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USCA1 Opinion
_________________________
No. 96-1976
DANIEL J. CURTIS,
Petitioner, Appellant,
v.
RONALD T. DUVAL, ET AL.,
Respondents, Appellees.
_________________________
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Douglas P. Woodlock, U.S. District Judge]
_________________________
Before
Selya, Circuit Judge,
Campbell, Senior Circuit Judge,
and Lagueux,* District Judge.
_________________________
Wendy Sibbison for appellant.
Gregory I. Massing, Assistant Attorney General, Commonwealth
of Massachusetts, with whom Scott Harshbarger, Attorney General,
was on brief, for appellees.
_________________________
August 13, 1997
_________________________
_____________
*Of the District of Rhode Island, sitting by designation.
SELYA, Circuit Judge. Petitioner-appellant Daniel J.
Curtis, a state prisoner serving a life sentence for second-degree
murder, challenges the constitutionality of his conviction. He
asseverates that three occurrences _ the absence of counsel when
the trial judge delivered a supplementary jury instruction, the
fact that the supplementary instruction impermissibly shifted the
burden of proof, and the trial court's refusal to immunize a
potential defense witness _ abridged his constitutional rights.
The district court declined to issue a writ of habeas corpus. We
affirm.
I. PROCEDURAL HISTORY
A Suffolk County (Massachusetts) jury convicted the
petitioner of second-degree murder on December 30, 1980, and the
trial judge sentenced him to life imprisonment. The Massachusetts
Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) turned down the petitioner's initial
appeal, in which he argued that the trial court had transgressed
his rights to due process and compulsory process under the Sixth
and Fourteenth Amendments when it refused to immunize a prospective
defense witness. See Commonwealth v. Curtis, 448 N.E.2d 345 (Mass.
1983) (Curtis I). Six years later, the petitioner filed a motion
for new trial and raised for the first time two additional issues,
both of which concerned the trial court's rendition of a
supplementary jury instruction. The state superior court denied
the motion and the SJC affirmed. See Commonwealth v. Curtis, 632
N.E.2d 821 (Mass. 1994) (Curtis II).
On April 12, 1995, the petitioner docketed an application
2
for habeas relief in the United States District Court for the
District of Massachusetts, naming as respondents various state
officials (who, for ease in reference, we refer to as "the
Commonwealth"). In due course, the district court wrote a
thoughtful opinion in which it refused to issue the writ. See
Curtis v. Duval, Civ. No. 95-10758-DPW (D. Mass. July 11, 1996)
(unpublished). This appeal followed.
II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND
We sketch the evidence relevant to this appeal, referring
readers who hunger for greater detail to the SJC's fuller accounts.
See Curtis II, 632 N.E.2d at 824-26; Curtis I, 448 N.E.2d at 346-
48. We propose to describe the pertinent procedural aspects of the
petitioner's trial when we address his specific claims.
On the evening of July 14, 1980, Michael Robinson was
severely beaten in a confrontation between a group of East Boston
youths and a number of sailors. He died eight days later from head
injuries.
The origin of the fracas is obscure. Its genesis
apparently lies in an encounter between Lenny Curtis, the
petitioner's brother, and four black sailors who were lounging
outside the perimeter fence of an East Boston shipyard. Witnesses
gave conflicting testimony about what transpired. Lenny Curtis
testified that one of the sailors struck him when he rebuffed a
request for a cigarette. A sailor testified that Lenny Curtis
strolled by them unmolested but gave them "hard looks."
In any event, when Lenny Curtis spotted his friend, Eddie
3
Colon, riding a bicycle, he told Colon to scat and "get my two
brothers." Word of the brewing storm spread. Soon the four black
sailors were joined by several white sailors, including Robinson,
while between twelve and twenty East Boston youths assembled in
apparent opposition. Some of the youths reportedly hurled racial
epithets.
When the petitioner arrived at the scene by car, someone
told him that the sailors had assaulted his brother. A full-scale
brawl erupted soon thereafter. Witnesses disagreed over the
petitioner's role. According to some accounts, the sailors fled
from the youths. On this version, Robinson either tripped or was
pushed to the ground. Seaman Webb testified that he saw the
petitioner hit a supine Robinson over the head with a baseball bat
three times. Other witnesses testified that there were multiple
assailants.
Lenny Curtis told a very different story. He said that
when his brother approached Robinson, Robinson swung a bottle at
him. The petitioner ducked, punched Robinson, and then backed away
as Robinson fell to the ground. Lenny Curtis stated that he saw
three or four other persons attack Robinson with bats and sticks as
Robinson lay prostrate (whereupon the Curtis brothers skedaddled).
III. STANDARD OF REVIEW
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act
(AEDPA), 28 U.S.C.A. S 2254(d) (Supp. 1997), became law on April
24, 1996 _ after the petitioner filed his habeas petition but
before the district court acted upon it. Although the AEDPA alters
4
the standard of review governing the issuance of writs of habeas
corpus, the Supreme Court has determined that the AEDPA does not
apply to habeas petitions which were pending when the AEDPA became
law. See Lindh v. Murphy, No. 96-6298, 1997 WL 338568, at *8 (U.S.
June 23, 1997). The petitioner is therefore entitled to de novo
review of his claim that the state court abridged his
constitutional rights. See Martin v. Bissonette, ___ F.3d ___, ___
(1st Cir. 1997) [No. 96-1856, slip op. at 7-8]; see also Scarpa v.
Dubois, 38 F.3d 1, 9 (1st Cir. 1994) (explaining that federal
courts, although respecting state courts' findings of historical
fact, traditionally afford de novo review in regard to ultimate
questions presented by state prisoners' habeas petitions), cert.
denied, 513 U.S. 1129 (1995).
IV. THE MERITS
We turn now to the three claims that are before us. We
discuss them seriatim.
A. Deprivation of Counsel.
The basic facts pertinent to the petitioner's argument
that he was deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to the effective
assistance of counsel are as follows. The petitioner's trial wound
down on December 29, 1980. On that date, final arguments were made
and the trial court charged the jury. Deliberations began the next
morning. At 2:00 p.m. on December 30, the trial judge conducted a
chambers conference. He stated at the outset that he had tried
unsuccessfully to locate the petitioner's attorney for at least
twenty minutes.
5
At 3:14 p.m., notwithstanding that the missing lawyer
still had not surfaced, the judge ordered the jury returned to the
courtroom and, acting sua sponte, gave a supplementary instruction
anent the lesser included offense of manslaughter. The jury found
the petitioner guilty of second-degree murder at 3:55 p.m.
The petitioner's paramount claim is that the judge's
actions deprived him of counsel at a critical stage of the
proceedings. He cites United States v. Cronic, 466 U.S. 648, 659
(1984), as authority for the concept that, when such a deprivation
occurs, it constitutes a structural error which makes the trial
presumptively unfair and requires automatic reversal on habeas
review. On this basis, he maintains that the state court's action
unleashed a presumption of prejudice per se, which entitles him to
habeas relief.
Cronic and its progeny do indeed stand for the
proposition that the actual or constructive denial of counsel at a
critical stage of a criminal trial constitutes prejudice per se and
thus invalidates a defendant's conviction. See Perry v. Leeke, 488
The supplementary instruction stated in pertinent part:
Now in case you are wondering about the
manslaughter, remember that I told you that
the only set of facts, if you believe them,
that would warrant a manslaughter verdict
would be the instance that I recalled to your
mind if one of the witnesses _ I think it was
Curtis' brother testified that the sailor was
the aggressor, that is, that he swung a bottle
at Mr. Curtis first, and that, then, if Curtis
used what you feel was unreasonable force in
defending himself that it would warrant a
verdict of manslaughter against Curtis.
6
U.S. 272, 278-79 (1989); Penson v. Ohio, 488 U.S. 75, 88 (1988).
It is apodictic that the right to counsel is not honored for its
own sake, but rather because it ensures the accused a fair trial.
The Cronic Court reaffirmed this aphorism, but recognized that,
because of the presumption that counsel's assistance is essential,
the denial of counsel at a critical stage renders an otherwise
acceptable trial unfair. See Cronic, 466 U.S. at 659.
The petitioner is also correct when he asserts that
recalling the jury for supplementary instructions after
deliberations are underway is a critical stage of a criminal trial.
See Rogers v. United States , 422 U.S. 35, 38-39 (1975); Siverson v.
O'Leary, 764 F.2d 1208, 1214 (7th Cir. 1985). It is evident to us
that giving a sua sponte jury instruction without consulting, and
in the absence of, the defendant's attorney, as occurred here,
denies the defendant the assistance of counsel at that critical
stage. See United States v. Parent, 954 F.2d 23, 25-26 (1st Cir.
1992). And although this deprivation was short-lived, it occurred
during a vital point in the trial and was, within its terms, total.
Therefore, were we to apply Cronic, Penson, and Parent, we would
hold that the error required reversal.
In a habeas proceeding, however, special protocols
prevail. Under one such protocol, "new constitutional rules of
criminal procedure will not be applicable to those cases which have
become final before the new rules are announced." Teague v. Lane,
489 U.S. 288, 310 (1989) (plurality).
Although this protocol would seem to have a bearing on
7
the disposition of Curtis' habeas petition, there is a procedural
glitch. The Commonwealth has not explicitly relied on Teague, and
the district court decided the issue on other grounds. Moreover,
the Teague paradigm is not jurisdictional in the sense that a court
is obliged to raise the point on its own initiative. See Collins
v. Youngblood, 497 U.S. 37, 41 (1990). Thus, by failing either to
cite Teague or to rely on its rationale in connection with the
petitioner's Sixth Amendment claim, the Commonwealth forfeited the
right to insist that we recognize this potential line of defense.
See id.
Withal, an appellate court possesses the authority to
raise the Teague issue on its own initiative if it believes that
doing so will further the ends of justice. See Caspari v. Bohlen,
510 U.S. 383, 389 (1994). We recognize that this power must be
used judiciously, and that many factors enter into the decisional
calculus. Here, the interests of comity and orderly procedure loom
large. Thus, we choose to invoke Teague.
To apply the paradigm of nonretroactivity required by
Teague, we must determine when the petitioner's conviction became
final and "whether a state court considering [the petitioner's]
claim at the time his conviction became final would have felt
compelled by existing precedent to conclude that the rule [he]
seeks was required by the Constitution." Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S.
484, 488 (1990). If the answer to this inquiry is in the negative,
the petitioner may benefit from the new rule only if it falls
within one of two isthmian exceptions. The first exception is
8
operative only "if the rule places a class of private conduct
beyond the power of the State to proscribe," and the second only if
the rule is a "`watershed rule[] of criminal procedure' implicating
the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding."
Lambrix v. Singletary, 117 S. Ct. 1517, 1531 (1997) (citations
omitted).
The petitioner's conviction became final in 1983.
Accordingly, the threshold question is whether a state court, at
that time, would have felt compelled to adopt the Cronic principle
that a deprivation of counsel during a critical stage amounts to
prejudice per se and thus mandates automatic reversal. We think
not.
We acknowledge that by 1983 it long had been established
that the Sixth Amendment right to assistance of counsel attaches at
all critical stages of the prosecution. See, e.g., Simmons v.
United States , 390 U.S. 377, 382-83 (1968). Although this general
precept was quite clear, it was by no means settled in 1983 what
remedy a court should employ to redeem a violation of the right to
counsel. On the one hand, the Court had stated that "there are
some constitutional rights so basic to a fair trial that their
infraction can never be treated as harmless error," Chapman v.
California, 386 U.S. 18, 23 (1967), and had cited a deprivation-of-
counsel case, Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), as
authority for that statement. On the other hand, hot on the heels
of Chapman, the Court remanded a case for harmless error analysis
after finding that the petitioner had been denied counsel at a
9
critical stage of the prosecution. See Gilbert v. California, 388
U.S. 263, 272 (1967) (involving the denial of the right to counsel
at a post-indictment pretrial lineup).
We harmonize this dissonance by concluding that the
Chapman Court was referring to a wholesale denial of counsel,
whereas the Gilbert Court was referring to a short-term, localized
denial of counsel. This interpretation receives a measure of
confirmation from subsequent opinions in which the Court conducted,
or ordered lower courts to conduct, harmless error analysis in
response to an isolated deprivation of counsel at a critical stage
of a criminal trial, yet refused to countenance such analysis when
the right was denied throughout the proceedings in their entirety.
Compare Moore v. Illinois, 434 U.S. 220, 232 (1977) (remanding for
harmless error analysis after denial of assistance of counsel at a
preliminary hearing) with Holloway v. Arkansas, 435 U.S. 475, 490-
91 (1978) (rejecting harmless error analysis in a case involving
joint representation of conflicting interests).
Any residual doubt about whether a state court judge
would have felt propelled to presage Cronic's prejudice per se
principle is purged by United States v. Morrison, 449 U.S. 361
(1981). There the Court, after remarking "society's interest in
the administration of criminal justice," stated that "[c]ases
involving Sixth Amendment deprivations are subject to the general
rule that remedies should be tailored to the injury suffered from
the constitutional violation and should not unnecessarily infringe
on competing interests." Id. at 364. Bearing this preference for
10
proportionality in mind, the Court declared that, depending on the
nature of the transgression, "certain violations of the right to
counsel may be disregarded as harmless error." Id. at 365.
Given the weight and direction of these precedents, we do
not believe that a state court in 1983 would have felt that Sixth
Amendment jurisprudence compelled the adoption of the principle
established a year later by the Supreme Court's opinion in Cronic.
Consequently, we conclude that Cronic announced a "new rule" as
that term is understood in the Teague context.
Since the Cronic principle does not fall into either of
the Teague exceptions, the petitioner's position erodes. The
principle does not place any conduct beyond the power of the state
to regulate, and it does not implicate the fundamental fairness or
accuracy of a criminal proceeding. Thus, under Teague, the
petitioner is not entitled to rely on the principle announced in
Cronic.
We turn, therefore, to the petitioner's contention that
he was actually prejudiced due to the transitory absence of his
lawyer. Before launching into this examination, we are constrained
to note that for six years no one intimately involved in the
petitioner's trial apparently thought that counsel's absence during
the supplementary instruction had been injurious enough to mention
on direct review or more coeval collateral review. Although this
observation is by no means dispositive, it does provide useful
information as to the contemporaneous perception of prejudice as we
today inquire into possible harmfulness.
11
On collateral review, the standard for harmless error
analysis, which derives from Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S.
750 (1946), affords relief only when the error "had substantial and
injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict."
Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 638 (1993) (quoting, without
attribution, Kotteakos, 328 U.S. at 776). Applying this criterion,
we find that the effect of this error was neither substantial nor
injurious, and that, therefore, the error was harmless.
To determine whether the Sixth Amendment violation had a
substantial or injurious effect, we focus primarily on the fruit of
that violation: the supplementary instruction as given. The
petitioner argues that the instruction was harmful for three
related reasons: the trial court's supplementary charge was
unconstitutional; the flawed instruction improperly induced the
jury's verdict; and counsel's absence deprived the petitioner of
any opportunity to influence the wording of the instruction.
Finding none of these plaints persuasive, we hold the error to have
been benign.
The petitioner's first complaint need not detain us. We
explain fully in Part IV(B), infra, why the supplementary
instruction conformed with the applicable legal norms, and it would
be pleonastic to rehearse that discussion here. It suffices to say
at this juncture that the petitioner was not prejudiced on this
account.
This conclusion also dooms the petitioner's second
contention. As long as the instruction passes muster from a legal
12
standpoint, the fact that it may have helped to persuade the jury
is unremarkable. See United States v. Nichols, 820 F.2d 508, 512
(1st Cir. 1987). Moreover, we cannot accept the petitioner's
brazen assumption that because the jury returned its verdict a half
hour after hearing the supplementary instruction, the instruction
must have had some effect. The judge offered the instruction sua
sponte. Thus, we cannot infer that the jury was even concerned
with the subject matter of the supplementary instruction. Because
we can only speculate about the correlation, if any, between the
giving of the supplementary instruction and the timing of the
verdict, it cannot fairly be said that the instruction had any
impact, let alone a substantial impact, or that it was injurious.
This leaves us with the last argument. Citing Parent,
the petitioner claims that he was undone by his attorney's absence
because, whether or not the supplementary instruction was correct,
he missed the opportunity to persuade the judge that some different
language might have been more appropriate. See Parent, 954 F.2d at
26 (finding denial of counsel to be reversible error on direct
appeal because "defense counsel was powerless to prime the pump of
This case is unlike Rogers v. United States, where the jury
returned a verdict five minutes after the court replied
affirmatively (without consulting counsel) to a question from the
jury about whether it would accept a particular verdict. See 422
U.S. at 36-37. When a jury indicates that it thirsts for knowledge
on a particular point and the court subsequently slakes that
thirst, the inference can reasonably be drawn that the court's
input had a causal effect on a verdict returned within minutes of
the court's action. The situation is vastly different where, as
here, the jury never indicated an interest in the subject matter of
the sua sponte supplementary instruction.
13
persuasion"). To the extent that this argument is of
constitutional dimension, it strives to redeem the intangible
might-have-been; after all, a harm that cannot be quantified,
cannot be identified. Unfortunately for the petitioner, this
Parent harm is the same harm addressed by the prejudice per se
principle, and as such its application is also barred by Teague.
In this case, all roads lead to Rome. Because of the
nonretroactivity paradigm, the brief deprivation of counsel which
occurred at trial some seventeen years ago, while lamentable, does
not constitute a lever that can be used on collateral review to
overturn the petitioner's conviction.
B. Supplementary Jury Instruction.
Due process requires that the government prove every
element of a criminal offense beyond a reasonable doubt. See
Francis v. Franklin, 471 U.S. 307, 309 (1985); Sandstrom v.
Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 522-24 (1979). In Anderson v. Butler, 23
F.3d 593 (1st Cir. 1994), we described a three-pronged framework to
be used in analyzing burden-shifting claims:
[A] reviewing court must first determine
whether a reasonable juror would have
interpreted the challenged portion of the
instruction as creating a mandatory
presumption. If so, the court must then
consider whether other parts of the charge
clarified the ill-advised language with the
result that a reasonable factfinder would not
have understood the instruction to create an
unconstitutional presumption. Finally, if the
court determines that the charge as a whole
left the jurors with an impermissible
impression, the court must proceed to evaluate
the harmlessness vel non of the error.
Id. at 595 (citing Hill v. Maloney, 927 F.2d 646 (1st Cir. 1990)).
14
We will assume here that Lenny Curtis' testimony that
Robinson initiated the fracas by swinging a bottle at the
petitioner provided a basis for a claim of self-defense. Under
Massachusetts law,
once the issue of self-defense has been fairly
raised, the jury should [be] instructed on the
legal consequences of using manifestly
disproportionate violence in the supposed
exercise of the right of self-defense. If the
jury [conclude] that [the defendant] had the
right to use force to defend himself but that
the force used was excessive . . . they would
[be] warranted in finding [the defendant]
guilty only of manslaughter.
Commonwealth v. Johnson, 589 N.E.2d 311, 313 (Mass. 1992)
(citations and internal quotation marks omitted) (alterations in
original).
The petitioner posits that the court's supplemental jury
instruction, quoted supra note 1, unconstitutionally shifted the
burden to him to prove self-defense by telling the jurors in effect
that they must believe Lenny Curtis' testimony in order to return
a manslaughter verdict. We disagree with this assessment.
We start with the first prong of the three-pronged test.
Although this supplementary instruction is not artfully phrased, we
believe that no reasonable juror would interpret it as creating a
mandatory presumption. To the contrary, we agree with the district
court that a reasonable juror probably would have understood this
instruction as clarifying the circumstances which would, if proved
beyond a reasonable doubt by the prosecution, warrant a
manslaughter conviction.
The second prong of the test also favors the
15
Commonwealth. On whole-record review, it seems highly likely that
any prospect of confusion vis-a-vis the supplementary instruction
vanishes when the instruction is considered in conjunction with the
main charge. During the main charge the superior court judge
explicated Massachusetts law clearly, accurately, and succinctly,
telling the jury, inter alia, that "the defendant does not have to
convince you that he acted in self-defense. The Commonwealth has
to convince you that he did not, or that he used excessive force."
In addition, the judge cautioned the jury that:
[I]f I refer to any of the evidence, it will
be by way of example only in order to make the
law a little easier for you to understand and
to apply, and I in no way intend or infer that
you are to give any more weight, place any
more importance, and more credibility on a
particular piece of evidence that I may
mention in the course of the charge than on
all the other evidence in the case.
In light of these instructions, we believe that a reasonable juror
would have understood that, through the supplementary instruction,
the trial court sought merely to facilitate the jury's
understanding of the applicable law.
The petitioner also objects to another portion of the
supplementary charge: a portion which linked a manslaughter
verdict for him to one for his codefendant, Giglio (another East
Boston youth convicted of second-degree murder). In particular, he
complains about the statement: "If there is any manslaughter
Since we do not believe that there is any appreciable risk
that the supplementary charge confused the jurors or left them with
an incorrect impression, the third prong of the Anderson test need
not concern us.
16
verdict in the Giglio case there has to be two of them."
The vice in this statement, the petitioner says, is that
it led the jury to believe that, in order to be found guilty of the
lesser included offense, Curtis had the burden to prove that Giglio
too was guilty only of manslaughter.
The petitioner's contention tortures the trial court's
statement and distorts its meaning. This portion of the
supplementary charge states that in order to find Giglio guilty of
manslaughter, the jury must first find Curtis guilty of
manslaughter. See Curtis II , 632 N.E.2d at 829. It neither states
nor implies the converse: that in order to find Curtis guilty of
manslaughter, the jury must first find Giglio guilty of
manslaughter. The latter statement would have been incorrect, but
the former statement merely fleshed out a specific theory of
manslaughter in coming to the aid of another, touched upon in the
main charge.
This portion of the supplementary charge addressed the use of
excessive force in self-defense by the petitioner:
I told you that if you find that happened, and
that Giglio was helping him defend himself and
used excessive force, but that it was the bat,
not a bottle that caused the death, there
could be a manslaughter verdict in the case of
Giglio only if there is a manslaughter verdict
in the case against Curtis, that is, the idea
of the joint enterprise being that Giglio
would have been aiding Curtis' self-defense
effort, and then if Curtis used excessive
force and was found guilty of manslaughter,
then Giglio could also be found guilty of
manslaughter. But if there is any
manslaughter verdict in the Giglio case there
has to be two of them.
17
To say more would be supererogatory. Because we discern
no constitutional error in the trial court's supplementary jury
instruction, we reject the petitioner's second claim.
C. Refusal to Grant Immunity.
At trial, the petitioner attempted to call as a defense
witness Joseph DeDominicis, one of the youths present during the
brawl. DeDominicis refused to testify on Fifth Amendment grounds.
The petitioner asked the court to immunize the witness, alleging
that DeDominicis would then testify that he saw a person named
Muzzone standing over the victim with a bat in his hand. The
prosecution opposed the grant of immunity, asserting that it would
interfere with an ongoing grand jury investigation. The trial
court declined the request and the SJC affirmed. See Curtis I , 448
N.E.2d at 348-50.
The petitioner's claim that he was entitled to
DeDominicis' immunized testimony encompasses both the "effective
defense" theory _ which draws its essence from the Sixth Amendment
right to compulsory process _ and the "prosecutorial misconduct"
theory _ which draws its essence from the Fourteenth Amendment
right to due process. See United States v. Angiulo, 897 F.2d 1169,
1190-93 (1st Cir. 1990) (limning both theories). On these facts,
neither approach takes wing.
The effective defense theory originated in the Third
We note that this testimony, even if credited, would not have
been wholly exculpatory; some witnesses testified that they saw two
batsmen.
18
Circuit. See Virgin Islands v. Smith, 615 F.2d 964, 974 (3d Cir.
1980). Under its mantra, a trial court has the power to grant
immunity based on a defendant's need to present exculpatory
evidence. See id. Thus, a trial court should grant immunity "when
it is found that a potential defense witness can offer testimony
which is clearly exculpatory and essential to the defense case and
when the government has no strong interest in withholding use
immunity." Id.
Notwithstanding the Third Circuit's pronouncement, the
effective defense theory has been roundly rejected by other courts,
most of which have agreed that the power to grant immunity properly
belongs to the Executive Branch. See, e.g., United States v.
Quintanilla, 2 F.3d 1469, 1483 (7th Cir. 1993); In re Grand Jury
Proceedings (Williams), 995 F.2d 1013, 1017 (11th Cir. 1993);
United States v. Tindle, 808 F.2d 319, 325 (4th Cir. 1986); United
States v. Pennel, 737 F.2d 521, 526-29 (6th Cir. 1984); United
States v. Turkish, 623 F.2d 769, 773-74 (2d Cir. 1980). We,
ourselves, in a case decided only recently, explicitly rejected the
effective defense theory. See United States v. Mackey, ___ F.3d
___, ___ (1st Cir. 1997) [No. 94-2264, slip op. at 8] (stating
that, "in general, courts have no power to compel immunity in the
face of a good faith refusal by the prosecutor [to grant it]").
To be sure, we added in Mackey that an occasional exception
perhaps "might exist upon very extreme facts." Mackey, ___ F.3d at
___ [slip op. at 8]. The case at hand certainly is no stronger
than Mackey from the defense standpoint. Consequently, it comes
within the general rule, not within the hypothetical exception to
that rule.
19
The prosecutorial misconduct theory fares no better here.
That theory is grounded in the notion that "the due process clause
[constrains] the prosecutor to a certain extent in her decision to
grant or not to grant immunity." Angiulo, 897 F.2d at 1191. But
this constraint comes into play only when a prosecutor
"intentionally attempt[s] to distort the fact-finding process."
Id. A defendant can demonstrate such distortion in two ways: by
showing an attempt to harass or intimidate potential witnesses, or
by showing that the prosecutor deliberately withheld immunity for
the purpose of hiding exculpatory evidence from the jury. See id.
at 1192.
Neither of these circumstances obtain here. The
petitioner does not argue, and there is no evidence to suggest,
that the prosecutor sought to silence DeDominicis through
harassment or intimidation. And although the petitioner does argue
that the prosecution intended to withhold exculpatory evidence from
the jury, this argument comprises sheer speculation. On this
record, we cannot peer behind the prosecution's plausible assertion
of a legitimate interest in keeping the way clear for a possible
future prosecution of DeDominicis. See Mackey, ___ F.3d at ___
[slip op. at 7-8]; Turkish, 623 F.2d at 776-77. Hence, the
petitioner's professed reliance on the prosecutorial misconduct
theory is unavailing.
V. CONCLUSION
We need go no further. We have inspected the
petitioner's asseverational array and found it wanting. There is
20
no sound basis for granting a writ of habeas corpus.
Affirmed.
21
Document Info
Docket Number： 96-1976
Filed Date： 8/13/1997
Precedential Status： Precedential
Modified Date： 9/21/2015