Court Opinion

ID: 9489336
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:12:50.45513+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:27.621168
License: Public Domain

PHILLIPS, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
I concur in the judgment and in all of the majority opinion except Part II which, with all respect, I think is both unnecessary to our decision, and substantively wrong.
Appellant sought in the district court an in camera review, pursuant to United States v. Figurski, 545 F.2d 389 (4th Cir.1976), of the Presentence Reports (PSR’s) of several previously convicted potential government witnesses against him. The district court faithfully conducted the review, found no material warranting disclosure under applicable law, and so refused any disclosure of PSR contents to appellant. Appellant’s appeal properly sought review of that decision. We have conducted that review of the properly sealed PSR’s and found no error. That is sufficient to decide the appeal, so I concur in the court’s judgment affirming the district court’s ruling.
The majority goes beyond that, however and in Part II of its opinion lays down a new rule (for prospective application only?) concerning the showing that defendants must make in the district courts to obtain in camera review of government-witness PSR’s. That obviously is not necessary to our decision here where the district court conducted in camera review on the showing made in conformity with the procedure provided in Figurski.
More critically, the new rule is at odds with Figurski’s in a way that, if followed, effectively and improperly overrules that circuit precedent in a critical respect. The majority assumes power to do this on the basis (1) that Figurski left open the exact showing required, and (2) (somewhat inconsistently) that, in any event, intervening Supreme Court authority, Pennsylvania v. Ritchie, 480 U.S. 39, 107 S.Ct. 989, 94 L.Ed.2d 40 (1987), has suggested that the majority’s newly-adopted rule is the proper constitutionally-based one for triggering in camera review of the materials here at issue, and (3) that policy concerns support the new rule. I respectfully disagree with each of these.
Figurski does not leave open the showing required. It simply requires very little: no more than a request based upon an assertion that there are PSR’s in existence with re-*194speet to particular government witnesses. But it states the requirement fully and clearly: “[W]hen requested to exhibit [a PSR], the district court should examine it in camera and disclose only those portions, if less than all, which [are exculpatory or, if only impeaching, reveal a reasonable likelihood of affecting the trier of the fact].” Figurski, 545 F.2d at 391-92.
Nor does Ritchie open the door for a reexamination of Figurski’s rule. Ritchie dealt only with the showing required to trigger in camera review of a very specific and highly sensitive type of material — government agency records concerning the alleged victim of sexual abuse crimes. It did not purport to lay down a generally applicable constitutional rule respecting all types of defense materials subject to in camera review for possible disclosure. There are obvious reasons for requiring a more stringent showing in that context than in this. Furthermore, it is questionable whether Ritchie’s requirement is, as a practical matter, any more stringent than is Figurski’s. See Ritchie, 480 U.S. at 44, 58 n. 15, 107 S.Ct. at 994, 1002 n. 15. Ritchie cannot be read as implicitly overruling our Figurski precedent — certainly not by a panel of this court.
Finally, the policy concern drawn on by the majority simply does not fit. The concern expressed is the protection of confidentiality of PSR’s with emphasis on the undoubtedly good reasons why they must be protected from routine disclosure. But their confidentiality is already fully protected in the only needed and relevant way — from disclosure of their contents to the defendant or the general public — precisely by Figurski’s procedure for in camera review. The majority’s new rule would only extend that already adequate protection to an uncertain amount of PSR material that would not even be disclosed to judicial eyes. That has never been, so far as I know, a proper concern in judicial or legislative protections of confidentiality. Except where confidentiality is absolute (if there be such) someone after all has to have access to determine its limits. Confidentiality therefore is not itself a justification for imposing the new rule.
Quite another policy concern than the expressed one of confidentiality may be implicit in the majority’s position. There are intimations of concern with the undue burden imposed on the courts — particularly the district courts — by Figurski’s modest requirement for triggering in camera review. That may be a legitimate concern — the district court was at pains to disavow any precedential effect for its decision to review in camera here — but Figurski has been on the books and apparently in unquestioned operation now for twenty years. If its procedure— grounded in constitutional concerns — is nevertheless on balance too light on defendants and too heavy on the courts, the answer for us can only properly lie in an en banc reexamination of its rule, not by way of panel dictum in a case where its rule was applied without objection.