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in the conjunction of Rule 410, the work-product privilege, and the Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel in the plea bargaining process,” but this novel argument fails too. As explained above, Rule 410 does not create a privilege and the intervenors waived any work-product privilege. The intervenors concede too that the right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment had not yet attached when the correspondence was exchanged. Lumley v, City of Dade City, Fla., 327 F.3d 1186, 1195 (11th Cir. 2003) (“[T]he Sixth Amendment right to counsel ordinarily does not arise until there is a formal commitment by the government to prosecute,” such as a “formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information, or arraignment.”). The “conjunctive” power of three false claims of privilege does not rescue the correspondence from disclosure. ... The Supreme Court has identified several considerations relevant to whether a court should recognize an evidentiary privilege—the needs of the public, whether the privilege is rooted in the imperative for confidence and trust, the evidentiary benefit of the denial of the privilege, and any consensus among the states, Jaffee v. Redmond, 518 U.S. 1, 10-15 (1996}—but none of these considerations weighs in favor of recognizing a new privilege to prevent discovery of the plea negotiations. Although plea negotiations are vital to the functioning of the criminal justice system, a prosecutor and target of a criminal investigation do not enjoy a relationship of confidence and trust when they negotiate. Their adversarial relationship, unlike the confidential relationship of a doctor and patient or attorney and client, warrants no privilege beyond the terms of Rule 410. See Jaffee, 518 U.S. at 10. But the victims would enjoy an evidentiary benefit from the disclosure of plea negotiations to prove whether the United States violated their rights under the Act. Moving forward, this case raises the important issue of what kinds of remedies are available for violations of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. Our complaint alleges that, prodded by Epstein, the federal prosecutors deliberately concealed the sweetheart plea deal they had reached with him to avoid public criticism of the deal. I am hopeful that in future district court proceedings, we will be able to prove that clear violation of the CVRA and then obtain the remedy of invalidating the illegally-negotiated plea deal. Paul G. Cassell teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, and crime victims’ rights at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. Before coming to Utah, he was President of the Stanford Law Review, a law clerk for then-Judge Antonin Scalia on the D.C, Circuit and for Chief Justice Warren Burger of the Supreme Court, an Associate Deputy Attorney General with the U.S. Justice Department (1986-88), and an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (1988 to 1991). Cassell joined the faculty at the University of Utah College of Law in 1992, where he taught full time until he was sworn in as a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Utah in 2002. In 2007, he resigned his judgeship to return full time to the College of Law, to teach, write, and litigate on issues relating to crime victims' rights and criminal justice reform. 47 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011958

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Filename HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011958.jpg
File Size 0.0 KB
OCR Confidence 85.0%
Has Readable Text Yes
Text Length 3,347 characters
Indexed 2026-02-04T16:15:26.818164