United States v. Gaskins

1

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, v. ALVIN M. GASKINS, Defendant.

No. 04-cr-379-RCL-6

United States District Court, District of Columbia

April 12, 2023

MEMORANDUM ORDER

ROYCE C. LAMBERTH, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.

The Court and the parties met recently to discuss next steps in potential discovery regarding Defendant Alvin Gaskins' pending certificate of innocence. During the status conference, the Court stated that an order addressing such discovery would be forthcoming. This is that order. Specifically, the Court will order the government to produce unredacted copies of certain Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) records and bank records related to Dream Team Investigations (“DTI”). Additionally Gaskins will be permitted to submit limited interrogatories and document requests in accordance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

I. BACKGROUND

In 2004, Alvin Gaskins and twenty other defendants were charged with various crimes related to a narcotics-distribution conspiracy that operated in the District of Columbia Maryland, and Virginia between 1999 and 2004. United States v. Gaskins (f Gaskins 7”), 690 F.3d 569, 572 (D.C. Cir. 2012). In 2006, Gaskins and three codefendants-Gerald Eiland, Frederick Miller, and Robert Bryant-went to trial. Id. at 572. The jury found Gaskins guilty of conspiracy to distribute more than 100 grams but less than one kilogram of heroin. Id. at 576. In 2008, this Court sentenced Gaskins to 262 months of incarceration. See id. Gaskins appealed and, in 2012, the Circuit reversed the conviction after finding that it was not supported by sufficient evidence. Id. at 576, 582. In total, Gaskins served almost eight years of his nearly twenty-two-year sentence before his release. United States v. Gaskins (“Gaskins Z7”), No. 1:04-cr-379 (RCL), 2019 WL 7758898, at *1 (D.D.C. Dec. 13,2019).

In 2017, Gaskins moved in this Court for a certificate of innocence, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2513. Def.'s Mot. for Certificate of Innocence, ECF No. 1237. The government opposed. Gov't Opp'n, ECF No. 1242. Nearly a year later, Gaskins moved for the Court to open limited discovery and set an evidentiary hearing on the motion. Mot. for Disc. & for Evidentiary Hr'g, ECF No. 1257. The Court denied Gaskins' motion for certificate of innocence without ruling on his discovery or evidentiary hearing requests. See generally Gaskins II, 2019 WL 7758898. Gaskins appealed and, in 2021, the Circuit vacated this Court's order and remanded the case for this Court to address Gaskins' procedural motion.^[1] United States v. Gaskins (“Gaskins IIP), 6 F.4th 1350 (D.C. Cir. 2021). According to the Circuit, “Gaskins' requests aimed at developing the key factual issue of his own state of mind,” even though the Circuit acknowledged that “with ‘an inchoate crime like conspiracy, . . . your best evidence' is ‘[w]hat is in Mr. Gaskins' mind.'” Id. at 136263 (citing Oral Arg. Tr. at 24:21-22, 36:14-15).

On February 2, 2023, the Court and the parties met for a status conference to discuss next steps on remand. Minute Entry (02/07/2023). The Court ordered the parties to meet and confer regarding a proposed scheduling order for discovery. On March 22, 2023, the parties jointly submitted an update detailing their conversations regarding, and disagreements about, the content and scope of the limited discovery. ECF No. 1308. On March 24, 2023, the Court and the parties met again for a status conference and to discuss their disagreements and proposed next steps. Minute Entry (03/24/2023). Among the topics discussed at that status conference were the applicability of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and whether the documents that Gaskins requests, if any, are discoverable.

II. DISCUSSION

The Court will lay out the legal standards applying to discovery in certificate of innocence proceedings and provide the parties guidance on moving forward with discovery in this case.

A. Civil Discovery Rules Apply to This Case

As a threshold matter, the Court must address what standards govern discovery here. In Gaskins' procedural motion, he asked the Court to apply the “rules and legal theories applicable to civil discovery principles.” Mot. for Disc. & for Evidentiary Hr'g at 3. The case that Gaskins cites for this proposition, Pulungan v. United States, 722 F.3d 983, 986 (7th Cir. 2013), does not specifically state that the traditional civil discovery rules apply to a certificate of innocence proceeding. At the March 24, 2023 status conference, the government stated that it did not believe that the civil discovery rules apply to this case. Status Conference Tr. (Draft) at 5:5-7. This is a novel issue, with no case resolving the matter.

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure plainly control here because (1) the petition for a certificate of innocence is a civil proceeding and (2) the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure apply to all civil actions and proceedings unless Congress or the Supreme Court has made a specific exception, and no exception has been made for this type of proceeding. For the first point, this Court previously remarked, “[a] petition for a certificate of innocence is civil in nature” and that “(u]nlike in a criminal action, the party seeking the certificate bears the burden of proof and must prove his case by a preponderance of the evidence.” Gaskins II, 2019 WL 7758898, at *1 (citing Betts v. United States, 10 F.3d 1278, 1283 (7th Cir. 1993) and United States v. Grubbs, 773 F.3d 726, 732-33 (6th Cir. 2014)); see Abu-Shawish v. United States, 898 F.3d 726, 736 (7th Cir. 2018) (“A petition [for a certificate of innocence] starts what is, in essence, a civil proceeding within the closed criminal case.”). The Circuit indicated that it shares this view. See Gaskins III, 6 F.4th at 1354-55 (“A petition for a judicial certificate of innocence may be filed under the existing criminal docket number or as a separate, miscellaneous civil case” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)); id. at 1361 (using the phrase “civil proceeding” to describe the nature of a proceeding “for a certificate of innocence”); id. at 1363 (favorably citing Seventh Circuit cases describing the applicability of civil procedure principles to proceedings for certificates of innocence). For the second point, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 1 states that the federal rules “govern the procedure in all civil actions and proceedings in the United States district courts, except as stated in Rule 81.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 1 (emphasis added). Neither Congress nor the Supreme Court has established an exception to that basic rule for certificates of innocence. Consequently, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure apply.

Next, discovery is governed by Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 26 through 37. See Doe 1 v. George Washington Univ., 573 F.Supp.3d 88, 97 (D.D.C. 2021). In general, “[p]arties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case, considering the importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties' relative access to relevant information, the parties' resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(b)(1). The Court “must limit the frequency or extent of discovery otherwise allowed” if the Court determines, among other things, that “the discovery sought is unreasonably cumulative or duplicative” or that “the proposed discovery is outside the scope permitted by Rule 26(b)(1).” Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(b)(2)(C). “Rule 26 vests the trial judge with broad discretion to tailor discovery narrowly and to dictate the sequence of discovery.” Crawford-El v. Britton, 523 U.S. 574, 598 (1998).

Though the Court concludes that the civil discovery rules apply to this case, the Court acknowledges that this is not a typical civil case. Usually, discovery is essential to build a record of evidence for a court to adjudicate an issue. However, a substantial record already exists here. Over the course of Gaskins' three-month trial, the government presented evidence in the form of “eight cooperating witnesses, more than 14,000 intercepted telephone conversations, visual and video surveillance and evidence seized during the execution of search warrants.” Gaskins I, 690 F.3d at 571-72, 576. The defense presented evidence its own in the form of witnesses and recorded phone conversations. Id. at 575-76. In other words, the parties start with far from a blank slate. Therefore, more limited discovery is required to rule on Gaskins' motion than in a typical case.

B. The Court Will Grant Limited Discovery

According to the Circuit, “[Gaskins'] position all along-in the criminal case and in seeking a certificate of innocence-has been that he never joined a narcotics conspiracy, but worked as a ‘gofer' for Frederick Miller, a since-convicted leader of the conspiracy, running personal errands for Miller and carrying out various administrative tasks for Dream Team Investigations (DTI), Miller's private investigations company.” Gaskins III, 6 F.4th at 1356 (internal citations omitted). Thus, “[t]he key issue bearing on whether Gaskins is entitled to the certificate concerns his state of mind, that is, whether he agreed to work with co-conspirators with the specific intent to distribute drugs.” Id. at 1354. The Court interprets this instruction to mean that all discovery should bear some reasonable relation to this question.

In his original motion, Gaskins asked for discovery limited to the following pieces of evidence: (1) an unredacted version of Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) records from a search of the conspiracy's stash house (an...