Court Opinion

ID: 9428898
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:25:05.722197+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:15.989012
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall join,
dissenting.
Today, the Court carries its recent penchant for summary decision to a new extreme. The substantial and controversial question raised here — whether an order denying a motion *271to dismiss based on prosecutorial vindictiveness is appealable before trial — does not, in my view, lend itself to summary treatment. Nevertheless, the Court has decided this important question of appellate jurisdiction without briefing or argument, even though it was not briefed or argued before the District Court or the Court of Appeals and was not the subject of any lower court opinion. I dissent.
I
The Court, it seems to me, has shown a disturbing tendency of late to dispose of difficult cases by summary per curiam reversals. I must assume that this tendency is prompted, at least in part, by the growing pressures of the Court’s calendar and an ill-conceived conviction that we must stay abreast of the increasing workload whatever the costs may be. I regret this pattern, for I think it demeans the Court and its work and surely tends to lessen the quality of its legal product.
Summary action is particularly unfortunate in this case, for the Court directs that respondents’ appeal be dismissed on an issue that was not raised by the Government until its petition for rehearing in the Court of Appeals. Indeed, for more than a year — until the Court of Appeals ruled on the merits in favor of respondents — the Government affirmatively represented to that court that it “ha[d] jurisdiction to review prior to trial a District Court’s denial of a defendant’s motion to dismiss for vindictive prosecution.” United States’ Emergency Motion for Summary Affirmance of District Court, reprinted in App. to Brief in Opposition 5a. As a result, the jurisdictional question was not briefed or argued before the Court of Appeals or the District Court.
Respondents’ opposition to the Government’s petition for certiorari understandably focuses on arguments for denying certiorari — in particular, the Government’s failure to raise the jurisdictional issue in a more timely fashion. Coupled *272with the Government’s litigation strategy, the Court’s summary disposition therefore deprives respondents of their “day in court” in a singularly inappropriate manner.
II
Additionally, I do not find today’s ruling so clearly compelled as to warrant summary treatment, especially when the Solicitor General, contrary to his frequent practice, has not suggested summary reversal in his petition for certiorari. In my view, the issue is important enough to be briefed and argued fully in at least one court.
Certainly, the Court’s disposition is not mandated by our precedents. As the Court explains, Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U. S. 541 (1949), and Abney v. United States, 431 U. S. 651 (1977), interpret 28 U. S. C. § 1291 as authorizing interlocutory appeals when a three-part standard has been met. The Court fails, however, to mention the first two requirements, presumably because they are satisfied here: that the denial of a defendant’s motion to dismiss an indictment on vindictive prosecution grounds “constitute[s] a complete, formal, and, in the trial court, final rejection of a criminal defendant’s [vindictive prosecution] claim,” 431 U. S., at 659, and that it resolves an issue that is “collateral to, and separable from, the principal issue at the accused’s impending criminal trial, i. e., whether or not the accused is guilty of the offense charged,” ibid. Unlike the speedy trial claim before the Court in United States v. MacDonald, 435 U. S. 850 (1978), which depended on an assessment of the extent to which delay had prejudiced the defense — an assessment that could only be “speculative” prior to trial, id., at 858 — an allegation-that the prosecutor impermissibly increased the charges in response to the defendant’s exercise of a legal right may be evaluated before trial, for all the facts relevant to such a claim are fully available.
The Court properly suggests that the third requirement set out in Cohen and Abney is the most difficult to apply in *273this context. See ante, at 267. But, unlike the Court, I find force in respondents’ contention that the right they seek to vindicate, in contrast to the right at issue in MacDonald, is “a ‘right not to be tried’ which must be upheld prior to trial if it is to be enjoyed at all.” 435 U. S., at 861. In MacDonald, it was “the delay before trial, not the trial itself, that offend[ed] against the constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial.” Ibid. When the defendant has been the victim of vindictive prosecution, however, the Court has said that he may “not to be haled into court at all upon the [increased] charge.” Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U. S. 21, 30 (1974) (emphasis added). And we have analogized that right to the right protected by the Double Jeopardy Clause, see id., at 31, which must, of course, be vindicated prior to trial if it is to be protected at all.1
Moreover, postconviction review may not suffice to remedy the chilling effect the vindictive prosecution doctrine is designed to prevent. The Court repeatedly has declined to hold that the Due Process Clause forbids only prosecutorial action taken with an actual retaliatory motive. Rather, it has emphasized that “‘since the fear of such vindictiveness may unconstitutionally deter a defendant’s exercise of [his] right[s] . . . , due process also requires that a defendant be freed of apprehension of such a retaliatory motivation. . . .’ ” *274Id., at 28 (emphasis added), quoting North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U. S. 711, 725 (1969); see also United States v. Goodwin, 457 U. S. 368, 375-376 (1982). Even if a defendant is convinced that his vindictive prosecution claim ultimately will prevail on postconviction review, the increased burdens attending a trial on enhanced charges may deter him from exercising his legal rights. This may well not be a case, then, where “reversal of the conviction and ... a new trial free of prejudicial error” are “adequate means of vindicating the constitutional rights of the accused.” Ante, at 268.
In addition to extending our precedents, the Court goes well beyond the rulings of the two Courts of Appeals it characterizes as “directly conflicting]” with the decision below. Ante, at 264, n. 1. In United States v. Brizendine, 212 U. S. App. D. C. 169, 180, 659 F. 2d 215, 226 (1981), the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit refused to permit interlocutory appeals involving “claims of due process violations arising from the plea bargaining process.” That court, however, expressly refused to consider the appealability of the denial of a motion to dismiss “in the Blackledge situation . . . ,” where the defendant’s claim “turned on a purely legal issue ...” and challenged increased charges filed in response to his exercise of a legal right. Id., at 175, 659 F. 2d, at 221. Similarly, in United States v. Gregory, 656 F. 2d 1132, 1136 (1981), the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit did not foreclose the possibility that some claims of prosecutorial vindictiveness could be the subject of interlocutory appeal.2
*275I cannot conclude that the Court’s ruling is compelled by our prior cases or is even consistent with the clear weight of authority in the Courts of Appeals. I would grant the petition for certiorari and set the case for oral argument.

 See Abney v. United States, 431 U. S. 651, 659 (1977) (noting that the defendant in Blackledge v. Perry was “contesting the very authority of the Government to hale him into court to face trial on the charge against him”); Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U. S., at 30-31 (observing that the defendant’s vindictive prosecution claim “went to the very power of the State to bring the defendant into court to answer the charge brought against him”; that, when the prosecutor acts vindictively in enhancing charges, the State is “simply precluded by the Due Process Clause from calling upon the respondent to answer to the more serious charge . . .”; that “[t]he very initiation of the proceedings against [a defendant subjected to vindictive prosecution] operated to deny him due process of law”; and that “North Carolina simply could not permissibly require Perry to answer to the felony charge”).

 Other Courts of Appeals have not restricted interlocutory appeals to the three instances in which this Court has applied the collateral-order doctrine in criminal cases, see ante, at 265-266. See United States v. Venable, 585 F. 2d 71, 74-75 (CA3 1978) (denial of motion to bar retrial on collateral estoppel grounds is immediately appealable); United States v. Alessi, 536 F. 2d 978, 980-981 (CA2 1976) (denial of motion to dismiss indictment that allegedly violated prior plea bargain may be the subject of an interlocutory appeal).