Court Opinion

ID: 9489171
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:07:45.834697+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:22.145100
License: Public Domain

GINSBURG, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The defendant stands charged with making a false statement on a passport application in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1542. According to the testimony of a Special Agent of the Department of State Security Service, in 1986 the defendant procured a passport in the name of a deceased person, Steven Barry Citron. In 1988, based upon a court document attesting to a change of name, he was issued a new passport, this time in the name of Sereno Citron. In 1993 he obtained yet another passport, this time in the name of *445Kani Xulam, again based upon a purported change of name. During a search of defendant’s office, agents recovered a Turkish passport with a photograph of defendant and a Canadian social security card, both in the name of Namet Gunduez.
Because the defendant is apparently subject to deportation as an illegal alien — the INS has instituted an investigation and lodged a detainer against him — and has a demonstrated ability to obtain false travel and other documents, the Government suggested that the risk he would flee is sufficiently high that he should be detained pending trial, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3142. The district court held a hearing at which the defendant made the best record he could in support of the proposition that he should be released into the custody of certain respected citizens willing to serve in that capacity. The court then granted the Government’s detention request on the ground that “no condition or combination of conditions” of release could reasonably assure that the defendant would appear as required for future hearings.
As for the testimony of the two witnesses who offered to supervise defendant’s release, the district judge explained at some length why he considered their offers inadequate to assure the defendant’s appearance. Basically, having first concluded that the defendant is likely to flee, the court found that “those persons ... could not stop him.”
Moreover, the Magistrate Judge who compiled the record upon which the district court acted — and who had also concluded that no condition or combination of conditions of release would be adequate — made the following findings of fact. (1) Both of the persons who offered to assume custody of the defendant, and the third witness who testified in opposition to his detention, have “an acquaintance [with him] which is superficial.” They did not know “his name, other names he has used, where he is from and where his family is....” Nor did they know his immigration status. (2) “[N]othing in the witnesses’ testimony suggests that defendant would be amenable to supervision by any of them.”
Nonetheless, the Court of Appeals, which has no firsthand knowledge of the defendant or of his witnesses, revokes the district court’s order of detention. Do my colleagues know something that the district court does not? Yes: They know that this “international human rights worker” and advocate for the Kurds of Turkey, who might be deported to Turkey where, he claims, he would be persecuted, would not, if released pending trial, flee in pursuit of personal safety and the opportunity to continue his human rights work from another eapitol, because that would do “immense harm to [the] reputation” of the two acquaintances who vouchsafed his appearance. This is nothing more than a leap of faith on the part of my colleagues.
The court devotes most of its opinion to the claim that the district court could have devised “some combination of conditions” calibrated reasonably to assure that the defendant would not flee — another leap of faith, it seems, for the defendant proposed no such combination of conditions, the district court concluded none exists, and the Court of Appeals itself is silent upon what that combination might be. In any event, having made that argument, the court then revokes the detention order unconditionally, thereby conferring upon the defendant more relief than the court has tried to justify and indeed more than the defendant has requested. The defendant at least proposed that he be released into the custody of one of his two acquaintances. By omission, the court has rejected even that slight concession by the defendant to the concerns expressed not only by the Government but by the magistrate and the district judge as well.
The court explains its decision to “revoke the district court’s detention order entirely rather than remanding for further proceedings” as an effort to avoid interfering with proceedings now pending in California. Releasing the defendant to the custody of his sponsors, however, as he proposed, would not interfere with the California proceedings at all. Moreover, the court’s apparent complacency about the Government’s ability to retain custody of the defendant in California is unwarranted. First, the California hearing has already been stayed once, and we have no way of knowing when it will be completed; in the interim the defendant could, he argues, be released on the ground that the *446detainer has expired. Second, the inclination of the INS to pursue the defendant’s deportation is entirely irrelevant to our responsibility to assure that the defendant does not flee in contemplation of his possible deportation. Third, the district court expressly deferred to the judgment of the California magistrate; even if we were to affirm the district court, therefore, the Government would still be obliged to make its case in yet another forum or, if necessary, to invoke whatever detention arrangements are permitted under the deportation provisions of the Immigration and Naturalization Act.
Why my colleagues take it upon themselves to become advocates for the defendant — who is zealously represented by counsel of his own — is a mystery to me. One thing is clear, though: In view of the record, the district court was well within what the court acknowledges is “the large discretion normally accorded the trial court in this area.”