Joseph Cammarata v. United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, et al.

This petition presents compelling reasons for review under this Court's Rule 10. It arises from the Third Circuit's denial of a petition for a writ of mandamus that raised, across three related federal cases, a conviction for conduct this Court has held lawful, prosecutorial fabrication of evidence, and judicial disqualification. The Government appeared but never answered the petition; it sat unopposed for nearly a year; and the court of appeals then denied it, in a four-page not-precedential opinion that engaged none of the constitutional allegations, on the ground that petitioner "can obtain appellate review" in his pending direct appeals. Two of those appeals have since been affirmed by the same court whose impartiality is challenged, and the third, the very proceeding pitting petitioner against the government attorney whose spouse is employed by that court, has sat undecided for more than two years without a responsive brief, so that this Court is now the only forum in which petitioner Can obtain any review at all. The case satisfies Rule 10 on two independent grounds. First, under Rule 10(a), the court of appeals "so far departed from the accepted and usual course of judicial proceedings ... as to call for an exercise of this Court's supervisory power": it held an unopposed, fully submitted petition alleging fabricated evidence and a structural conflict for 361 days, disposed of every motion, including a motion to transfer the case to a circuit free of the conflict, in a single sentence, and denied relief without ever addressing the conflict it was asked to remedy, all while itself operating under the very disqualifying relationship alleged. Second, under Rule 10(c), the courts below have left standing, and refused to test, a federal criminal conviction that squarely conflicts with this Court's unanimous decision in Sprint Communications Co. v. APCC Services, Inc., 554 U.S. 269 (2008): an important question of federal law this Court has never resolved and that will recur, namely whether conduct this Court has held lawful may be punished as a federal crime where no court will adjudicate the controlling authority. The integrity of the federal courts, and the public's confidence in them, are directly at stake. The questions presented are:

1. Whether a court of appeals may deny mandamus for want of "other adequate means to obtain relief," Cheney v. U.S. Dist. Court, 542 U.S. 367, 380 (2004), by pointing to direct appeals that are either (a) pending unadjudicated before the same court for more than two years while the Government defaults on its briefing, or (b) since resolved against the petitioner by that same court, so that the "adequate alternative" the court invoked is now no alternative at all. ■ 2. Whether the Due Process Clause is violated, and vacatur required under Williams v. Pennsylvania, 579 U.S. 1 (2016), Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U.S. 868 (2009), and Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510 (1927), where all four of petitioner's related appeals were heard within a single court of appeals, every panel of which was operationally supported by Jeanne T. Donnelly, an attorney employed by that court's own Executive Office who is the spouse of the very government attorney petitioner had charged with the uncontested misconduct; where the one proceeding placing petitioner directly against her husband, the Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement appeal, No. 24-1381, has itself been left undecided for more than two years without a responsive brief from the Government; where the relationship is established of record, was asserted in petitioner's filings for more than two years, and was never once denied; and where that same court, itself laboring under the conflict, disposed of the unopposed mandamus petition raising it through a 361-day silence and a denial that engaged none of the constitutional allegations.

2. Whether a federal criminal conviction may stand, and mandamus lies to compel its examination, where in four and a half years no court, trial, panel, or en banc, has ever adjudicated whether the charged conduct is an offense against' the United States, when that conduct is the assignment of securities class-action settlement'claims, the precise conduct this Court unanimously held lawful in Sprint Communications Co. v. APCC Services, Inc., 554 U. S. 269 (2008); where the prosecution suppressed Sprint and the financially interested trial judge failed to enter the order required by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 5(f); and where every subsequent conviction, judgment, and ruling against petitioner is predicated on that single unreviewed conviction.

3. Whether, under United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725 (1993), the combined effect of these features "seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings" such that this Court's supervisory intervention is warranted.