WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Constitution Project wants the U.S. Supreme Court to clarify that a federal law called the "Hyde Amendment" requires the Department of Justice to pay the attorneys' fees when prosecutors intentionally withhold favorable evidence from prevailing defendants.
In an amicus brief filed today, the bipartisan watchdog group asked the Court to take up the case of Ali Shaygan v. United States, in which the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals threw out an award of more than $600,000 in fees to Shaygan's lawyers, despite a lower court's findings of repeated violations of the defendant's rights by the prosecutors.
"The trial court found constitutional violations and unethical behavior on the part of the prosecutors throughout this case," said Virginia Sloan, president of The Constitution Project (TCP). "If this case doesn't merit the award of attorneys' fees under the Hyde Amendment, it is hard to imagine one that would; the Eleventh Circuit was wrong to deny them."
Enacted in 1997, the Hyde Amendment gives federal judges the power to force the government to pay reasonable fees to acquitted defendants if the actions of the government lawyers were "vexatious, frivolous or in bad faith."
TCP argues in its brief that a sharply divided Eleventh Circuit wrongly interpreted the Hyde Amendment to permit any kind of prosecutorial behavior so long as there were grounds to file the initial charges, saying that such an interpretation "guts the Hyde Amendment, rendering it meaningless."
The group also argues that violations of a defendant's Brady rights often go unpunished and that the Hyde Amendment is one of few deterrents to such violations, making its application to Brady violations essential. In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brady v. Maryland that prosecutors have a constitutional obligation to provide the defense with "evidence favorable to an accused . . . where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment." The failure by a prosecutor to disclose appropriate information is often referred to as a "Brady violation."
"Congress clearly understood in passing the law that prosecutorial misconduct such as discovery violations can taint an entire prosecution," Sloan said, "and it undoubtedly intended that the Hyde Amendment apply in cases involving such misconduct."
The issue arose from the unsuccessful prosecution of a Miami doctor, Ali Shaygan, on drug charges in 2008. The trial court found that government agents had continued to interrogate Shaygan after he requested legal counsel, a violation of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, and piled on additional indictments to punish him for seeking to suppress the interrogation. In addition, when the government thought its case was "going south," it launched a secret, collateral investigation in an attempt to disqualify Shaygan's attorneys right before trial, and government lawyers withheld a number of documents that could have helped the defense mount its case.
The amicus brief notes that The Constitution Project has issued several reports calling for stronger Brady enforcement. Earlier this year, the group assembled nearly 150 criminal justice experts --more than 100 of whom are former federal prosecutors -- who agree that Congress should act to reduce instances of prosecutorial misconduct by clarifying the standards for required disclosure and imposing meaningful penalties when they are violated.
Sloan said the high court should use this case to "take a step in the right direction" by clarifying that the Hyde Amendment applies to failures to disclose favorable evidence in violation of Brady.
