Court Opinion

ID: 9483714
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:29:51.651147+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:48.179666
License: Public Domain

RICHARD S. ARNOLD, Chief Judge,
concurring.
I agree that the judgment should be reversed, and the cause remanded to the District Court for further proceedings, but I reach this result by a route somewhat different from the Court’s.
I see no need to engage in a balancing analysis under Roviaro v. United States, 353 U.S. 53, 62, 77 S.Ct. 623, 628, 1 L.Ed.2d 639 (1957). This judgment should be reversed whatever the outcome of a Roviaro balancing. The procedure engaged in by the Court below is a clear violation of the Confrontation Clause. Agent Robley’s testimony about what some unknown person told him Feldewerth had said is hearsay, not within any recognized exception, and not accompanied by any specialized guarantees of trustworthiness. It is hornbook law that such evidence may not be used *325against a defendant in a criminal prosecution. In my view, this is all that needs to be said.
On remand, the government can call the unidentified informant as a witness and subject him or her to cross-examination, if it wishes. Failing that, the District Court should make a new finding, leaving out of account Agent Robley’s testimony concerning the informant’s accusations. As the Court notes, ante at 324, “it is doubtful” that without these accusations “the government would have sustained its burden of proving Feldewerth breached the agreement.”
I would like also to add a word of clarification about a statement in the Court’s opinion. The opinion states that “it is the government that ... decides whether the defendant has fully complied with the agreement and whether charges should be brought against the defendant.” Ante at 324. The word “decides” in this sentence, I take it, refers only to the initial decision whether to bring charges. In the end, if the defendant claims, as he does here, that he has complied with the agreement, it is for the Court to decide the question of compliance, just as it decides any other question of fact, with the burden of proof on the United States.