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Case 22-1426, Document 117, 11/01/2024, 3636586, Page15 of 51
affirmative appearance of doing so. Papa does not explain or attempt
to rationalize the rule that has evolved.
294 F.3d at 547-48 (brackets and italics in original; bold added).
Annabi stands in tension with what the United States Supreme Court has
written about plea and immunity agreements. In Santobello, 404 U.S. 257 (1971)—
the seminal case on plea bargaining—the Supreme Court held that one prosecutor’s
promise in a plea agreement would bind other prosecutors, even those who might
have been unaware of the promise. As Santobello explained, “[t]he staff lawyers in
a prosecutor’s office have the burden of ‘letting the left hand know what the right
hand is doing’ or has done.” 404 U.S. at 262. And in Giglio v. United States, the
Supreme Court held that an AUSA had a duty under Brady to disclose a promise of
immunity that another AUSA had made to a testifying witness, even though the first
AUSA had been falsely assured that no such promise was made. See 405 U.S. 150,
154 (1972) (“The prosecutor’s office is an entity and as such it is the spokesman for
the Government. A promise made by one attorney must be attributed, for these
purposes, to the Government”) (citing Restatement (Second) of Agency § 272).
These premises are inconsistent with the notion that a federal prosecutor in one
district has no obligation to honor promises made by his or her counterpart in
another.
Appellant is not aware of any published authority from another circuit that
follows Annabi in holding that an ambiguous promise made in a plea agreement by
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Dates
Document Details
| Filename | DOJ-OGR-00021839.jpg |
| File Size | 692.3 KB |
| OCR Confidence | 95.0% |
| Has Readable Text | Yes |
| Text Length | 1,633 characters |
| Indexed | 2026-02-03 20:17:42.608625 |