Court Opinion

ID: 9460815
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:00:56.90001+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:47.699813
License: Public Domain

LEWIS, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
The compulsion of Roviaro is very clearly set out: The government’s privilege to withhold disclosure of ah informer’s identity must give way when such disclosure is essential to a fair trial. So, too, the discretionary pretrial ruling of the trial court must probe the proper “balancing of the public interest in protecting the flow of information against the individual’s right to prepare his defense.” The majority opinion recognizes this test but with repeated emphasis upon the fact that Roviaro was concerned with a nontestifying informer and that we are presently concerned with an informer-witness completely distinguishes Roviaro from the case at bar and states, in effect, that the trial judge properly exercised his discretion. I submit that the government gave the trial judge no opportunity to exercise a considered judgment through its adamant refusal to disclose, with no explanation, the identity of the informer. The Assistant United States Attorney at the pretrial hearing stated:
With regard to the informant, I point out that we would claim the privilege of nondisclosure as to the informant. However, I believe that— Well, I am not going to say this, because I got in trouble last time. So, I will just say that we will say that we will claim privilege of nondisclosure as to the informant.
At the time this statement was made the prosecution knew and the trial court and defense did not know each of the enumerated facts:
1. That the cover, if any, and the identity of the informer were revealed by the government in a narcotics trial held some two months earlier wherein the informer testified.a
2. That the informer was the government’s only witness to the charged distribution of heroin.
3. That the informer had visited with the defendant in his home at least forty or fifty times other than the dates charged in the indictment.
4. That the informer was a user and had on numerous occasions shot heroin with the defendant.b
Other pertinent facts are set out in the main opinion but the net result was that the government had seven months to prepare the prosecution and the defense was limited to an unprepared and exploratory cross-examination of the informer. Roviaro is not limited to disclosure of the identity of a potential favorable witness to the defense. Fairness, under the circumstances here considered, would seem to require disclosure of an unfavorable informant-witness upon whose credibility the case is solely dependent as to result.
I would so hold.

. The court expressed deep concern about the safety of informers stating, “For instance, in the Southern District of California I heard a judge say that there is hardly any witnesses alive after their identity is divulged.”

. Nos. 2, 3 and 4 were potentially relevant to a claim of defendant to possible entrapment.