Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-08-03012/USCOURTS-caDC-08-03012-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Ricardo Palmera Pineda
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 24, 2009 Decided January 26, 2010 

No. 08-3012 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

APPELLEE

v. 

RICARDO PALMERA PINEDA, ALSO KNOWN AS SIMON 

TRINIDAD, 

APPELLANT

On Petition for Rehearing 

Before: GINSBURG and HENDERSON, Circuit Judges, and 

EDWARDS, Senior Circuit Judge. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GINSBURG. 

Circuit Judge HENDERSON concurs in the judgment. 

GINSBURG, Circuit Judge: Ricardo Pineda, a member of 

the Colombian guerilla group Fuerzas Armadas 

Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), was convicted of 

violating 18 U.S.C. § 1203 (penalizing whomever “seizes or 

detains and threatens to ... continue to detain another person 

in order to compel a ... governmental organization to do ... 

any act as [a] ... condition for the release of the person 

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detained, or ... conspires to do so”) based upon evidence he 

conspired with other members of the FARC to detain several 

American citizens to be used as bargaining chips in 

negotiations with the government of Colombia. During his 

trial the prosecution presented strong evidence of Pineda’s 

guilt: Pineda was a member of the FARC; the FARC had 

designated Pineda to be one of its negotiators for the release 

of the Americans; Pineda admitted he went to Quito on behalf 

of the FARC to contact a U.N. representative and to deliver a 

message that the FARC wanted to negotiate prisoner 

exchanges; and Pineda acknowledged that, when he went to 

Quito, he agreed with the FARC’s policy that prisoners would 

not be released unless the FARC got something in exchange 

from the government of Colombia. It was also undisputed 

that the FARC captured the Americans in order to compel the 

Colombian government to take certain acts. The prosecution 

also presented — and the district court admitted over 

objection — evidence of crimes committed by the FARC in 

which Pineda played no role. 

When we affirmed Pineda’s conviction we explained 

that, although the district court erred by admitting evidence of 

crimes in which Pineda was not involved, the error was 

harmless. Specifically, we wrote: “The Government’s case 

was strong enough that we cannot say it is ‘highly probable’ 

the error had a ‘substantial and injurious effect or influence in 

determining the jury’s verdict.’ Kotteakos v. United States, 

328 U.S. 750, 776 (1946).” United States v. Pineda, No. 08-

3012, 2009 WL 3416344, at *1 (Oct. 5, 2009). 

In petitioning for rehearing, Pineda calls our attention to 

an inconsistency in the way this circuit has restated the 

standard established in Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 

750 (1946), for our review of non-constitutional harmless 

error. In some cases, including this one, we have seemingly 

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asked whether it is “highly probable” an error had a 

“substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining 

the jury’s verdict.” See, e.g., United States v. Harris, 491 

F.3d 440, 452 (2007). In other cases we have articulated a 

less demanding standard for deeming an error harmless. See, 

e.g., United States v. Bailey, 319 F.3d 514, 519 (2003) (“fair 

assurance ... that the judgment was not substantially swayed 

by the error”); United States v. Lampkin, 159 F.3d 607, 613 

(1998) (no “real possibility that the [error] had a substantial 

effect on the jury’s verdict”). In still other cases we have 

seemingly dispensed with the concept of probability, asking 

only whether an error had “a substantial and injurious effect 

or influence in determining the jury’s verdict.” See, e.g., 

United States v. Bentley, 489 F.3d 360, 363 (2007). 

The “highly probable” version of the standard for 

harmless error, to which Pineda objects, is indeed less faithful 

to the text and to the reasoning of Kotteakos than are the other 

above-quoted versions of the standard. Although the Court in 

Kotteakos did ultimately determine in that case it was “highly 

probable that the error had substantial and injurious effect or 

influence in determining the jury’s verdict,” 328 U.S. at 776, 

it does not follow that a lower probability of injurious effect 

would have made the error harmless. Earlier in its opinion the 

Court discussed more directly how we are to determine 

whether an error is harmless: 

[I]f one cannot say, with fair assurance, after 

pondering all that happened without stripping 

the erroneous action from the whole, that the 

judgment was not substantially swayed by the 

error, it is impossible to conclude that 

substantial rights were not affected. The 

inquiry cannot be merely whether there was 

enough to support the result, apart from the 

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phase affected by the error. It is rather, even 

so, whether the error itself had substantial 

influence. If so, or if one is left in grave doubt, 

the conviction cannot stand. 

328 U.S. at 765 (emphases added). 

We need not determine today which of this court’s 

versions of the standard for harmless error is most faithful to 

Kotteakos; in this case the admission of evidence about the 

FARC was harmless under any version of that standard. 

Suffice it to say that, after “pondering all that happened 

without stripping the erroneous action from the whole,” we 

are satisfied that “the judgment was not substantially swayed 

by the error.” Kotteakos, 328 U.S. at 765. Accordingly, our 

original judgment is amended by deleting the phrase “it is 

‘highly probable,’” but our conclusion remains the same. 

 

Pineda also suggests, based upon the same phrase in our 

judgment, that we placed the burden of proving harmlessness 

upon the defendant rather than upon the Government. It is 

clear the Government bears the burden of proving 

harmlessness, e.g., United States v. Simpson, 430 F.3d 1177, 

1184 (D.C. Cir. 2005), and nothing in the judgment indicates 

otherwise. 

 In sum, the judgment is amended as indicated above and 

the petition is 

Denied.

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