Court concluded the anti-wire-tapping statute at issue fit within neither class. Finally, the Court noted the canon dictating that “the sovereign is embraced by general words of a statute intended to prevent injury and wrong.” Id.
As the Singleton II opinion makes clear, the government’s practice of offering leniency in exchange for truthful testimony is a prosecution tactic deeply rooted in the common law. See Singleton II, 165 F.3d at 1301 (“This ingrained practice of granting lenience in exchange for testimony has created a vested sovereign prerogative in the government.”); see also United States v. Ware, 161 F.3d 414, 419 (6th Cir.1998) (“The prosecutorial prerogative to recommend leniency in exchange for testimony dates back to the common law in England and has been recognized and approved by Congress, the courts, and the Sentencing Commission of the United States”). Construing § 201(c)(2) to forbid such bargaining would therefore run afoul of Nardone by infringing upon a'“recognized or established prerogative” of the government.
But construction of the statute to permit the government to offer pecuniary rewards for testimony — as Albanese claims the government did in this case — is another matter entirely.1 First, although the practice of paying for information is certainly familiar, I find no indication that payments specifically for testimony have a similar pedigree. To the contrary, the corrupting influence of money on testimony and the judicial process as a whole has long been a concern at common law, as amply illustrated by the Singleton II dissenters. See Singleton II, 165 F.3d at 1313-14 (Kelly, J., dissenting) (noting that at common law in most jurisdictions it is improper to pay occurrence witness any fee for testimony, and that agreements to pay fact witnesses are generally void as contrary to public policy and for lack of consideration). And while it is true that we have upheld contingent-fee agreements for witness testimony such as that in Risken against due process challenges, such agreements can hardly be deemed established to the point of being a sovereign prerogative. See Samuel A. Perroni & Mona J. McNutt, Criminal Contingency Fee Agreements: How Fair Are They?, 16 U.Ark. Little Rock L.J. 211, 214-20 (1994) (recounting how “barrage” of cases involving witness contingent-fee agreements emerged in 1980s).
The majority cites 18 U.S.C. § 3521 as a lone example of “other statutes” that authorize payment of witnesses in apparent contradiction to § 201(c)(2). I see no such contradiction. Under § 3521(a)(1) the government may provide for the relocation and protection of a government witness or potential witness threatened by violence or other interference. The government may provide for the relocation and protection of such witnesses, including payment of living expenses, where necessary to protect the witness and assure that person’s health safety and welfare. See 18 U.S.C. § 3521(b)(1). But the plain purpose of this statute is protection, not compensation; payments and other gratuities are provided “in connection with the protection ... of a witness,” and must be determined by *398the Attorney General to be “necessary to protect the person involved from bodily injury and otherwise to assure the health, safety, and welfare of that person.” Id.
I think it also clear that no absurdity results from holding both the government as well as private entities bound by a statute intended to protect the reliability of testimony. To the contrary, I find no reason to believe that testimony bought and paid for by the government is somehow immune from being corrupted, either by design or otherwise. Finally, Nardone counsels that a statute “intended to prevent injury and wrong,” as § 201(c)(2) plainly is, applies to the sovereign as well. See Nardone, 302 U.S. at 384, 58 S.Ct. 275.
IV.
I believe that here, as with the government’s violation of the anti-wire-tapping statute in Nardone, the appropriate remedy is the exclusion of evidence obtained by the government in violation of the statute. See Nardone v. United States, 308 U.S. 338, 339-41, 60 S.Ct. 266, 84 L.Ed. 307 (1939).
“Any claim for the exclusion of evidence logically relevant in criminal prosecutions is heavily handicapped. It must be justified by an over-riding public policy expressed in the Constitution or the law of the land.” Id. at 340, 60 S.Ct. 266. We must reconcile the need for “stern enforcement of the criminal law” with the concern for preservation of the integrity of the judicial process that Congress has manifested in § 201(c)(2). See id. The circumstances of the case before us persuade me that this balance should tip toward protection of the trustworthiness of the judgments of our courts. As in the Fourth Amendment context, exclusion of paid testimony would provide a vital incentive for the government to abide by the law. Moreover, exclusion of paid testimony directly advances the concern of the underlying law: the reliability of evidence.
The case before us illustrates vividly the dangers posed by the government’s purchase of testimony. With respect to Lan-Franca, Bartels appears to have attempted to give the testimony he thought the government wanted to hear, impheating Lan-Franca in the conspiracy at LanFranca’s revocation hearing, and then changing his testimony so as to shore up LanFranca’s credibility at Albanese’s February 1998 trial, where LanFranca testified for the government. It is only by the aid of the district judge’s perceptive law clerk that we are aware of this particular prevarication; one can only wonder in what other ways Bartels endeavored to keep his customer satisfied.
This case should be remanded to the district court for an evidentiary hearing. Because the relevant information on this issue is in the possession of the government, once a defendant has made a prima facie showing that the government is paying a witness or providing other tangible remuneration for or because of testimony, the burden must shift to the government to prove that it has not violated § 201(c)(3). On remand, the government should be allowed to present additional evidence on this issue, although the present state of the record strongly suggests to me that the government will be unable to carry this burden.
V.
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.

. While the rejection of Singleton I may aptly be characterized as a ''stampede,” United States v. Lowery, 166 F.3d 1119, 1123 (11th Cir.1999), other courts have recognized that the issue we face in this case is distinct from that in Singleton, see United States v. Hunte, 193 F.3d 173, 176 n.4 (3d Cir.1999) (reserving question of § 201(c)(2)’s application where witness has received money from government in exchange for testimony); United States v. Condon, 170 F.3d 687, 689 (7th Cir.1999) (rejecting argument that leniency in exchange for testimony violates § 201(c)(3), but declining to hold that statute does not apply to federal prosecutors; "[tjhat approach, if taken seriously, would permit prosecutors to pay cash for favorable testimony, a practice that lacks the statutory and historical support of immunity and sentence reduction”).