Court Opinion

ID: 9493815
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:20:21.678432+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:03.114789
License: Public Domain

McKEOWN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
The majority today holds that “a United States Attorney ... may delegate authority to sign [§ 5032] certifications to an Assistant U.S. Attorney ... serving as Acting U.S. Attorney.” Maj. op. at 685. I agree with this result. I write separately, however, to express my concern that the majority’s particular approach will allow juvenile charging decisions to be made without the hard look that Congress intended.
I start from the premise that the statutory requirement of a signed need certification is not a “technical or ministerial” mandate. United States v. Doe, 98 F.3d 459, 461 (9th Cir.1996). Rather, it is a reflection of congressional desire “to remove juveniles from the federal system.” United States v. Juvenile Male, 864 F.2d 641, 644 (9th Cir.1988) (citing S.Rep. No. 93-1011, (1974), reprinted in 1974 U.S.C.C.A.N. 5283).
To effect that goal, Congress created the need certification process, which stands as a hurdle the federal government must clear when it seeks to proceed against a juvenile. The government bears the burden of satisfying the requirements of § 5032, see Doe 1996, 98 F.3d at 460-61, which quite intentionally makes it harder to prosecute juveniles in the federal system. Under the statute and its implementing regulations, not just any prosecuting attorney who seeks to charge a juvenile in federal court can sign the need certification. Rather, 28 C.F.R. § 0.57 entrusts that responsibility to only certain high-level officials within the Department of Justice (“the Department” or “DOJ”): the Assistant Attorney General in charge *689of the Criminal Division, Deputy Assistant Attorney Generals in the Criminal Division, and the United States Attorneys (if such authority is further delegated to them by the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division).
In addition to § 0.57, which specifically regulates juvenile need certifications, the Department — and our inquiry here — is also governed by a general delegation regulation, which makes no specific reference to juveniles: “Each U.S. Attorney is authorized to designate any Assistant U.S. Attorney in his office to perform the duties of the U.S. Attorney during his absence from office ... and to sign all necessary documents and papers, including indictments, as Acting U.S. Attorney while performing such functions and duties.” 28 C.F.R. § 0.131.
Read together, these two regulations make clear that when the U.S. Attorney is “absen[t] from office,” a designated AUSA may sign a § 5032 need certification. On that much, the majority and I agree. We part ways, however, regarding the term “absent from office.”
As noted above, delegation under the need certification process is intended to be quite limited. What seems to have happened here, however, was not. On appeal, the government attempted to introduce a memorandum designated “General Policy 99-02,” and an accompanying affidavit by Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick O’Toole.1 In G.P. 99-02, Gregory Vega, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, designated certain Assistant U.S. Attorneys as “Actings” “during my absence from the office.” Note that, though this policy claims to follow § 0.131, it does not precisely adopt the statutory language. Rather than “absence from office,” G.P. 99-02 refers to “absence from the office” (emphasis added). Those three letters make a big difference. When the President visits Congress or travels to Wyoming, he is still “in office” (as President), even though he is “absent from the office” (in the West Wing).
Under G.P. 99-02, the designated personnel may act as U.S. Attorney whenever Mr. Vega is “absen[t] from the office”-even if, it seems, that absence consists of nothing more than a quick five-minute trip down the street to grab a cup of coffee. To allow an Assistant U.S. Attorney to act, for all intents and purposes, as U.S. Attorney during those five minutes seems far removed from the intent behind §§ 0.57 or 0.131, or, for that matter, 18 U.S.C. § 5032.
In Section IV of its opinion, the majority suggests that if the affidavit submitted along with the government’s brief is indeed accurate, Mr. O’Toole was properly authorized to sign the need certification. In his affidavit, Mr. O’Toole states, “At the time the certification was presented for signature, Mr. Vega was not in the United States Attorney’s Office in San Diego and was out of San Diego County on business.” I cannot agree that Mr. Vega’s business trip (to a destination unknown) rendered him “absenft] from office” for purposes of § 0.131. He may have been “out of the office,” but he was not “absenft] from office.”
What type of absence is sufficient? Out for coffee, gone to lunch, in court, out of town on business, on vacation at home, on leave, out of the country? Under the majority’s broad language, the juvenile charging decision could be delegated to virtually any attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s office, for virtually any reason. If, for example, all of the senior attorneys were out of the office attending a training session, then the most junior attorney would have the authority to make the need certification *690decision. Surely this is inconsistent with the purpose of § 5032.
I conclude that § 0.131, DOJ’s general delegation regulation, is not intended to cover those situations where the U.S. Attorney has merely gone missing from the office for a short time. Rather, it permits an “Acting” to take over the duties of the U.S. Attorney only when the U.S. Attorney truly cannot perform the duties of the office. This conclusion is bolstered by the very title of the regulation, which suggests the limited circumstances under which § 0.131 is appropriately invoked: “Additional Assignments of Functions and Designations of Officials to Perform the Duties of Certain Offices in Case of Vacancy, or Absence Therein or in Case of Inability or Disqualification to Act.” What is more, the general terms of § 0.131 cannot trump the specific regulation that governs need certification, § 0.57. Indeed, interpreting the need certification regulation in light of its limiting purpose would not preclude a broader reading of the general delegation regulation for matters in the ordinary course of business. But, of course, juvenile certification is extraordinary, not ordinary.
I agree that “[l]ife doesn’t stop just because the United States Attorney is absent from office.” United States v. Wallace, 213 F.3d 1216, 1218 (9th Cir.2000). But requiring a signature for need certification hardly makes life stop. A signature requirement does not grind the wheels of justice to a halt. On the contrary, the office of the U.S. Attorney has several obvious solutions: (1) in an age of instantaneous communications, where no one is truly “away from the office,” take advantage of a low technology option such as the fax machine, or a high technology option such as the digital signature; (2) wait until the U.S. Attorney returns to the office; or (3) just as 28 C.F.R. § 0.57 specifies, bring the matter to the attention of the designated officials in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. The United States Attorney’s temporary absence from i/m office should not absolve the government of its weighty statutory responsibility to have a senior official think long and hard before charging a juvenile in federal court.

. I agree with the majority that, because this affidavit was not presented to the district court, we should not consider it on appeal. I discuss it here only because the proposed opinion does suggest that, if everything stated in the affidavit were in fact true, Mr. O’Toole would qualify as the Acting U.S. Attorney. I believe this judgment is best left to the district court after considering all of the facts.