United States v. McTague
| Decision Date | 26 October 2016 |
| Docket Number | No. 15-4739,15-4739 |
| Citation | 840 F.3d 184 |
| Parties | United States of America, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. Maria Rosalba Alvarado McTague; Felix Adriano Chujoy, a/k/a Felix Chujoy Alvarado; Gladys Georgette Chujoy, a/k/a Gladys Johnston, Defendants–Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
ARGUED: Jean Barrett Hudson, Office of the United States Attorney, Charlottesville, Virginia, for Appellant. Aubrey Gene Hart, Jr., A. Gene Hart, Jr., PC, Harrisonburg, Virginia; Aaron Lee Cook, Aaron L. Cook, PC, Harrisonburg, Virginia, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: John P. Fishwick, Jr., United States Attorney, Roanoke, Virginia, Heather Lynn Carlton, Assistant United States Attorney, Office of the United States Attorney, Charlottesville, Virginia, for Appellant. W. Andrew Harding, Convy & Harding, PLC, Harrisonburg, Virginia, for Appellee Gladys Georgette Chujoy.
Before DUNCAN, AGEE, and HARRIS, Circuit Judges.
Vacated and remanded by published opinion. Judge Duncan wrote the opinion, in which Judge Agee and Judge Harris joined.
The government brings this interlocutory appeal from an order of the district court excluding grand jury testimony from use at trial without having found prosecutorial misconduct or bad faith in the underlying grand jury proceeding. For the reasons that follow, we vacate the order and remand for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
The grand jury investigation at issue here took place in October 2015, but relates back to criminal proceedings that began in 2014. On December 4, 2014, a federal grand jury indicted Maria Rosalba Alvarado McTague (“Alvarado”) and Felix Chujoy (“Felix”) on charges of visa fraud and various immigration violations stemming from their operation of a Peruvian restaurant in Virginia. The indictment alleged that Alvarado smuggled immigrants into the United States to work in the restaurant. It further alleged that both Alvarado and Felix employed these and other undocumented immigrants in horrendous and illegal working conditions, either paying them well below the minimum wage or requiring them to work as indentured servants to repay Alvarado for smuggling them into the United States.
After their arrest, the district court released Alvarado and Felix on bond. As a condition of release, Alvarado and Felix could not contact witnesses or alleged victims in the case.
During this time, a grand jury continued to investigate additional charges and suspects. In expectation of a superseding indictment, the parties jointly moved for a continuance. The district court granted the motion and postponed trial to June 22, 2015.
On March 12, 2015, the grand jury returned a superseding indictment. The superseding indictment (1) charged Alvarado and Felix with additional labor trafficking counts, (2) added Gladys Chujoy—Felix's sister and Alvarado's daughter—as a defendant, and (3) charged all three Defendants with obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and conspiracy to witness tamper. The magistrate judge released Gladys Chujoy on bond, but revoked bond for Alvarado and Felix after finding probable cause to believe that they had violated their conditions of release. Evidence suggested that Alvarado and Felix had been contacting witnesses using other people's phones to avoid detection. Over the next several months, the government investigated these allegations by interviewing individuals whose telephone numbers appeared in witnesses' cellphone records.
In May 2015, as part of this investigation, the government interviewed several friends of Alvarado and the Chujoys, including Carolyn Edlind and Sheriff Donald Smith. Based on those interviews, the government subpoenaed Edlind and Smith to testify at the upcoming trial.
On June 21, 2015, due to a personal emergency, the government moved for another continuance. The district court granted the motion, finding it to be in the interest of justice. So as not to adversely affect Alvarado and Felix, it ordered them released from jail on bond. Although Alvarado was obliged to obtain new counsel, Defendants did not object to the continuance and explicitly waived any potential speedy trial objection. The district court scheduled the new trial date for October 26, 2015.
In late August 2015, counsel for an inmate at the Rockingham County Jail invited the government to interview his client about information concerning Felix. Felix had been incarcerated at the Rockingham County Jail with this inmate following his arrest on the superseding indictment. The inmate revealed that he and other inmates had given Felix their PIN numbers so that Felix could make calls from jail without detection. The government obtained recorded conversations from the jail and discovered that Felix had placed at least eleven calls from May 2015 to June 2015 using other inmates' PIN numbers. Felix spoke with Smith on nine of those calls, and the conversations provided evidence of a witness-tampering scheme between Felix, Edlind, and Smith—information that Edlind and Smith did not disclose during their May 2015 interviews with federal law enforcement.
Because this conduct took place after the superseding indictment, the United States began a new investigation of Felix regarding witness tampering and obstruction of justice. The government subpoenaed Edlind and Smith to testify when the next grand jury convened on October 6, 2015. Edlind's and Smith's testimony provided further evidence of the post-superseding indictment witness-tampering scheme. The government promptly disclosed the grand jury evidence to the district court and Defendants.
On October 20, 2015, the government presented the grand jury with additional testimony and physical evidence concerning the potential witness-tampering scheme between Felix, Edlind, and Smith. That same day, the grand jury returned a new indictment against Felix and Edlind on multiple counts, including conspiracy to witness tamper, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice. The indictment also charged Edlind with perjury and a second count of obstruction of justice for allegedly lying during her grand jury testimony about her contact with Felix.
In response to this new information, Alvarado filed a motion for a continuance to investigate possible prosecutorial misconduct at the October 2015 grand jury proceedings. The district court granted the continuance and set a new trial date of December 1, 2015. In addition, the district court invited Defendants to file motions related to prosecutorial misconduct after reviewing the grand jury transcripts disclosed by the government.
On November 13, 2015, Defendants filed a joint motion to dismiss all indictments, claiming that the government abused the October 2015 grand jury process by gathering evidence for the superseding indictment. Specifically, Defendants alleged that the government called Edlind and Smith before the grand jury for the dominant purpose of gathering additional evidence against Defendants on the superseding indictment and discovering Defendants' evidence and trial strategy. The district court denied Defendants' motion, finding that no prosecutorial misconduct occurred.
The district court nevertheless limited the government's use of October 2015 grand jury evidence at the upcoming trial on the superseding indictment. The district court concluded that the government could not (1) call Edlind or Smith to testify in its case-in-chief as to any subjects covered in their October 6, 2015, grand jury testimony, nor could it (2) use their grand jury testimony for any purposes at trial—including to impeach Edlind or Smith, if Defendants called them as witnesses.
The district court based its remedy on a “unique combination of circumstances,” which it found to be “fundamentally unfair.” J.A. 460. First, the district court found that several lines of questioning extended beyond the new witness tampering and obstruction charges into allegations underlying the original charges. J.A. 458. Second, the district court cited “the ongoing delay” occasioned by the second continuance, sought by the government, and the third continuance, sought by Defendants. J.A. 459. It bears repeating that in addition to expressly finding that “the government's examination of Edlind and Smith did not go so far as to constitute misconduct,” J.A. 455, the district court also did not hold that the government engaged in bad-faith questioning or abused the grand jury process.
The government appeals the district court's order pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3731 and 28 U.S.C. § 1291.
On appeal, the government argues that the district court abused its discretion by sanctioning the government without finding prosecutorial misconduct. According to the government, in the absence of such a finding, an evidentiary exclusion will never lie. Defendants counter that the district court justifiably fashioned a limited evidentiary remedy to address fundamental unfairness.
This court reviews a district court's evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion. United States v. Hedgepeth, 418 F.3d 411, 418–19 (4th Cir. 2005). Although this standard accords deference to the district courts, it does not insulate them from review. A district court abuses its discretion when it (1) acts “arbitrarily, as if neither by rule nor discretion,” (2) fails to “adequately ... take into account judicially recognized factors constraining its exercise” of discretion, or (3) rests its decision on “erroneous factual or legal premises.” James v. Jacobson, 6 F.3d 233, 239 (4th Cir. 1993).
We find that the district court abused its discretion in this case. District courts have the supervisory duty to ensure that the grand jury “process is not abused or used for purposes of oppression or injustice.” United States v. U.S. Dist. Court for S. Dist. of W. Va., 238 F.2d 713, 722 (4th Cir. 1956). But a district court must provide a sufficient explanation for its decisions in furtherance of that duty to...
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Grand jury proceedings
...pretrial discovery device to help the prosecutor prepare for trial after the grand jury returns an indictment. United States v. Alvarado , 840 F.3d 184, 189 (4th Cir. 2016); GRAND JURY PROCEEDINGS 8-7 Grand Jury Proceedings §8:13 see also United States v. Furrow , 125 F. Supp. 2d 1170, 1172......