Court Opinion

ID: 9467477
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:49:58.395971+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:22.172263
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
I concur in the result. The majority opinion views the issue as whether the June 22, 1979, arrest by the joint city, state, and federal New York Drug Enforcement Task Force was properly characterized as “state” or “federal.” Determining that it was a “state” arrest, the majority holds that the Southern District Plan for Achieving Prompt Disposition of Criminal Cases does not apply. I do not agree with the majority that the fact that the “arrest, examination and release of Leonard were all supervised by a state prosecutor,” “under these circumstances convincingly demonstrates that his arrest was for a state and not a federal offense,” slip op. 823. With respect to the period preceding the June arrest, I am more persuaded by Judge Brieant’s characterization of events. In his memorandum and order below, he explained as follows:
[T]he Government attempts ... to distinguish the similar case of United States v. LaCruz, 441 F.Supp. 1261 (S.D.N.Y.1977) by noting that this Task Force arrest was being “supervised” by an Assistant District Attorney of New York County, assigned to the Task Force, while noting that the Task Force arrest in LaCruz led to an immediate arraignment before a federal magistrate, and presumably would be counted as a “federal” arrest. This subtle distinction has little factual basis and carries no legal significance. There is a substantial federal presence in all Task Force operations. In Leonard’s case, the “pen register” was obtained from a United States Magistrate, and thereafter the wiretap warrant, the next step in the investigation, was obtained from a state judge. Neither event marked this case as “state” or “federal.” Long before the concept of joint task forces, or cooperative law enforcement procedures, it was proper, and indeed commonplace, in some parts of the country, for federal agents to obtain warrants from state judicial officers, and to bring arrested persons charged with federal crimes before state judicial officers for arraignment and bail to answer to the federal grand jury.
United States v. Leonard, No. S79 Cr. 826, at 7-8 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 12, 1980). With respect to the conduct of the June seizure, as Judge Brieant also explains, “[i]n the normal course in processing its drug arrests, the Task Force determines initially which drug dealers it apprehends shall be tendered to federal law enforcement officials for prosecution, which shall be processed on the state level, and which shall be recruited as cooperating individuals,” id. at 3. The identity of the supervising officer is presumably irrelevant to this determination.
Although I agree with the court below that the arrest cannot properly be called a “state” arrest, I do not believe that it was a federal arrest either, for the purposes of the Southern District Plan. The Plan’s time limits go into effect when “an individual is *107arrested . .. and the complaint charges an offense to be prosecuted in this district” or when a person “(i) is held in custody solely for the purpose of responding to a Federal charge; (ii) is delivered to the custody of a Federal official in connection with a Federal charge; or (iii) appears before a judicial officer in connection with a Federal charge.” See Section 3 of the Plan, in footnote 1 of the majority opinion. In this case, no complaint was issued and no federal (as well as no state) offense was charged. Thus as I see it, for the purposes of the Plan, no federal criminal proceeding was pending, and the time limits set forth in Section 3(a) therefore were not applicable to the June seizure, United States v. Hillegas, 578 F.2d 453, 456-57 (2d Cir. 1978).
I cannot accept Judge Brieant’s holding that the better rule is to “regard the arrest which ultimately eventuates in a federal prosecution, as a federal arrest ab initio,” United States v. Leonard, No. 579 Cr. 826, at 8. Even if this were the best rule, it would be inapplicable here because it was not, I believe, the June arrest but the October one which “eventuated” in a federal prosecution. More fundamentally, Judge Brieant’s rule as applied here to a joint state and federal task force has an undesirable retroactive quality, which is illustrated by the fact that under the case law, had a state prosecution followed the June “chargeless” arrest and had the state case been subsequently dismissed, federal prosecutors would then have been free to seek an indictment, United States v. Lai Ming Tanu, 589 F.2d 82, 88-89 (2d Cir. 1978). Thus, the fortuity of an intervening state prosecution would have made the arrest purely a state arrest.
In all other respects I agree with Judge Mulligan’s opinion.