Court Opinion

ID: 9464987
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:32:49.251629+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:55.397842
License: Public Domain

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Although I agree that these convictions should be affirmed for the reasons stated in Judge Mulligan’s thorough opinion, I cannot approve of the use made of the cooperation agreement in the summation of the Assistant United States Attorney. This included such remarks as the following:
That’s what motivates Mr. Rivas in this trial to tell you the truth, not respect for the oath of office or for the oath that he took.
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Now, he’s motivated to tell the truth precisely to help himself. If he lies there is no agreement, there is no reduction of sentence. He’s prosecuted, he’s prosecuted for the crimes that he’s admitted, for that swim, that pickup in October of 1975 with Cambindo.
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He finally has a motive to tell the truth because he has no choice. The government has its foot on his throat. He is in jail for 20 years and he will be 60 years old before he gets out of jail unless he is doing something about it.
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Do you think Judge Werker, the judge who sentenced him for 20 years while he was still saying, “Well, I was a delivery boy,” do you think Judge Werker is going to look kindly on a man who says, “I wasn’t a delivery boy. I bought a kilo, sometimes two every six or eight weeks and I sold it as fast as I could get my hands on it.”
If he lies, if the government doesn’t v/rite a memorandum for him do you think Judge Werker is going to look kindly on his motion to reduce sentence?
*1150Such remarks are prosecutorial overkill. They inevitably give jurors the impression that the prosecutor is carefully monitoring the testimony of the cooperating witness to make sure that the latter is not stretching the facts — something the prosecutor usually is quite unable to do; that any significant exaggeration by the witness of what the prosecutor believes to be the truth will cause the latter to refrain from writing the promised memorandum recommending leniency; and, perhaps worst of all, that an acquittal may involve serious consequences to the witness by releasing the Government from its promise or even by causing an indictment for perjury. None of our cases supports a summation with respect to a cooperation agreement like that made here. United States v. Ricco, 549 F.2d 264, 274 (2 Cir.), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 905, 97 S.Ct. 1697, 52 L.Ed.2d 389 (1977), comes the closest to doing so, but examination of the record reveals that the prosecutor’s use of the cooperation agreement was nowhere near so extensive and offensive as here. (Eicco transcript, 1864-65). If proper objection had been made to the summation, the judge should have sustained it; if matters had gone too far to make a striking of the remarks an effective cure, the judge should have instructed that the promise in the cooperation agreement adds little to the truth-telling obligation imposed by the oath; that the prosecutor often has no way of knowing whether the witness is telling the truth or not; that the books are not filled with perjury indictments of Government witnesses who have gone beyond the facts; and that an acquittal would not mean that as a matter of course the Government would seek such an indictment or even fail to make its promised recommendation of leniency. If prosecutors know that such instructions will be given, they will hardly be tempted to the excesses committed here.