426
Opinion of the Court
courts "may, within limits, formulate procedural rules not specifically required by the Constitution or the Congress." United States v. Hasting, 461 U. S. 499, 505 (1983). Whatever the scope of this "inherent power," however, it does not include the power to develop rules that circumvent or conflict with the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. As we recognized in Bank of Nova Scotia v. United States, 487 U. S. 250, 254-255 (1988), holding that federal courts may not invoke supervisory power to circumvent Rule 52(a): "[F]ederal courts have no more discretion to disregard the Rule's mandate than they do to disregard constitutional or statutory provisions." Whether the action of the District Court here is described as the granting of an untimely motion, or the sua sponte entry of a judgment of acquittal, it contradicted the plain language of Rule 29(c), and effectively annulled the 7-day filing limit.
In Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., 501 U. S. 32, 47 (1991), we said that we would not " 'lightly assume that Congress has intended to depart from established principles' such as the scope of a court's inherent power," id., at 47 (quoting Weinberger v. Romero-Barcelo, 456 U. S. 305, 313 (1982)). Similarly, in Link v. Wabash R. Co., 370 U. S. 626, 629-632 (1962), we said that since a district court's authority to dismiss sua sponte for lack of prosecution was a "sanction of wide usage," we would not assume, in the absence of a clear expression, that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b), which allowed a party to move for dismissal for lack of prosecution, abrogated this "long . . . unquestioned" power. That cautionary principle does not apply in the present case, not only because of the clarity of the text, but also because we are unaware of any "long unquestioned" power of federal district courts to acquit for insufficient evidence sua sponte, after return of a guilty verdict. Indeed, we are aware of only two cases prior to the enactment of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure that could be read as asserting in dictum the existence of
Page: Index Previous 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007