Court Opinion

ID: 9465843
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:57:21.823361+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:24.117897
License: Public Domain

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
With respect to the affirmance of Watson’s and Whitley’s convictions, I concur in the result. With respect to the reversal of Muse’s conviction, I dissent.
Judge Oakes finds that Muse suffered “substantial actual prejudice” from the delay in unsealing the indictment and concludes that therefore the Government must show not merely a “legitimate” but a “strong” prosecutorial interest in not having obtained a superseding indictment within the period of limitations that would have led to Muse’s arrest, which it has not done. Along with the district judge, I see nothing to prove that Muse suffered substantial prejudice and believe that the Government showed whatever interest, “strong” or otherwise, is needed to justify its having proceeded as it did.
The supposed prejudice arises from the fact that, although in his direct testimony, given in April 1978, Muse had a vivid recollection that he had stopped distributing heroin for Diamond and Egister around Christmas of 1970, a date conveniently tailored to his claim that the statute of limitations had run before the indictment on June 1, 1976, on cross-examination he professed inability to remember a number of facts, some of which were more recent and several of *1159which were subject to verification. Even if we make the charitable assumption that Muse in fact suffered a memory lapse on these items, there is nothing to show it had not occurred before June 1, 1976, when the indictment, conceded by the majority to have been timely, was returned,- or November, 1976, when the statute of limitations ran. The notion that Muse’s lapse of memory about where he lived between 1969 and 1970 occurred in the interval between June, 1976 or November, 1976 and September, 1977 defies the teachings of psychology,1 as well as common sense. The conclusion of “substantial actual prejudice” is thus an unfounded conjecture; the case differs markedly from one where it can be shown that witnesses have died or disappeared or records have been lost at identifiable dates.2
I am even more baffled by the majority’s conclusion of lack of “a strong prosecutorial interest.” Surely my brothers are not suggesting that the Government did not have such an interest in apprehending Watson and Whitley, members of the Bynum narcotics organization, which, in addition to numerous offenses against the narcotics laws, had engaged in “one unsuccessful robbery, together with the near fatal shooting of the victim, another aborted robbery, and an elaborate plan to murder a corrupt New York City patrolman, who was thought to be cooperating with the authorities,” United States v. Bynum, 485 F.2d 490, 493 (2 Cir. 1973), vacated, 417 U.S. 903, 94 S.Ct. 2598, 41 L.Ed.2d 209 (1974), conformed to, 386 F.Supp. 449 (S.D.N.Y.1974), aff’d, 513 F.2d 533 (2 Cir.), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 952, 96 S.Ct. 357, 46 L.Ed.2d 277 (1975). What the majority is really doing, under the cloak of this form of words, is substituting its judgment that a superseding indictment before November, 1976 naming only Muse, or Muse plus Doe and Roe, and Muse’s arrest pursuant thereto would not have involved serious risk of tipping off Whitley and Wat■son, in place of the prosecutors’ judgment that it would. Muse’s argument that there was no likelihood that he would have informed Watson and Whitley of his arrest, even if one were to accept it, misses the point, namely, the risk that Watson and Whitley, who were well aware of their traffic with Muse, would have learned of his arrest from other sources. I am not sufficiently experienced in the ways of the big-time narcotics underworld to be certain that this risk was insignificant; the narcotics cases I have observed over the past twenty years would lead me to the opposite conclusion. More important, the question is not what we think but what the prosecutors reasonably could have thought. Judge Sif-ton found that the delay in unsealing the indictment was the result of a “good faith . effort to find” Whitley and Watson; that a premature arrest of Muse might have made it impossible to locate them; and that none, including Muse, were prejudiced by the delay. We should give these findings of the trial judge, who saw and heard Muse testify and also observed the jury, the respect they deserve. While there must indeed be some limit on the time during which an indictment can be kept sealed as against a defendant who is not *1160concealing himself, that limit was not exceeded here.
I would affirm all the convictions.

. The basic work on memory is Ebbinghaus, Uber das Gedachtniss (1885). He shows memory declining along an asymptotic curve, with most loss occurring within a few days and almost no further decline in the time span here at issue. The theory and data behind the Eb-binghaus curve have been refined but not significantly changed. See, e. g., Hutchins & Schlesinger, Some Observations on the Law of Evidence — Memory, 41 Harv.L.Rev. 860, 862 (1928); W. & H. Mischel, Essentials of Psychology, 68-70 (1977).

. The majority, fn. 4, attempts to bootstrap its position with respect to prejudice by adding some or all of the period of pre-indictment delay, saying that “in effect” there is an irre-buttable presumption that “an indictment brought beyond the limitations period prejudices the defendant.” Of course there is no such presumption; the statute of limitations sets an arbitrary period for the beginning of a prosecution for a wide variety of reasons. What is true is that there is a strong presumption that pre-limitation delay is not prejudicial, see United States v. Marion, 404 U.S. 307, 92 S.Ct. 455, 30 L.Ed.2d 468 (1971). It would be incomprehensible, as a factual matter, that a strong presumption of no prejudice should change into an irrebuttable presumption of prejudice on a particular day.