No.

19-107

In the Supreme Court of the United States

__________
Vincent Asaro,
Petitioner,
v.

United States of America,

Respondent.
__________

On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the

United States Court of Appeals for the Second
Circuit
__________
BRIEF OF THE CATO INSTITUTE AS AMICUS
CURIAE SUPPORTING PETITIONER
__________

Clark M. Neily III

Jay R. Schweikert
Counsel of Record
CATO INSTITUTE
1000 Mass. Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 216-1461
[email protected]

September 18, 2019

 i

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE ............................. 1
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT ..................................... 2
ARGUMENT ................................................................ 3
I. SENTENCING BASED ON ACQUITTED
CONDUCT IS FUNDAMENTALLY INCONSISTENT
WITH THE ANGLO-AMERICAN CONCEPTION OF
THE INDEPENDENT JURY TRIAL. ........................ 3
II. PROTECTING THE FINALITY OF JURY
ACQUITTALS IS ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT IN
LIGHT OF THE VANISHINGLY SMALL ROLE
THAT JURY TRIALS PLAY IN OUR CRIMINAL
JUSTICE SYSTEM...................................................... 7
CONCLUSION .......................................................... 10
 ii

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES
Page(s)
Cases
Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004) ............... 6
Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1 (1978) .................. 6
Bushell’s Case, 124 Eng. Rep. 1006 (C.P. 1670) ......... 4
Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145 (1968) ................. 3
Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806 (1975) .................. 7
Jones v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 8 (2014) ................. 2
Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227 (1999) ........... 3, 8
Lafler v. Cooper, 566 U.S. 156 (2012) ......................... 8
Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400 (1991) ........................... 6
Thompson v. Utah, 170 U.S. 343 (1898) ..................... 5
United States v. Bell, 808 F.3d 926 (D.C. Cir. 2015) .. 9
Yeager v. United States, 557 U.S. 110 (2009) ......... 2, 6
Constitutional Provisions
U.S. CONST. art. III, § 2 ............................................... 7
Other Authorities
4 WILLIAM M. BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES ON THE
LAWS OF ENGLAND (1769) ......................................... 5
AKHIL REED AMAR, THE BILL OF RIGHTS: CREATION
AND RECONSTRUCTION (1998) ................................... 7

Albert W. Alschuler & Andrew G. Deiss, A Brief

History of the Criminal Jury in the United States,
61 U. CHI. L. REV. 867 (1994) ............................... 4, 5
 iii

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA

(Phillips Bradley ed. 1945) ...................................... 7
CLAY CONRAD, JURY NULLIFICATION: THE EVOLUTION
OF A DOCTRINE (2d ed. 2014) ................................ 4, 5

George Fisher, Plea Bargaining’s Triumph, 109 YALE

L.J. 857 (2000) .......................................................... 8
J. STORY, COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF
THE UNITED STATES § 1779 .................................. 5–6

Jed S. Rakoff, Why Innocent People Plead Guilty, N.Y.

REV. OF BOOKS, Nov. 20, 2014 .................................. 8
JEFFREY ABRAMSON, WE, THE JURY: THE JURY SYSTEM
AND THE IDEAL OF DEMOCRACY (1994)...................... 5

LYSANDER SPOONER, AN ESSAY ON THE TRIAL BY JURY

(1852) ........................................................................ 4
NAT’L ASS’N OF CRIM. DEF. LAWYERS, THE TRIAL
PENALTY: THE SIXTH AMENDMENT RIGHT TO TRIAL
ON THE VERGE OF EXTINCTION AND HOW TO SAVE IT
(2018) .................................................................... 8, 9
Suja A. Thomas, What Happened to the American
Jury?, LITIGATION, Spring 2017 ............................... 8
THE FEDERALIST NO. 83 ............................................... 6
THOMAS ANDREW GREEN, VERDICT ACCORDING TO
CONSCIENCE: PERSPECTIVES ON THE ENGLISH
CRIMINAL TRIAL JURY, 1200–1800 (1985) ................ 4
 1

INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE1

The Cato Institute is a nonpartisan public policy
research foundation founded in 1977 and dedicated to
advancing the principles of individual liberty, free
markets, and limited government. Cato’s Project on
Criminal Justice was founded in 1999, and focuses in
particular on the scope of substantive criminal liabil-
ity, the proper and effective role of police in their com-
munities, the protection of constitutional and statu-
tory safeguards for criminal suspects and defendants,
citizen participation in the criminal justice system,
and accountability for law enforcement officers.
Cato’s concern in this case is defending the princi-
ple of jury independence, including the special sanctity
reserved for jury acquittals, and ensuring that the in-
creasing pervasiveness of plea bargaining does not fur-
ther erode the participation of citizen juries in the
criminal justice system, or deprive defendants of the
right to subject prosecutions to meaningful adversarial
testing.

1 Rule 37 statement: All parties were timely notified and con-

sented to the filing of this brief. No part of this brief was authored
by any party’s counsel, and no person or entity other than amicus
funded its preparation or submission.
 2

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
Under our Constitution, and within the Anglo-
American legal tradition generally, the jury trial is the
cornerstone of criminal adjudication. As long as there
has been criminal justice in America, the independ-
ence of citizen jurors has been understood to be an in-
dispensable structural check on executive, legislative
power, and even judicial power. And that independ-
ence has always entailed a special solicitude for jury
acquittals, which are intended to have “unassailable”
finality. Yeager v. United States, 557 U.S. 110, 122-23
(2009).
The decision below, upholding the authority of
judges to sentence defendants based on acquitted con-
duct, strikes at the heart of jury independence. It is
fundamentally in tension with the understanding of
the jury trial in the Anglo-American legal tradition,
and at odds with Founding-Era practices regarding
jury acquittals specifically. Permitting sentencing
based on acquitted conduct not only denies criminal
defendants their Sixth Amendment right to a jury
trial, but also denies the community their proper role
in overseeing the administration of criminal justice. As
three members of this Court recently noted, “[t]his has
gone on long enough.” Jones v. United States, 135 S.
Ct. 8, 9 (2014) (Scalia, J., joined by Thomas & Gins-
burg, JJ., dissenting from denial of certiorari).
It is especially important to protect the sanctity of
jury acquittals now, in light of the near-disappearance
of the criminal jury trial generally. Today, jury trials
have been all but replaced by plea bargaining as the
baseline for criminal adjudication, and there is ample
reason to doubt whether the bulk of these pleas are
 3

truly voluntary. If defendants know they may be sen-

tenced based even on acquitted conduct, that mas-
sively ratchets up the pressure to accept a plea in any
case where the prosecutor charges multiple, related of-
fenses, as even acquittals on the more serious charges
are no guarantee against harsh sentencing. Precluding
sentences based on acquitted conduct would therefore
be a small but vital safeguard against the wholesale
erosion of the jury trial itself.
ARGUMENT
I. SENTENCING BASED ON ACQUITTED
CONDUCT IS FUNDAMENTALLY INCON-
SISTENT WITH THE ANGLO-AMERICAN
CONCEPTION OF THE INDEPENDENT
JURY TRIAL.
The right to a jury trial developed as a “check or
control” on executive power—an essential “barrier” be-
tween “the liberties of the people and the prerogative
of the crown.” Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 151,
156 (1968) (trial by jury is an “inestimable safeguard
against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and
against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge”); see
also Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227, 246 (1999)
(quoting Blackstone’s characterization of “trial by jury
as ‘the grand bulwark’ of English liberties”). Permit-
ting judges to sentence on the basis of acquitted con-
duct is deeply at odds with this sacred right as it has
been understood and applied throughout our legal and
constitutional history.
The tradition of independent juries standing as a
barrier against unsupported or unjust prosecutions
pre-dates the signing of Magna Carta, and likely even
 4

the Norman Conquest. See CLAY CONRAD, JURY NULLI-

FICATION: THE EVOLUTION OF A DOCTRINE 13 (2d ed.
2014); see also LYSANDER SPOONER, AN ESSAY ON THE
TRIAL BY JURY 51-85 (1852) (discussing this tradition
both before and after Magna Carta). In other words,
jury independence is as ancient and storied as the An-
glo-Saxon legal tradition itself.
A landmark pre-colonial decision on the sanctity of
jury acquittals was Bushell’s Case, 124 Eng. Rep. 1006
(C.P. 1670). Bushell was a member of an English jury
that refused to convict William Penn for violating the
Conventicle Act, which prohibited religious assemblies
of more than five people outside the auspices of the
Church of England. See THOMAS ANDREW GREEN, VER-
DICT ACCORDING TO CONSCIENCE: PERSPECTIVES ON THE
ENGLISH CRIMINAL TRIAL JURY, 1200-1800, at 236-49
(1985). The trial judge essentially ordered the jury to
return a guilty verdict and even imprisoned the jurors
for contempt when they refused. However, the Court
of Common Pleas granted a writ of habeas corpus to
Bushell, cementing the authority of a jury to acquit
against the wishes of the Crown. Id.
This understanding of the jury trial was firmly es-
tablished in the American colonies as well. One nota-
ble case involved John Peter Zenger, who was charged
with seditious libel for printing newspapers critical of
the royal governor of New York. Albert W. Alschuler &
Andrew G. Deiss, A Brief History of the Criminal Jury
in the United States, 61 U. CHI. L. REV. 867, 871-72
(1994). The jury refused to convict notwithstanding
Zenger’s factual culpability, thus establishing an early
landmark for freedom of the press and jury independ-
ence. Id. at 873-74. Indeed, “Zenger’s trial was not an
 5

aberration; during the pre-Revolutionary period, ju-

ries and grand juries all but nullified the law of sedi-
tious libel in the colonies.” Id. America’s Founders
thus “inherited a well-evolved view of the role of the
jury, and both adopted it and adapted it for use in the
new Nation.” CONRAD, supra, at 4.
A corollary of Colonial juries’ authority to issue
binding acquittals was their awareness of the conse-
quences of a conviction. In an era with a far simpler
criminal code, detailed instructions from the judge
were often unnecessary to ensure that the jury was
properly informed. See, e.g., JEFFREY ABRAMSON, WE,
THE JURY: THE JURY SYSTEM AND THE IDEAL OF DEMOC-
RACY 22–29, 32, 34-35 (1994) (“[J]urors did not even
need to rely on a judge’s instructions to know the com-
mon law of the land . . . .”). Juries were thus able—and
expected—to tailor their verdicts to prevent excessive
punishment. See, e.g., 4 WILLIAM M. BLACKSTONE,
COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND *342-44
(1769) (juries often found value of stolen goods to be
less than twelvepence in order to avoid mandatory
death penalty for theft of more valuable goods).
Ultimately, the jury trial was understood not just
to be a fair means of deciding guilt or innocence, but
also as an independent institution designed to give the
community a central role in the administration of
criminal justice. “Those who emigrated to this country
from England brought with them this great privilege
‘as their birthright and inheritance, as a part of that
admirable common law which had fenced around and
interposed barriers on every side against the ap-
proaches of arbitrary power.’” Thompson v. Utah, 170
U.S. 343, 349-50 (1898) (quoting J. STORY, COMMEN-
TARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
 6

§ 1779). Alexander Hamilton observed that “friends

and adversaries of the plan of the [constitutional] con-
vention, if they agree[d] in nothing else, concur[red] at
least in the value they set upon the trial by jury; or if
there [was] any difference between them it consist[ed]
in this: the former regard[ed] it as a valuable safe-
guard to liberty; the latter represent[ed] it as the very
palladium of free government.” THE FEDERALIST NO.
83.
Indeed, the community itself has a strong interest,
complementary to but separate from that of the indi-
vidual defendant, in seeing that its verdicts—rendered
through a jury process that “the Constitution regards
as the most likely to produce a fair result,” Yeager v.
United States, 557 U.S. 110, 122 (2009)—are given
great deference. And nowhere is that more true than
in the context of a jury acquittal, which the Constitu-
tion regards as inviolate. See Burks v. United States,
437 U.S. 1, 17 (1978); see also, e.g., Yeager, 557 U.S. at
123 (extolling the “unassailable” finality of jury acquit-
tal).
When judges sentence on the basis of acquitted con-
duct, they fundamentally undermine the community’s
duty and prerogative to oversee the administration of
criminal justice. “Just as suffrage ensures the people’s
ultimate control in the legislative and executive
branches,” the “jury trial is meant to ensure [the peo-
ple’s] control in the judiciary,” and constitutes a “fun-
damental reservation of power in our constitutional
structure.” Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296, 306
(2004). By providing an “opportunity for ordinary citi-
zens to participate in the administration of justice,”
the jury trial “preserves the democratic element of the
law,” Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400, 406-07 (1991), and
 7

“places the real direction of society in the hands of the

governed,” AKHIL REED AMAR, THE BILL OF RIGHTS:
CREATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 88 (1998) (quoting
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 293–
94 (Phillips Bradley ed. 1945)).
To protect this long tradition of jury independence
and popular sovereignty, the Court should grant the
petition and reverse the decision below.
II. PROTECTING THE FINALITY OF JURY
ACQUITTALS IS ESPECIALLY IM-
PORTANT IN LIGHT OF THE VANISH-
INGLY SMALL ROLE THAT JURY TRIALS
PLAY IN OUR CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYS-
TEM.
The jury trial is foundational to the notion of Amer-
ican criminal justice, and it is discussed more exten-
sively in the Constitution than nearly any other sub-
ject. Article III states, in mandatory, structural lan-
guage, that “[t]he Trial of all Crimes . . . shall be by
Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where
the said Crimes shall have been committed.” U.S.
CONST. art. III, § 2 (emphases added). And the Sixth
Amendment not only guarantees the right to a jury
trial generally, but lays out in specific detail the form
such a trial shall take. See Faretta v. California, 422
U.S. 806, 818 (1975) (“The rights to notice, confronta-
tion, and compulsory process, when taken together,
guarantee that a criminal charge may be answered in
a manner now considered fundamental to the fair ad-
ministration of American justice . . . .”).
Yet despite their intended centrality as the bedrock
of our criminal justice system, jury trials are being
pushed to the brink of extinction. The proliferation of
 8

plea bargaining, which was completely unknown to the

Founders, has transformed the country’s robust “sys-
tem of trials” into a “system of pleas.” Lafler v. Cooper,
566 U.S. 156, 170 (2012); see also George Fisher, Plea
Bargaining’s Triumph, 109 YALE L.J. 857, 859 (2000)
(observing that plea bargaining “has swept across the
penal landscape and driven our vanquished jury into
small pockets of resistance”).
The Framers understood that “the jury right [may]
be lost not only by gross denial, but by erosion.” Jones,
526 U.S. at 248. That erosion is nearly complete, as
plea bargains now comprise all but a tiny fraction of
convictions. See Lafler, 566 U.S. at 170 (in 2012, pleas
made up “[n]inety-seven percent of federal convictions
and ninety-four percent of state convictions”); Suja A.
Thomas, What Happened to the American Jury?, LITI-
GATION, Spring 2017, at 25 (“[J]uries today decide only
1-4 percent of criminal cases filed in federal and state
court.”).
Most troubling, there is ample reason to believe
that many criminal defendants—regardless of factual
guilt—are effectively coerced into taking pleas, simply
because the risk of going to trial is too great. See Jed
S. Rakoff, Why Innocent People Plead Guilty, N.Y. REV.
OF BOOKS, Nov. 20, 2014. In a recent report, the
NACDL has extensively documented this “trial pen-
alty”—that is, the “discrepancy between the sentence
the prosecutor is willing to offer in exchange for a
guilty plea and the sentence that would be imposed af-
ter a trial.” NAT’L ASS’N OF CRIM. DEF. LAWYERS, THE
TRIAL PENALTY: THE SIXTH AMENDMENT RIGHT TO
TRIAL ON THE VERGE OF EXTINCTION AND HOW TO SAVE
IT 6 (2018).
 9

Although the trial penalty has many complex

causes, one of the biggest factors is the unbridled
charging discretion of prosecutors in conjunction with
severe sentences (especially mandatory minimums).
See id. 7, 24-38. Given the pressure that prosecutors
can bring to bear through charging decisions alone,
many defendants decide to waive their right to a jury
trial, no matter the merits of their case.
In short, criminal juries have been dramatically
marginalized. The result is not only that criminal pros-
ecutions are rarely subjected to the adversarial testing
of evidence that our Constitution envisions, but also
that citizens are deprived of their prerogative to act as
an independent check on the state in the administra-
tion of criminal justice. We have, in effect, traded the
transparency, accountability, and legitimacy that
arises from public jury trials for the simplicity and ef-
ficiency of a plea-driven process that would have been
both unrecognizable and profoundly objectionable to
the Founders. And permitting sentencing based on ac-
quitted conduct will only exacerbate this already-con-
cerning trend.
As one judge recently explained, “factoring acquit-
ted conduct into sentencing decisions imposes almost
insurmountable pressure on defendants to forgo their
constitutional right to a trial by jury.” United States v.
Bell, 808 F.3d 926, 932 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (Millett, J.,
concurring in the denial of rehearing en banc). Even if
a defendant goes to trial and wins on the more serious
counts, “a hard-fought partial victory . . . can be ren-
dered practically meaningless when that acquitted
conduct nonetheless produces a drastically lengthened
sentence.” Id. The implication of this practice is there-
 10

fore that “[d]efendants will face all the risks of convic-

tion, with no practical upside to acquittal unless they
run the board and are absolved of all charges.” Id.
There is no panacea for the jury’s diminishing role
in our criminal justice system; it is a deep, structural
problem that far exceeds the bounds of any one case or
doctrine. But the least we can do to avoid further dis-
couraging defendants from exercising their right to a
jury trial is to ensure that juries maintain their his-
toric authority to issue acquittals with absolute final-
ity. Defendants must be assured that if they are ac-
quitted of the most serious charges against them, a
judge will not be able to do an end-run around the jury
and sentence them based on the acquitted conduct.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, and those described by
the Petitioner, this Court should grant the petition.

Respectfully submitted,
Clark M. Neily III
Jay R. Schweikert
Counsel of Record
CATO INSTITUTE
1000 Mass. Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 216-1461
[email protected]

September 18, 2019