United States v. Kenney

598 F. Supp. 874, 1984 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21497
District Court, D. Maine·Decided December 5, 1984·No. Crim. 84-00007-01-P·Published·Cited by 3 cases

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION ON DEFENDANTS' MOTION IN LIMINE FOR EXCLUSION OF TESTIMONY OF COOPERATING WITNESS ON DUE PROCESS GROUNDS

GENE CARTER, District Judge.

On November 29, 1984, the Defendant Edward P. Kenney filed a Motion in Li-mine for Exclusion of Testimony of Cooperating Witness on Due Process Grounds. The motion seeks an order of this Court to “exclude all testimony of James Gregory Anderson, which the prosecution in the above-captioned case may seek to offer or use against the Defendant Kenney.” The grounds alleged in support of this claim are the following:

1. The agreement between the Government and James Gregory Anderson constitutes an invitation to perjury to an extent irreparable by cross-examination;
2. Said agreement violates the spirit, if not the letter, of 18 U.S.C. § 201, which proscribes bribery of witnesses;
3. Said agreement renders the testimony of the said James Gregory Anderson violative of the due process to which Defendant is entitled, and undermines the integrity of the judicial system;
4. Said agreement is inconsistent with the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution and the due process protections guaranteed to the accused by the United States Constitution.

Thus is sought to be generated an issue of the content of due process, which has recently been adjudicated, in a very short space of time, to a stage of at least modest confusion. The seeds to that confusion were sown with the case of United States v. Waterman, 732 F.2d 1527 (8th Cir.1984). In the initial opinion, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals of the Eighth Circuit, the Court held:

the government’s agreement with its key witness hampered the truth-finding function of the jury to a degree which cannot be reconciled with the fair procedures guaranteed by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Because the testimony given pursuant to this agreement was critical to support Waterman’s conviction, we reverse the district court’s denial of his Section 2255 motion.

Id. at 1528. The Court defined the issue generated in that case to be “whether an agreement to procure testimony about accomplished facts, which places a premium on testimony adverse to a defendant, creates a risk of perjury so great that even the jury’s full knowledge of the agreement is insufficient to protect the fundamental fairness inherent in the due process clause.” Id. at 1530 (emphasis added). In deciding that issue, the Court found that *876 the agreements involved in that case did place a premium on the production by the cooperating witness of testimony adverse to a defendant. The Court stated “the government cannot consistent with due process offer favorable treatment to a prosecution witness contingent upon the success of the prosecution. Such an agreement is nothing more than an invitation to perjury having no place in our constitutional system of justice.” Id. at 1531. Finding that the invitation to perjury was not sufficiently guarded against even by disclosure of the content of the agreement to the jury in the course of the trial process, the Court found that the agreement constituted an impermissible reward to the cooperating witness based upon the results of his testimony. Id. at 1533.

Thereafter, the same general issue was confronted by the District Court for Massachusetts in the matter of United States v. Dailey, 589 F.Supp. 561 (D.Mass.1984). 1 In that case, the Court framed the issue in the following terms: “what is at issue is the validity of an agreement for a sentencing recommendation that is in any way contingent on the success of the government’s prosecutorial effort.” Id. at 562 (emphasis added). Noting that the panel decision in the Waterman case was not binding authority in the District of Massachusetts, the Court concluded that the panel decision “presents persuasive authority in support of defendant’s position.” Id. at 563.

Beginning its analysis of the law, the District Court implicitly acknowledged that “an agreement by which the government agrees to grant favors to a prosecution witness in return for truthful testimony about others” is not subject to challenge as violative of due process. Id. at 562. The panel in Waterman indulged precisely the same recognition in its approach to its legal analysis of the issue. Waterman, 732 F.2d at 1531. Indeed, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in a decision issued five days after that of the District Court in Dailey, supra, made it clear that the law in this circuit continues to be that the credibility of an informer, just as of any other witness, is to be tested for purposes of admissibility, even in the constitutional sense, by cross-examination and determined by a properly instructed jury. United States v. Tapia, 738 F.2d 18, 20 (1st Cir.1984). Cf. Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 311, 87 S.Ct. 408, 418, 17 L.Ed.2d 374 (1966) (“The established safeguards of the Anglo-American legal system leave the veracity of a witness to be tested by cross-examination, and the credibility of his testimony to be determined by a properly instructed jury.”).

The District Court in Dailey, proceeding to an analysis of the content and meaning of the agreements involved in that case, found the agreement to give

the government three distinct recommendation options, each having a different triggering point. The government’s first option is to make a recommendation of twenty years if the witnesses have “fully cooperated ... as defined in Paragraph 2.” The government’s second option is to make a recommendation of ten years “depending principally upon the value to the Government of the [witnesses’] cooperation.” Third, the government may make a recommendation of thirty-five years if the witnesses have not fully cooperated.

Dailey, 589 F.Supp. at 563-64. The Court found the provision for a ten-year “bonus” to be an incentive to the Government’s cooperating witness to fabricate testimony, which violated due process of law. The Court stated:

To receive this ten year bonus, the witnesses must clearly do more than merely cooperate. Indeed, to earn a recommendation of ten rather than twenty years, *877 the witnesses’ cooperation must be deemed to have been of “value” to the government. We cannot tolerate the imposition of that type of subjective pressure on witnesses, whose only interest is supposed to be in telling the truth.

Id. at 564.

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United States v. Kenney, 598 F. Supp. 874, 1984 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21497 (D. Me. 1984).

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