Court Opinion

ID: 9460380
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:48:25.592803+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:35.457238
License: Public Domain

*1080LUMBARD, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
I dissent.
The majority agrees that it was improper for Judge Newman to order the release of secret grand jury testimony here simply on the showing of a “slight need” for such testimony by the plaintiffs. While the “particularized need” test of Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. v. United States, 360 U.S. 395, 400, 79 S.Ct. 1237, 3 L.Ed.2d 1323 (1959) and United States v. Procter & Gamble Co., 356 U.S. 677, 682-683, 78 S.Ct. 983, 2 L.Ed.2d 1077 (1958), has been eroded to some extent, no previous decision of this court has endorsed a standard which would permit the breach of grand jury secrecy merely for general discovery purposes. Such a lenient standard would seriously jeopardize the effective functioning of grand juries. Ready access to grand jury minutes would likely have the effect in the future of substantially inhibiting the deliberations of the grand jury, and, perhaps more significant, the willingness of witnesses to appear and testify freely. With these consequences in- mind, this court has required a showing of exigent circumstances before overriding the strong policy in favor of grand jury confidentiality. See, e. g., United States v. Youngblood, 379 F.2d 365, 367 (2d Cir. 1967), Atlantic City Electrical Co. v. A. B. Chance Co., 313 F.2d 431, 434 (2d Cir. 1963).
The plaintiffs have failed to point to such exigent circumstances here in support of disclosure. They seek to use secret grand jury testimony to obtain “leads” to competent evidence that could then be used in this civil suit against the defendants. No showing, however, has been made that the usual channels of discovery have proved fruitless or have even been diligently pursued. As the majority notes, plaintiffs have yet to exhaust “the deposing of other live and available witnesses who might provide the ‘leads' plaintiffs seek to gain from disclosure of the grand jury testimony of the deceased officials.” Moreover, any difficulties plaintiffs may be encountering in obtaining evidence are largely traceable to their own lackadaisical prosecution of this civil suit. Plaintiffs procrastinated four years after the termination of the criminal action before initiating this civil proceeding. Even then, they waited another five years and seven months before requesting the release of grand jury minutes. During this period, many of the witnesses, whose grand jury testimony plaintiffs now seek to have released, were available for deposing.
Despite the absence of any justification for overriding the principle of grand jury secrecy under the circumstances of this case, the majority nevertheless argues that it is powerless to review at the present time the orders of Judges Newman and Wyatt. They assert that these orders are interlocutory in nature and therefore nonappealable. 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291, 1292. Yet, only last term, in In re Biaggi, 478 F.2d 489 (2d Cir. 1973), this court, confronted with a similar appeal from an order directing release of grand jury minutes, concluded that the order was “obviously appeala-ble,” id. at 491, and went on to decide the question of the release of grand jury testimony on the merits.
The majority attempts to distinguish Biaggi by noting that in that case, “unless review were granted there could never have been any review of [the disclosure] issue.” In contrast, it is blithely suggested that the orders here “may still be reviewed upon an appeal entered in the Connecticut district.” While this may be true in a technical sense, the release of the grand jury minutes here will, in practical terms, foreclose any later, meaningful appeal. A subsequent determination by this court that grand jury secrecy should have been preserved will not undo the damage to the principle of secrecy which will have been done by the dissemination of the testimony. *1081Additionally, should this court conclude that disclosure was unwarranted, as would almost certainly be the case, it would face the hopeless task of determining the extent to which the leads from the grand jury testimony facilitated plaintiffs’ investigation and the production of evidence, and the degree to which this tainted evidence was responsible for the judgment in the district court on the merits of this antitrust suit. It is contrary to all the practical considerations, which must always play an important part in the judicial process, to suggest seriously that any court would ever reverse a judgment, years later and after lengthy proceedings, because grand jury minutes had been made available for discovery purpose.
These considerations should guide us in determining whether the orders here under review are presently appealable. The Supreme Court has made clear, Gillespie v. United States Steel, 379 U.S. 148, 152, 85 S.Ct. 308, 311, 13 L.Ed.2d 199 (1964), that “a decision ‘final’ within the meaning of § 1291 does not necessarily mean the last order possible to be made in a case” and that “the requirement of finality is to be given a ‘practical rather than a' technical construction.’ ” See also Cohen v. Beneficial Ind. Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 545, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949). In practical terms, nothing could be more final than the order requiring the release of the grand jury minutes here. Once disclosure takes place, there will be no way to restore the secrecy of the testimony, should it later be decided that there was no basis for its release. Preserving the secrecy of grand jury minutes, in accordance with Rule 6, Fed.R.Cr.P., is an important concern of the courts, and to the end that the administration of criminal justice is effectively and properly conducted, the courts of appeals should not hesitate to exercise their supervisory powers when a situation jeopardizing secrecy of grand jury minutes is brought to their attention.
Atlantic City Elec. Co. v. A. B. Chance Co., 313 F.2d 431 (2d Cir. 1963), on which the majority so heavily relies, involved a quite different situation than that presented here. In A. B. Chance Co., the grand jury testimony was to be released pursuant to a National Deposition Program designed to expedite, but not circumvent, discovery in the many electrical antitrust cases then pending. Id. at 433. Moreover, the trial judge had concluded “that many facts were disclosed in the grand jury testimony ‘of vital importance to essential issues in the . . . litigation which were not recalled or were denied by deponent in his deposition testimony,’ and that a ‘compelling need for disclosure . has been shown and that the ends of justice clearly require it.’ ” Id. at 434. The situation here is quite different as it is conceded that the minutes cannot be used as evidence in any way.
Moreover, the court in A. B. Chance was careful to distinguish the case before it from one involving “a manifest abuse of discretion.” In the latter situation, the court concluded, appellate review would be permissible. Since we all agree that there is no authority whatever supporting the trial court’s decision to release grand jury testimony, this case suggests the possibility of precisely the sort of manifest abuse of discretion permitting immediate review. Accordingly, I would allow the appeal from the orders of Judges Newman and Wyatt, reverse the orders to the extent that they permit any disclosure, and direct the return of the minutes to the Southern District of New York.