Court Opinion

ID: 9642068
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:47:41.794781+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:26:03.665323
License: Public Domain

NEBEKER, Associate Judge:
I concur in the result but not in the dicta and personal views of my colleagues respecting the footnoted “hope” based on “a matter of policy”, that the government should continue the “traditional method” of presenting “live witnesses” to the grand *99jury, supra note 11, and that the government initially must present and, presumably, the grand jury must indict on all charges.
I find it unnecessary and of doubtful value to suggest, contrary to established precedent, that witnesses must retestify in the event of a superseding indictment. A major interest my colleagues ignore is that of witnesses to or victims of crime who make all too many trips to the courthouse anyway. I see no value in suggesting that that burden on them be increased by reappearance before the grand jury. Given the informal basis upon which an indictment can be based,* there is no reason in “policy” to require witnesses with firsthand knowledge to reappear before a grand jury in order to have a valid superseding indictment.
The policy of victim and witness accommodation as well as that of efficiency also augur against a requirement that all known charges be included in the first charging document. Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 98 S.Ct. 663, 54 L.Ed.2d 604 (1978), implicitly recognized the danger and impracticality of initially bringing all available charges when it speaks of “the very premises that underlie the concept of plea bargaining itself” and the evil of such practice since it “could only invite unhealthy subterfuge that would drive the practice of plea bargaining back into the shadows from which it has so recently emerged.” Id. at 365, 98 S.Ct. at 669. Since this case “would be no different if the grand jury had indicted [appellant for all other charges] from the outset, and the prosecutor had offered to drop [some charges] as part of the plea bargain”, id. at 361, 98 S.Ct. at 666, there is no useful purpose in the suggestion of the majority and no validity to the assertion that the “better practice” is to include all known charges in the first charging document.

 See, e. g., United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 344-45, 94 S.Ct. 613, 618, 38 L.Ed.2d 561 (1974) (“the validity of an indictment is not affected by the character of the evidence considered”); United States v. Dionisio, 410 U.S. 1, 15, 93 S.Ct. 764, 772, 35 L.Ed.2d 67 (1973) (grand jurors “may act on tips, rumors, evidence offered by the prosecutor, or their own personal knowledge”). See also United States v. Washington, D.C.App., 328 A.2d 98 (1974), reversed in part on other grounds, United States v. Washington, 431 U.S. 181, 97 S.Ct. 1814, 52 L.Ed.2d 238 (1977).