In re: Grand Jury Matter #3 — criminal / jurisdictional — reversal — per curiam

This past October, a divided Third Circuit panel ruled in this case that it lacked jurisdiction to hear an appeal from grand jury evidentiary ruling because, while the appeal was pending, the grand jury indicted the defendant. (My post on the prior ruling is here.)

Today, the same Third Circuit panel granted rehearing, vacated its prior opinion, and now ruled that it did have jurisdiction because the grand jury investigation was continuing. On the merits, it held that the district court erred in admitting the evidence:

With jurisdiction, we turn to an important question
involving the limits of the exception to the confidentiality
normally afforded to attorney work product. It loses
protection from disclosure when it is used to further a fraud
(hence the carve-out is called the crime-fraud exception).
The District Court stripped an attorney’s work product of
confidentiality based on evidence suggesting only that the
client had thought about using that product to facilitate a
fraud, not that the client had actually done so. Because an
actual act to further the fraud is required before attorney work
product loses its confidentiality and we know of none here,
we reverse.

The panel remained McKee, Ambro, and Scirica. Counsel for the John Doe appellant was Scott Resnik of New York, with Mark Dubnoff for the government.

UPDATE: Keith Donoghue, an appellate-unit assistant federal defender in Philadelphia, has posted this helpful analysis of the opinion on the Federal Defender Third Circuit Blog.