United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit _____________________________________

August Term 2022

(Argued: June 28, 2023 Decided: December 11, 2023)

Nos. 22-1057, 22-1061

_____________________________________

LYNN ALLEN, CHERI GARCIA, TIMOTHY CORSI,

Defendants-Appellants-Cross-Appellees,

— v. —

GRIST MILL CAPITAL LLC,

Plaintiff-Appellee-Cross-Appellant,

DANIEL E. CARPENTER,

Plaintiff.∗ _____________________________________ Before: LYNCH, LOHIER, and BIANCO, Circuit Judges.

The government, through defendant-appellant-cross-appellee Lynn Allen, an agent of the United States Department of Labor (“DOL”), appeals from an order of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Underhill, J.) ∗ The Clerk of the Court is respectfully instructed to amend the caption to conform with the above. granting, in part, plaintiff-appellee-cross-appellant Grist Mill Capital LLC’s (“GMC”) motion for return of property under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g).

At issue is the government’s retention of financial documents, which the DOL obtained pursuant to court-authorized search warrants and a grand jury subpoena in connection with a federal criminal investigation and prosecution of Daniel E. Carpenter in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut. In May 2022, the district court granted, in part, GMC’s motion under Rule 41(g), holding that the government failed to demonstrate a legitimate need justifying the continued retention of the seized materials given that this Court affirmed Carpenter’s criminal conviction and the Supreme Court denied his petition for certiorari.

We VACATE the district court’s order and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion, and we DISMISS GMC’s cross-appeal as moot.

NEERAJ N. PATEL (Sandra S. Glover, on the brief), Assistant United States Attorneys, for Vanessa Roberts Avery, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, New Haven, CT, for Defendants-Appellants-Cross-Appellees.

JONATHAN J. EINHORN, Jonathan J. Einhorn Law Offices, New Haven, CT (Jeffrey R. Sandberg, Palmer Lehman Sandberg, PLCC, Dallas TX, on the brief), for Plaintiff-Appellee-Cross- Appellant. JOSEPH F. BIANCO, Circuit Judge:

In this case, the government appeals from an order of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Underhill, J.) granting, in part,

2 plaintiff-appellee-cross-appellant Grist Mill Capital LLC’s (“GMC”) motion for return of property under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g). This case comes to us after a complex procedural history. GMC filed the Rule 41(g) motion on the docket of a Bivens action that GMC filed, along with Daniel E. Carpenter (collectively, “plaintiffs”), against defendants Lynn Allen, Cheri Garcia, and Timothy Corsi in their individual capacities, who were law enforcement agents employed by the United States Department of Labor