Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-11-03058/USCOURTS-caDC-11-03058-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Christopher Sealey
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 4, 2014 Decided September 1, 2015

No. 11-3054

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

ANDERSON STRAKER, ALSO KNOWN AS GYPSY’S SON, ALSO 

KNOWN AS ANDY,

APPELLANT

Consolidated with 11-3055, 11-3056, 11-3057, 11-3058, 

11-3059, 11-3061

Appeals from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:06-cr-00102)

No. 11-5124

ZION CLARKE, ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

v.

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LORETTA E. LYNCH, ATTORNEY GENERAL, U.S. DEPARTMENT 

OF JUSTICE AND VINCENT H. COHEN JR., ACTING UNITED 

STATES ATTORNEY FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:09-cv-00753)

Victoria Killion, Charles B. Wayne, Andrew M. Treaster, 

Jonathan S. Zucker, Paul S. Rosenzweig, Steven R. Kiersh, and 

Andrew Macurdy, appointed by the court, argued the causes for 

appellants. With them on the briefs were Justin S. 

Antonipillai, Leeann R. Morentz, Jeffrey B. O=Toole, 

Christopher S. Rhee, Jocelyn A. Wiesner, and Pleasant S. 

Brodnax III, appointed by the court. Lisa S. Blatt entered an 

appearance.

David B. Goodhand and W. Mark Nebeker, Assistant U.S. 

Attorneys, argued the causes for appellees. With them on the 

brief were Ronald C. Machen Jr., U.S. Attorney, Bruce R. 

Hegyi, Trial Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, and R. 

Craig Lawrence, Elizabeth Trosman, and Elizabeth H. 

Danello, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

Before: TATEL, MILLETT and PILLARD, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed PER CURIAM. 

PER CURIAM: The Hostage Taking Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1203, 

prescribes criminal penalties for foreign nationals who abduct 

American citizens. In this case, nationals of the Republic of 

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Trinidad and Tobago abducted wealthy individuals, held them 

captive in the island’s mountainous forests, and extorted 

ransoms from terrified family and friends. The scheme 

proved quite profitable—at least until they kidnapped an 

American citizen and ran headlong into the Hostage Taking 

Act. The conspirators were extradited to the United States, 

tried, and convicted of violating the Act. But does that statute 

apply if, as defendants allege, the victim secured his United 

States citizenship through fraud? The district court held that it 

does, and for the reasons set forth in this opinion, we agree. 

Rejecting all of the conspirators’ other challenges, we affirm 

their convictions in all respects.

I.

By early 2005, defendants Wayne Pierre, Ricardo De

Four, and Zion Clarke had perfected their hostage-taking 

protocol and regularly extorted six-figure ransoms

(Trinidadian dollars). Looking to up the ante, the three 

enlarged their organization to include defendants Kevon 

Demerieux, Kevin Nixon, Christopher Sealey, and Anderson 

Straker, and set their sights on Trinidad-native Balram 

Maharaj, whom they believed had amassed a fortune in the 

United States. Although naturalized as an American citizen in 

1995, Maharaj frequently visited his children in Trinidad. 

Defendants, assisted by a host of unindicted co-conspirators, 

planned to abduct Maharaj during one of those visits.

On the night of April 6, 2005, defendants executed their

plan. Sealey and Nixon, armed with handguns, dragged 

Maharaj from Samaan Tree Bar in Aranguez, Trinidad and 

forced him into a getaway car while De Four drove ahead in a 

separate vehicle to clear the way. Sealey and Nixon delivered 

Maharaj to an isolated camp deep within the forest where 

Clarke and Demerieux guarded him. A nightmare ensued. 

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The two guards tied Maharaj to a post and gave him little 

food and water. Suffering from severe diabetes, hypertension, 

and tuberculosis, Maharaj pleaded for medication. Clarke and 

Demerieux ignored his pleas while their co-conspirator, 

Winston Gittens, used Maharaj’s worsening health as leverage 

to demand three million Trinidadian dollars from his family. 

Bound and gagged, Maharaj repeatedly refused defendants’ 

attempts to record a “proof of life” video, even when Straker

threatened to harm Maharaj’s son. After six days in captivity, 

Maharaj slipped into a diabetic coma and died. 

Well aware that they had killed a United States citizen, 

defendants voted to conceal their crime. “No body, no 

evidence, no case,” proclaimed Pierre. Using a machete and 

their bare hands, Clarke, Demerieux, and Pierre removed 

Maharaj’s internal organs and dismembered his body. They 

packed the remains in Styrofoam containers and buried them in 

the woods. As with most buried secrets, however, 

defendants’ misdeeds eventually surfaced. 

In late 2005, the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service 

began an investigation of defendants’ hostage-taking ring.

Assisted by the FBI, Trinidadian police ultimately uncovered 

evidence of Maharaj’s death. The United States extradited 

defendants and charged them with conspiracy and 

hostage-taking resulting in death in violation of the Hostage 

Taking Act. The facts and circumstances surrounding the 

kidnapping are largely undisputed—indeed, five of the seven 

defendants confessed. Defendants primarily argue that 

Maharaj misrepresented key facts on his immigration 

applications, thus negating his United States citizenship—an 

essential element of a Hostage Taking Act prosecution. The 

district court rejected this argument, as well as numerous other 

objections. After a ten-week trial, the jury convicted 

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defendants of all charges, and the district court sentenced them 

to life imprisonment without the possibility of release. 

Defendants now appeal their convictions on numerous 

grounds. We address the arguments pertaining to Maharaj’s 

citizenship in Part II and then consider defendants’ other 

arguments in Parts III through XI. 

II.

Enacted to fulfill the United States’ obligations under the 

International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages, the 

Hostage Taking Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1203, makes extraterritorial 

hostage-taking a criminal offense when the victim is a United 

States national. On appeal, it is undisputed that at the time of 

his death Balram Maharaj possessed an authentic certificate of 

naturalization.

Before trial, however, defendants uncovered evidence 

they claim demonstrates that Maharaj obtained his 

naturalization through fraud. According to this evidence, 

Maharaj, formerly Aladdin Barlow John, first entered the 

United States in 1967 as a non-immigrant transit en route to 

Canada. Following a short visit there, Maharaj returned to the 

United States, briefly settling in New York before enlisting in 

the Army in 1968. He deserted seven months later. In order 

to avoid prosecution for desertion, Maharaj completed a 

clemency program and was ultimately discharged from the 

Army as undesirable. 

In April 1986, the Immigration and Naturalization Service 

(INS), having discovered that Maharaj had overstayed his 1967 

transitory permit, ordered him to leave the United States. But 

instead of leaving, he petitioned INS for permanent-resident 

alien status, also known as a green card. Asked on his green 

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card application whether he had ever been convicted of a crime 

involving moral turpitude, Maharaj checked “no” even though,

defendants claim, he had once pleaded guilty to petty larceny 

and was on probation. Maharaj also checked “no” when 

asked whether he had ever suffered an “attack of insanity,” 

narcotic drug addiction, or chronic alcoholism, even though his 

ex-wife would years later attest in an unrelated proceeding that 

he had previously spent time in a mental-health facility, 

attempted suicide, and chronically abused alcohol and 

prescription drugs. INS granted Maharaj’s petition. 

After maintaining permanent-resident status for five years, 

Maharaj applied for full naturalization in 1994. On the 

application, Maharaj checked “no” when asked whether he had 

ever been ordered deported. And when asked whether he had 

ever knowingly committed a crime for which he had not been 

arrested, he checked “no” even though his ex-wife had testified 

that he once physically assaulted and raped her. INS granted 

Maharaj citizenship in 1995. 

The question whether Maharaj’s misrepresentations 

negated his citizenship and, in turn, defendants’ guilt, was the 

most contested issue throughout the proceedings in the district 

court. Defendants first raised the issue in a motion to dismiss 

the indictment, arguing that because conviction under the 

Hostage Taking Act requires U.S. citizenship and because 

Maharaj’s fraud negated his citizenship, the district court 

lacked jurisdiction. The district court disagreed. Citing a 

long and unbroken line of Supreme Court precedent, see, e.g., 

United States v. Zucca, 351 U.S. 91, 95 & n.8 (1956); see also 

Bindczyck v. Finucane, 342 U.S. 76, 83 (1951), the district 

court held that 8 U.S.C. § 1451, which permits the United 

States Attorney to institute denaturalization proceedings in a 

federal district court, is the exclusive procedure for voiding the 

citizenship of a person naturalized due to fraud. United States 

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v. Clarke, 628 F. Supp. 2d 1, 9 (D.D.C. 2009). Citizenship, 

the court held, remains valid until a district court, acting upon a 

United States Attorney’s section 1451 motion, determines that 

naturalization was “procured by concealment of a material fact 

or fraud.” Id. at 6 (quoting 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a)). Given that 

no district court had ever made such a finding as to Maharaj, 

the court denied the motion. Clarke, 628 F. Supp. 2d at 10. 

The district court also granted the government’s motion in 

limine to exclude from trial any evidence regarding Maharaj’s 

alleged fraud. Id. at 13. Conviction under the Hostage 

Taking Act, the court held, requires the government to prove 

that the victim acquired citizenship by birth or naturalization. 

Id. at 13. Evidence disputing whether the victim should have 

been naturalized or the circumstances surrounding 

naturalization is irrelevant. Id. The court therefore rejected 

defendants’ argument that they had a Sixth Amendment right 

to present evidence regarding Maharaj’s alleged fraud to the 

jury. Id. at 14. “[T]he jury,” the district court concluded, 

“may not decide the validity of Maharaj’s citizenship.” Id. at 

13.

At trial, the government offered Maharaj’s certificate of 

naturalization and two passports as evidence of his citizenship. 

An employee of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service 

testified that INS issued the certificate of naturalization in 

1995. A State Department Fraud Program Manager testified 

that Maharaj’s two passports, issued in 1995 and 2000, were 

authentic. On cross examination, however, defense counsel 

pointed out that Maharaj’s 1995 passport was unsigned and, as 

the witness conceded, invalid. See 22 C.F.R. § 51.4(a) (“A 

passport book is valid only when signed by the bearer in the 

space designated for signature[.]”). The district court struck 

the 1995 passport from evidence and ruled that challenges to 

the authenticity of the 2000 passport, issued solely on the basis 

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of the stricken 1995 passport, were fair game. In sum, then, 

the district court permitted defendants to argue that the 

citizenship documents were inauthentic, i.e., forged or 

counterfeit, but barred them from collaterally attacking INS’s 

decision to naturalize Maharaj.

In its final instructions, the district court reminded the jury 

that the victim’s citizenship was an essential element of the 

crime that the government must prove beyond a reasonable 

doubt. The 2000 passport and the naturalization certificate, 

the court instructed, may be considered as evidence of 

citizenship. In closing arguments, defense counsel pressed 

this point, claiming that the invalidity of the 1995 passport 

called into question the authenticity of the 2000 passport, as 

well as the naturalization certificate. 

After the jury returned a guilty verdict, defendants, 

reiterating their earlier arguments, moved for a judgment of 

acquittal, or alternatively a new trial. Relying on its prior

reasoning, the district court denied the motion. United States 

v. Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d 12, 65 (D.D.C. 2011).

The criminal trial was not the only forum in which 

defendants challenged Maharaj’s citizenship. Prior to trial, 

defendants submitted affidavits to the United States Attorney 

for the District of Columbia detailing Maharaj’s alleged fraud 

and requesting initiation of section 1451 proceedings. When 

the U.S. Attorney took no action, defendants petitioned the 

district court for a writ of mandamus requiring the U.S. 

Attorney to initiate denaturalization proceedings. The 

government moved to dismiss pursuant to Federal Rules of 

Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) for lack of jurisdiction and 12(b)(6) 

for failure to state a claim. The district court granted the Rule 

12(b)(1) motion, finding that defendants lacked constitutional 

standing because they failed to demonstrate that their requested 

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remedy—initiation of section 1451 proceedings—would 

redress their claimed injury, i.e., denial of the right to present 

evidence in the criminal trial. It is “wholly speculative,” the 

court concluded, whether the U.S. Attorney could meet the 

high burden of proof necessary to denaturalize Maharaj, 

“especially in light of evidentiary problems that may arise so 

long after Maharaj’s death and his inability to defend himself.” 

Clarke v. Holder, 767 F. Supp. 2d 106, 109 (D.D.C. 2011). 

Alternatively, the district court found that even if defendants 

could establish standing, they failed to meet the threshold 

requirements for mandamus relief because the U.S. Attorney 

had no clear duty to seek posthumous denaturalization of 

Maharaj. Id. at 112–13.

On appeal, defendants argue that the district court lacked 

jurisdiction under the Hostage Taking Act and erred in 

excluding evidence contesting the validity of Maharaj’s 

naturalization. Defendants also appeal the district court’s 

denial of their petition for a writ of mandamus. We address 

each issue in turn.

The Criminal Conviction

Defendants argue that “[s]ubject matter jurisdiction . . . 

hinges entirely on Mr. Maharaj’s citizenship.” Def. Br. 12. 

This, however, misapprehends the nature of federal court 

jurisdiction in criminal cases. A claim that an element of the 

offense is unsatisfied—that the victim was not a United States 

citizen, for example—goes only to a defendant’s guilt or 

innocence. In other words, jurisdiction hinges not on the 

merits, but rather on the court’s constitutional or statutory 

power to adjudicate the case. Lamar v. United States, 240 

U.S. 60, 64 (1916) (“Jurisdiction is a matter of power, and 

covers wrong as well as right decisions.”). Under 18 U.S.C. 

§ 3231, federal district courts possess statutory authority over 

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“all offenses against the laws of the United States.” Because 

violation of the Hostage Taking Act is an offense against the 

laws of the United States, our jurisdictional inquiry ends and 

we turn to the merits of defendants’ appeal. United States v. 

Fahnbulleh, 752 F.3d 470, 476 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (“If an 

indictment or information alleges the violation of a crime set 

out in Title 18 or in one of the other statutes defining federal 

crimes, that is the end of the jurisdictional inquiry.”) (internal 

quotation marks omitted).

Defendants make two arguments. They first claim that 

the district court’s exclusion of evidence regarding Maharaj’s 

alleged fraud violated their constitutional right to present a 

complete defense. They also argue that the district court 

removed the citizenship question from the jury, thus relieving 

the government of its burden to prove Maharaj’s citizenship 

beyond a reasonable doubt. 

With respect to both arguments, our starting point is the 

text of the Hostage Taking Act. Section 1203(b)(1)(A) 

criminalizes hostage-taking that occurs outside the United 

States if “the person seized or detained is a national of the 

United States.” A “national of the United States” is, in turn, 

defined by reference to the Immigration and Nationality Act as 

“a citizen of the United States.” 18 U.S.C. § 1203(c); 8 U.S.C. 

§ 1101(a)(22). By its plain language, then, section 1203 

broadly protects United States citizens. The statute imposes

no restriction on this protection. It does not, for example, 

exclude citizens who, in retrospect, are unworthy of the honor. 

Nor does it exclude persons whose citizenship might at some 

later time be invalidated. In other words, section 1203 

protects victims according to their status at the time of the 

hostage-taking. 

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True, section 1203 is written in the present tense—the 

statute applies if “the person seized or detained is a national of 

the United States.” But that clause appears in a criminal 

statute that requires examination of past events—whether the 

victim was seized or detained. See Cullen v. Pinholster, 131 

S. Ct. 1388, 1398 (2011) (use of backward-looking language 

such as “resulted in” and “involved” in federal habeas statute, 

28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), requires examination of the state-court 

decision at the time it was made). A more familiar statute, the 

Armed Career Criminal Act, provides a helpful parallel. The 

ACCA imposes a sentence enhancement if the defendant “has 

three previous convictions . . . for . . . serious drug offense[s]” 

for which “a maximum term of imprisonment of ten years or 

more is prescribed by law.” 18 U.S.C. § 924(e) (emphasis 

added). As the Supreme Court has explained, “[t]he plain text 

of ACCA” therefore “requires the court to determine whether a 

‘previous conviction’ was for a serious drug offense.” McNeill 

v. United States, 131 S. Ct. 2218, 2221–22 (2011) (emphases 

added). To answer that “backward-looking question,” the 

Court held that the sentencing court must “consult the law that 

applied at the time of that conviction.” Id. at 2222. So too 

here. Determining whether an American citizen was seized or 

detained under the Hostage Taking Act requires examination 

of the victim’s status at the time of the abduction.

This focus on status at the time of the crime is hardly 

unusual. For instance, convictions under the federal statute 

that bars felons from possessing firearms rest solely upon the 

fact of the prior felony. Lewis v. United States, 445 U.S. 55, 

62–65 (1980). The validity of the prior conviction is 

irrelevant even when that conviction is patently 

unconstitutional. Id.; see also Custis v. United States, 511 

U.S. 485, 493–97 (1994) (defendants in federal sentencing 

proceedings may not, with a narrow exception for certain 

convictions obtained in violation of the right to counsel,

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challenge the validity of prior state convictions used to 

enhance sentences under the Armed Career Criminal Act). 

Likewise, defendants accused of providing material support to 

designated foreign terrorist organizations in violation of 18 

U.S.C. § 2339B may not challenge the validity of the 

designation. United States v. Hammoud, 381 F.3d 316, 331 

(4th Cir. 2004) (en banc) (“Congress has provided that the fact

of an organization’s designation as an FTO is an element of 

§ 2339B, but the validity of the designation is not.”), rev’d on 

other grounds, 543 U.S. 1097 (2005); see also United States v. 

Mandel, 914 F.2d 1215, 1222 (9th Cir. 1990) (defendants 

charged with illegally exporting items on the Secretary of 

Commerce’s Commodity Control List may not challenge the 

validity of the Secretary’s designation).

Finally, our interpretation of the Hostage Taking Act 

reinforces its purpose. When President Reagan proposed the 

bill that ultimately became the Act, he declared that it would 

“send a strong and vigorous message to friend and foe alike 

that the United States will not tolerate terrorist activity against 

its citizens[.]” President’s Message to the Congress 

Transmitting Proposed Legislation to Combat International 

Terrorism, Pub. Papers, Admin. of Ronald Reagan 3–4 (Apr. 

26, 1984). This “strong and vigorous message” would be 

severely diluted if foreign nationals could target American 

citizens for abduction and then avoid prosecution in the United 

States by impugning the victim’s character. This is especially 

true where, as here, defendants targeted the victim not only 

because he was an American, but also because he had assets in 

the United States. Permitting them to escape prosecution by 

arguing that Maharaj was undeserving of United States 

citizenship would weaken the protection Congress intended to 

extend to Americans abroad. 

 

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For all of these reasons, the district court properly 

excluded evidence of Maharaj’s alleged fraud as irrelevant. 

Congress has vested sole naturalization authority in the 

Attorney General, 8 U.S.C. § 1421(a), and a certificate of 

naturalization represents conclusive evidence of the Attorney 

General’s determination, Tutun v. United States, 270 U.S. 568, 

577 (1926); 8 U.S.C. § 1443(e). As explained above, whether 

the Attorney General, acting through INS, should have issued a 

certificate to Maharaj—as opposed to whether the certificate 

was itself authentic—is irrelevant under the Hostage Taking 

Act. 

The Mandamus Proceedings

This brings us to defendants’ appeal of the district court’s 

denial of their petition for a writ of mandamus requiring the 

United States Attorney to initiate posthumous denaturalization

proceedings against Maharaj under 8 U.S.C. § 1451. Recall 

that the district court denied the petition on the grounds that

defendants lacked standing and, alternatively, that they failed 

to meet the requirements for mandamus relief. Clarke v. 

Holder, 767 F. Supp. 2d 106, 116 (D.D.C. 2011). Because we 

agree with the former ruling, we need not address the latter.

In order to have Article III standing to bring their 

mandamus action, defendants must prove that they suffered (1) 

an “injury in fact” that is (2) “fairly . . . traceable to the 

challenged action,” and that is (3) likely to be “redressed by a 

favorable decision.” Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 

555, 560–61 (1992) (internal quotation marks omitted). The 

district court found that defendants failed to establish the third 

element, redressability, i.e., “a substantial likelihood that the 

relief requested will redress the injury claimed.” Duke Power 

Co. v. Carolina Envtl. Study Grp., Inc., 438 U.S. 59, 75 n.20 

(1978) (internal quotation marks omitted). Reviewing 

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defendants’ evidence, the district court thought it “wholly 

speculative” whether the government could meet section 

1451’s burden of proving fraud by “clear, unequivocal, and 

convincing evidence.” Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d at 109, 112 

(quoting Fedorenko v. United States, 449 U.S. 490, 505 

(1981)). Given this, defendants’ alleged “injury—their 

hostage taking convictions—is not redressable by an order 

directing [the government] to initiate [a section 1451] 

proceeding.” Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d at 109.

Defendants challenge the district court’s conclusion on 

two grounds. First, they claim that their “injury is the lack of 

opportunity to present a defense,” which is “necessarily . . . 

redressed if the Government is compelled to bring a § 1451 

hearing against Mr. Maharaj.” Def. Mandamus Br. 9. 

Second, they argue that the district court’s evidentiary rulings 

in the criminal trial, together with its dismissal of their 

mandamus petition, ensnare them in a catch-22: defendants 

“could not show the citizenship evidence at trial because the 

district court had ruled that a Government-initiated § 1451 

proceeding was the exclusive avenue for presenting such 

evidence, but they could not present the evidence in a § 1451 

proceeding because the district court would not allow them to 

challenge the Government’s inaction.” Id. at 8. 

Both arguments are foreclosed by the conclusion we 

reached in the previous section, i.e., that conviction under the 

Hostage Taking Act depends upon the victim’s citizenship at 

the time of the crime. Balram Maharaj possessed American 

citizenship when defendants abducted him in 2005. Whatever 

happens now is irrelevant. In other words, even if the 

government were to strip Maharaj of his United States 

citizenship under section 1451, defendants’ convictions would 

stand because Maharaj possessed a valid naturalization 

certificate at the time of the crime. Defendants’ alleged injury 

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is therefore incapable of redress not because the outcome of the 

section 1451 proceeding is too speculative (as the district court 

found), but because the outcome of those proceedings could 

not possibly affect defendants’ right to present a full defense to 

a charge under the Hostage Taking Act.

We reach this conclusion despite section 1451’s 

relation-back provision, which provides that denaturalization 

on account of fraud “shall be effective as of the original date of 

the [naturalization] order and certificate.” 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a). 

Based on this provision and pre-section 1451 case law 

espousing the relation-back principle, defendants argue that 

denaturalization on account of Maharaj’s fraud would 

retroactively void his naturalization, meaning that he never

possessed citizenship and thus was not a national under the 

Hostage Taking Act. Def. Mandamus Br. 11 n.8.

The Supreme Court, however, has rejected mechanical 

application of section 1451’s relation-back principle. 

Costello v. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 376 U.S. 

120, 130 (1964). In Costello, the Court examined section 

1451’s language and legislative history to determine whether 

the provision applied to the “general deportation provisions” of 

the Immigration and Nationality Act. Id. at 129. The Court 

concluded that Congress intended the relation-back provision 

simply to codify pre-existing case law that retroactively voided 

fraudulently-acquired naturalization for the purpose of 

determining derivative citizenship, i.e., citizenship conveyed 

to children through the naturalization of one or both parents. 

Id. Calling relation-back a “legal fiction,” the Court refused, 

absent express congressional command, to extend that fiction 

to require deportation of a denaturalized individual on the 

theory that crimes committed prior to his denaturalization 

rendered him an alien despite possession of a then-valid 

naturalization certificate. Id. at 130, 132.

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Likewise, nothing in the text or legislative history of 

section 1451—or the Hostage Taking Act—suggests that 

Congress intended the relation-back doctrine to apply in a 

criminal prosecution. Indeed, as explained above, applying 

the doctrine in this context would weaken the purpose of the 

Hostage Taking Act. See supra at 11. We therefore decline, 

as did the Supreme Court in Costello, to extend the legal fiction 

of relation-back into the realm of criminal law. See Costello, 

376 U.S. at 130.

III. 

Objections to Introduction of Evidence of Other Crimes

Defendants challenge the district court’s admission, over 

their repeated objections, of evidence of three other, uncharged 

hostage takings that occurred within four months of the 

Maharaj hostage taking.1 We conclude that the district court 

did not err in admitting that evidence. It was relevant under 

Rule 404(b) as background showing how the conspiracy 

 1 All defendants, with the exception of Straker, state in a footnote in 

their brief their intention to join this argument. Def. Br. 29 n.9. 

While adoption by reference pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate 

Procedure 28(i) may streamline the appeal of common legal issues, it 

threatens to confuse those issues that litigants do not share. See

United States v. Renteria, 720 F.3d 1245, 1251 (10th Cir. 2013),

cert. denied, 134 S. Ct. 969 (2014); United States v. Santana-Pérez,

619 F.3d 117, 122 (1st Cir. 2010). The evidence of other crimes 

was admitted only against Pierre, De Four, and Clarke. The 

remaining defendants, against whom the evidence was not admitted, 

fail to articulate how it affected their rights. Any potential prejudice 

to them of being tried jointly with the defendants against whom the 

prior-crimes evidence was admitted is addressed in connection with 

objections that certain defendants’ trials should have been severed. 

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formed and certain defendants’ intent. Given the care the 

district court took to limit and focus the evidentiary 

presentation, its prejudicial potential did not outweigh its 

probative value under Rule 403.

A.

Before trial, the government submitted a notice of its 

intent to introduce evidence that some of the defendants 

participated in uncharged hostage takings. The district court 

admitted the evidence as relevant to issues other than the 

defendants’ bad character—namely “the background of the 

conspiracy and how the relationships between the participants 

developed, as well as defendants’ motive, intent, knowledge, 

preparation, and plan.” United States v. Straker, 567 F. Supp. 

2d 174, 178–79 (D.D.C. 2008). The evidence was strongly 

probative, in the district court’s view, and thus its value was 

not substantially outweighed by the “fairly low” danger of 

unfair prejudice. Id. at 179.

The district court restricted the government’s presentation 

of the “other crimes” evidence in order to avoid “unnecessary 

presentation of cumulative evidence and to minimize the 

danger of unfair prejudice.” Id. The district court precluded 

the government from introducing any evidence concerning the 

Gopaul hostage taking—an offense in which the hostage takers 

apparently killed the victim after they received an 

unsatisfactory ransom offer—because that evidence presented 

“the most likely case for some degree of unfair prejudice.” Id. 

Additionally, the court permitted the government to introduce 

only three of the four other uncharged hostage takings the 

government identified, id.; see also J.A. 961–62, and limited 

the testimony on those to three hours each. J.A. 3171–72. 

The government accordingly introduced at trial evidence 

that defendants Pierre and De Four participated in three of the 

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uncharged hostage takings, and that defendant Clarke 

participated in two of them. The evidence came in through 

the testimony of the four cooperating co-conspirators and six 

additional witnesses, including the victim of one hostage 

taking and Trinidadian law enforcement officials involved in 

investigating the other hostage takings. The district court 

gave limiting instructions to the jury periodically during the 

trial, informing it that the evidence of other hostage takings 

was admissible only against the specific defendants the jury 

found were involved in them and explaining the purposes for 

which the evidence could, and could not, be considered. See 

Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d at 27–28.

B.

On appeal, defendants argue that the district court’s 

admission of evidence of the three uncharged hostage takings 

violated Rule 404(b) because it was not admitted for any of the 

valid purposes enumerated in that Rule, but impermissibly to 

show their bad characters and propensity to commit the 

charged crimes. The evidence’s probative value was 

substantially outweighed by its unfair prejudicial effect, they 

assert, and was presented in a confusing and prejudicial 

manner, so should have been excluded under Rule 403.

The evidentiary limitation in Rule 404(b) implements the 

fundamental tenet of our criminal justice system that 

defendants may be convicted only for violating the law, not for 

being bad people. United States v. Sutton, 801 F.2d 1346, 

1360 (D.C. Cir. 1986). The Rule prohibits the admission of 

evidence of a crime, wrong, or other bad act “when offered for 

the purpose of proving that a defendant acted in conformity 

with his character, but allows admission so long as the 

evidence is offered for any other relevant purpose.” United 

States v. Lawson, 410 F.3d 735, 741 (D.C. Cir. 2005); United 

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States v. Bowie, 232 F.3d 923, 930 (D.C. Cir. 2000); see also 

Fed. R. Evid. 404(b)(1). Relevant, non-propensity purposes 

include “proving motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, 

knowledge, identity, absence of mistake, or lack of accident.” 

Fed. R. Evid. 404(b)(2).

Even if a court determines that the prosecution’s 

other-crimes evidence is relevant to an issue apart from 

propensity, the evidence may nonetheless be excluded under 

Rule 403 if its “probative value is substantially outweighed by 

a danger of . . . unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, 

misleading the jury, undue delay, wasting time, or needlessly 

presenting cumulative evidence.” Fed. R. Evid. 403; Bowie, 

232 F.3d at 930. Even if it is concededly relevant, unduly 

prejudicial evidence may be excluded to prevent jurors from 

impermissibly relying on biases, dislikes, or the emotional 

impact of the evidence, for example by drawing on 

assumptions about a defendant’s bad character, rather than 

proof of the criminal conduct charged. The Rule’s 

requirement that the danger of unfair prejudice substantially

outweigh probative value calls on us, in close cases, to lean 

towards admitting evidence. United States v. Douglas, 482 

F.3d 591, 600 (D.C. Cir. 2007); United States v. Manner, 887 

F.2d 317, 322 (D.C. Cir. 1989). 

We review a district court’s admission of other-crimes 

evidence for abuse of discretion, United States v. Mathis, 216 

F.3d 18, 25–26 (D.C. Cir. 2000), according “substantial 

deference” to the district court, Lawson, 410 F.3d at 741; see 

also United States v. Long, 328 F.3d 655, 660 (D.C. Cir. 2003). 

We review Rule 403 balancing decisions “only for grave 

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abuse.” Douglas, 482 F.3d at 596 (internal quotation marks 

omitted).2

1.

The district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding 

that evidence of particular defendants’ involvement in 

uncharged hostage takings was relevant to both how those 

defendants started to work together as kidnappers, and their 

motive and intent to kidnap wealthy civilians to extort ransom 

money. “In a conspiracy prosecution, the government is 

usually allowed considerable leeway in offering evidence of 

other offenses” to, for example “inform the jury of the 

background of the conspiracy charged” or “help explain to the 

jury how the illegal relationship between the participants in the 

crime developed.” Mathis, 216 F.3d at 26 (internal quotation 

marks omitted); see Manner, 887 F.2d at 322. Evidence that 

defendants jointly engaged in other criminal activity can be 

relevant to shed light on how the “relationship of mutual trust” 

developed between those individuals. See United States v. 

Escobar-de Jesús, 187 F.3d 148, 169 (1st Cir. 1999) 

(collecting cases). The district court admitted the 

other-crimes evidence as tending to show that a criminal 

relationship formed between Pierre, De Four, Clarke, and the 

cooperating co-conspirators during other, uncharged hostage 

takings. That prior criminal relationship helped to explain 

how Pierre, De Four, and Clarke knew they could rely on one 

 2 “[T]he principles governing what is commonly referred to as 

other crimes evidence are the same whether the conduct occurs 

before or after the offense charged.” United States v. Latney, 108 

F.3d 1446, 1450 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (internal quotation marks omitted).

It makes no difference, therefore, that two of the uncharged hostage 

takings occurred before the Maharaj hostage taking and that one 

occurred after.

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another during the Maharaj hostage taking. The district court 

did not impermissibly admit evidence of the uncharged hostage 

takings merely to allow the government to provide the jury 

with general background information that completed the 

prosecutor’s narrative, see Bowie, 232 F.3d at 929, but rather 

admitted it as tending to establish how the defendants in this 

case formed the Maharaj hostage-taking conspiracy. 

The uncharged hostage takings were also relevant to 

establish the defendants’ state of mind. Information showing 

that Pierre, De Four, and Clarke had worked closely before on 

very similar hostage takings helped to dispel any doubt as to 

whether they knowingly and intentionally joined together to 

carry out these crimes in order to extract significant ransoms. 

Intent, knowledge, and motive are “well-established 

non-propensity purposes for admitting evidence of prior 

crimes or acts.” Bowie, 232 F.3d at 930; see also Fed. R. 

Evid. 404(b)(2). As we have previously observed, evidence 

relevant to intent and motive “is particularly probative where 

the government has alleged conspiracy.” Mathis, 216 F.3d at 

26 (internal quotation marks omitted). To prove conspiracy to 

commit hostage taking, the government was required to 

establish that the conspiracy was knowingly formed and that 

defendants willfully participated in the plan to commit it with 

the intent to further some purpose of the conspiracy. See 

United States v. Yunis, 924 F.2d 1086, 1096 (D.C. Cir. 1991). 

Potential juror doubt about whether any of these three 

defendants was somehow mistakenly swept up into activities 

he did not know were part of a criminal conspiracy is 

powerfully undermined by the evidence of similar criminal 

teamwork with some of the same people, both before and after 

the Maharaj hostage taking. Any questions about motive also 

tended to be put to rest by evidence that the conspirators 

successfully obtained ransoms in the other, uncharged hostage 

takings. The district court thus permissibly held that the 

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other-crimes evidence was relevant for non-propensity 

purposes.3

2.

That conclusion does not end our inquiry. Even where 

other-crimes evidence is relevant for a non-propensity purpose, 

it nevertheless is inadmissible under Rule 403 if the potential 

for prejudice from introducing the evidence outweighs its 

probative value. See Douglas, 482 F.3d at 600. We see no 

reason, however, to disturb the district court’s carefully 

reasoned Rule 403 determination. See Straker, 567 F. Supp. 

2d at 179. The district judge identified the strong probative 

value of the evidence for the purposes we have just discussed: 

to show the defendants’ willingness to trust one another and 

work together to kidnap civilians as a means to extort ransom 

 3 Defendants also assert that the district court erred by concluding 

that evidence of the uncharged hostage takings was probative of their 

modus operandi. We express no view on that question because, 

even if defendants were correct, it makes no difference here, given 

that the evidence was properly admitted for other permissible 

purposes. It is worth noting, however, that the defendants’ 

argument appears to hinge on a misunderstanding of the district 

court’s opinion. Defendants point to the district court’s discussion 

of ways in which the other hostage takings were similar to the 

charged offense, and its observation that they were all close in time.

Straker, 567 F. Supp. 2d at 178. The district court did not thereby 

hold that the evidence was admissible to show a similar modus 

operandi in both the charged and uncharged offenses. That part of 

its analysis instead related to whether the evidence of the uncharged 

hostage takings met the “threshold level of similarity” to the charged 

hostage taking, without which it could not have admitted the 

evidence as relevant to defendants’ intent, motive, and knowledge. 

See id. (citing Long, 328 F.3d at 661); see also Manner, 887 F.2d at 

321.

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money. The danger of unfair prejudice was minimal because 

the other-crimes evidence added “‘no emotional or other 

pejorative emphasis not already introduced by the evidence’” 

of the crime charged in this case. Id. (quoting Lawson, 410 

F.3d at 742). Indeed, the facts of this kidnapping are 

significantly more damning because, unlike the uncharged 

other crimes the judge allowed the prosecution to establish, this 

one went awry. After defendants held their victim, an 

American citizen, hostage for seven days without necessary 

diabetes medication, he died. Several defendants then 

dismembered his body with a machete and packed the pieces in 

two large coolers in an effort to conceal their crime.

The district court effectively barred cumulative 

evidentiary presentations and used safeguards to minimize any 

potential prejudice from the admission of the other-crimes 

evidence. In addition to limiting the number of other crimes 

about which the prosecution could introduce evidence, and 

strictly rationing the trial time allowed for those evidentiary 

presentations, Straker, 567 F. Supp. 2d at 179; see also J.A. 

961–62; J.A. 3171–72, the court paid careful attention to the 

nature of the testimony that was introduced and prevented the 

government from soliciting testimony about particularly 

prejudicial details. See J.A. 3462–66; J.A. 3686–88. The 

court excluded all evidence of two uncharged hostage takings, 

including the one that raised the greatest risk of unfair 

prejudice. As already noted, the evidence in that kidnapping 

suggested that the captors intentionally killed their hostage in 

response to an insufficient ransom offer, see Straker, 567 

F. Supp. 2d at 179—a response arguably even more brutal than 

the deprivation of life-sustaining medication that led to the 

predictable demise of the victim in this case. 

Defendants further argue that the uncharged 

hostage-takings evidence was “wholly unnecessary” to the 

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government’s case, such that any minimal probative value was 

substantially outweighed by the prejudice it caused, in 

violation of Rule 403. Defendants find unpersuasive the 

theories discussed above, regarding the probativeness of the 

other-crimes evidence to questions of relationship, motive, and 

intent; they contend that the government had ample, less 

prejudicial ways to make the same points. Defendants 

contend that the evidence was unnecessary to show their 

relationships, given other evidence that the defendants formed 

friendships in boyhood or during military service. That 

evidence, however, does not speak to their repeated experience 

of trusting one another to carry through with felonious 

conspiracies without revealing their activities to law 

enforcement. Defendants also contend that the evidence of 

the uncharged hostage takings was unnecessary to show their 

intent or motive because they did not raise innocent-motive 

defenses. That argument ignores the government’s burden, 

regardless of the nature of the defense, to prove beyond a 

reasonable doubt that defendants knowingly and intentionally 

joined the conspiracy to kidnap Maharaj. See Douglas, 482 

F.3d at 597; Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172, 187–88 

(1997). In sum, the district judge’s careful sorting of the 

other-crimes evidence and the limitations he placed on how 

much other-crimes evidence the prosecution could use 

successfully allowed the evidence which was most probative 

while avoiding unfair prejudice. The district court did not 

abuse its discretion by refusing to exclude the evidence of the

uncharged hostage takings under Rule 403. 

3.

Lastly, we turn to defendants’ argument that the 

government presented evidence of the uncharged hostage 

takings in such a “disorganized and confusing fashion” that 

they were prejudiced. Def. Br. 56 (citing United States v. 

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Sampol, 636 F.2d 621, 645 (D.C. Cir. 1980); United States v. 

Foskey, 636 F.2d 517, 524 n.6 (D.C. Cir. 1980)). As we 

discuss more fully, infra, in connection with the post-trial 

severance motion, the district court concluded that the jury was 

able to correlate the evidence with each defendant against 

whom it was properly introduced, and to avoid spillover 

consideration of evidence against defendants to whom it did 

not relate. See Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d at 26–27. Defendants 

have failed to persuade us that the district court abused its 

discretion in so concluding. The government presented 

evidence about the other hostage takings, in part through 

testimony of cooperating co-conspirators who spoke about 

some of the uncharged offenses before describing the charged 

offense in greater detail. Because the cooperating 

co-conspirators generally testified about the hostage takings in 

chronological order and each hostage taking involved a 

different victim, the jury was provided with clear guideposts 

with which to differentiate and compartmentalize each event. 

The district court repeatedly and carefully instructed the 

jury as to which defendants were involved in which of the other 

crimes, and cautioned the jurors to consider evidence only 

against those specific defendants, thereby protecting all of the 

defendants against any potential confusion stemming from the 

other-crimes evidence. See Long, 328 F.3d at 662 

(“[L]imiting instructions ordinarily suffice to protect the 

defendant’s interests.” (citing Spencer v. Texas, 385 U.S. 554, 

561 (1967)). The court gave limiting instructions concerning 

the evidence of other hostage takings six times throughout the 

course of the trial: after opening statements, the first time that 

the other-crimes evidence was introduced by the government, 

at several points during the trial, and as part of the final jury 

instructions. In the various instructions, the court cautioned 

the jury that the evidence of the uncharged hostage takings was 

admissible for only limited purposes: informing the jurors of 

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the background of the conspiracy, helping them decide 

whether there were relationships between the co-conspirators, 

and aiding their determinations as to whether the defendants 

had motive, intent, knowledge, or a plan to commit the 

Maharaj hostage taking. The court also made clear that the 

other-crimes evidence was admissible only against the 

particular defendants the jurors found were involved in those 

other crimes, alternating between specifically naming the 

defendants involved in the other hostage takings and generally 

referring to those defendants. Juries are presumed to follow 

instructions that caution them to draw only permissible 

inferences from Rule 404(b) evidence. See United States v. 

Brown, 597 F.3d 399, 405–06 (D.C. Cir. 2010). The district 

court’s detailed instructions guided the jurors to 

compartmentalize and properly consider the evidence of 

uncharged hostage takings. 

Defendants have identified a handful of examples where 

the district judge expressed some confusion regarding the 

presentation of evidence of the uncharged hostage takings. In 

several instances, the district court identified potential 

confusion only to reinforce to the prosecution the importance 

of making clear to the jury which hostage taking the witness 

was discussing. Several references to confusion were made 

during bench conferences out of the jury’s hearing. The 

record portions on which defendants rely demonstrate not that 

the evidence was presented in a misleading fashion, but rather 

that the district court took great care to reduce the potential for 

confusion. The isolated examples of confusion identified by 

defendants do not show that the other-crimes evidence was so 

unclear or misleading that the jury was unable to follow the 

district court’s limiting instructions. 

Defendants claim the government’s closing argument 

intensified confusion about the other-crimes evidence by 

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stating that the same “crew” or “organization” carried out all of 

the hostage takings, and that Pierre was the “godfather” of the 

crew. Contrary to defendants’ characterization, however, no 

prosecutor argued that Pierre’s crew committed all of the 

hostage takings. The government’s closing did refer to the 

“crew” or group of individuals involved in the Maharaj hostage 

taking. The government also argued that Pierre was involved 

in all of the hostage takings, and indeed was in charge during 

each of those hostage takings. The evidence presented at trial 

supported each of those points. What the government did not 

assert was that Pierre led the same crew in each instance, and 

the trial evidence and judge’s instructions protected against 

any such conclusion.4

For all of these reasons, we conclude that the district court 

acted within its sound discretion in admitting at trial evidence 

about three uncharged hostage takings.

 4 For similar reasons, the argument that the proof at trial represented 

a material variance from the indictment, even if preserved below, is 

meritless. Even if we were to assume that the trial evidence in this 

case materially varied from the indictment (and the defendants give 

us little reason to think that is the case), the defendants nonetheless 

cannot show the requisite substantial prejudice. Given the focused 

and limited nature of what was actually argued or established 

regarding other incidents involving groups led by Pierre and the 

district court judge’s careful limiting instructions, it simply was not 

the case that the jury here was “substantially likely” to consider 

against the defendants evidence of a RICO conspiracy not charged in 

the indictment. See United States v. Celis, 608 F.3d 818, 845-46 

(D.C. Cir. 2010).

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IV.

Confrontation Clause Challenge to Use of 

Codefendants’ Statements

Defendants next contend that the district court violated 

their Sixth Amendment rights to confront the witnesses against 

them when it admitted into evidence redacted confessions 

made by their fellow defendants that inculpated them in the 

Maharaj hostage taking.5

 We conclude that the admission of 

the redacted confessions did not violate the Confrontation 

Clause, with the exception of the violation acknowledged by 

the government, which, in view of the independent and 

overwhelming evidence in support of the conviction, was 

harmless.

A.

The conspiracy was alleged to have involved at least a 

dozen men, seven of whom were tried jointly in this case. 

After they were arrested, five of the defendants gave 

statements to law enforcement officials confessing their own 

 5 In a footnote, all defendants, save Straker, seek to join this 

argument. Def. Br. 60 n.27. As discussed supra note 1, adoption 

by reference is permitted only to the extent we can readily apply the 

proponent’s arguments to the adopter’s case. Some of the 

defendants’ Confrontation Clause arguments are purely legal and 

can readily be adopted. Others are fact-specific, rendering adoption 

by reference inappropriate. Clarke, Demerieux, and Nixon have 

made fact-specific arguments that explain how they believe their 

constitutional rights were violated by the introduction of their 

codefendants’ out-of-court statements. We therefore limit our 

consideration of defendants’ fact-specific arguments to those 

particular defendants.

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participation in the Maharaj hostage taking. Before trial, the 

government filed a notice of its intent to introduce at trial the 

out-of-court statements made by codefendants Clarke, 

Demerieux, and Sealey. 6 Defendants objected on Sixth 

Amendment grounds to the admission of the statements and 

also moved to sever their trials. The district court concluded 

that separate trials would not be necessary because each 

statement could be adequately redacted and other safeguards 

used in order fully to protect the non-declarant defendants’ 

Sixth Amendment confrontation rights. The district court 

ordered the government to redact the statements to remove 

references identifying defendants other than the declarant 

whenever possible. When full redaction was not possible, the 

court instructed the government to replace a particular name 

with a neutral term, sufficient to “avoid creating an inevitable 

association with a particular defendant or defendants when the 

statement is viewed together with other evidence.” J.A. 2079. 

The court also provided the government with a detailed set of 

guidelines, recounted below, specifying the types of neutral 

terms that would be acceptable and those that would not, along 

with other safeguards of defendants’ confrontation rights.

 6 The government introduced ten confessions made by five 

different defendants. Two of those defendants, De Four and 

Straker, testified at trial. Defendants cannot raise Confrontation 

Clause challenges to the admission of those pretrial statements, as 

they had the opportunity to subject De Four and Straker to 

cross-examination. See, e.g., Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 

68–69 (2004). Furthermore, none of the defendants identifies any 

statements or redactions in those confessions that implicated him. 

On appeal, therefore, we focus on defendants’ arguments concerning 

the introduction of Clarke, Demerieux, and Sealey’s confessions. 

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B.

Defendants contend that the use of neutral-pronoun 

redactions was inadequate, and that the Confrontation Clause 

instead demands full redaction of codefendants’ confessions to 

eliminate any reference to fellow defendants that jurors might 

infer to be references to non-declarant defendants. See 

Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200 (1987). Alternatively, 

redactions used here were inadequate because, defendants 

claim, when a redacted confession was considered alongside 

the other evidence presented at trial, it inevitably pointed an 

inculpatory finger at a particular defendant, contrary to Gray v. 

Maryland, 523 U.S. 185 (1998). 

The government responds that the Confrontation Clause 

does not require removal of all references to defendants, 

anonymized as the remaining references were, and that full 

redaction would have substantially diminished the value of the 

statements against the declarants themselves. Full redactions 

were not always practicable in this case, the government 

contends, because the declarants were charged with 

conspiracy. Eliminating from their statements all references 

to their co-conspirators jointly on trial would have “deprived 

the government of powerful conspiracy evidence” that it was 

entitled to use. Gov’t Br. 94.

We review de novo the district court’s legal conclusions 

under the Confrontation Clause, United States v. Wilson, 605 

F.3d 985, 1003 (D.C. Cir. 2010), and subject to harmless-error 

analysis any legal errors it may have made, United States v. 

Moore, 651 F.3d 30, 69 (D.C. Cir. 2011). 

1.

The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment 

provides a criminal defendant with the right “to be confronted 

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with the witnesses against him,” including the right to 

cross-examine those witnesses. U.S. Const. Amend. VI; see 

Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 404 (1965). Use of a 

defendant’s own confession against him raises no 

confrontation issues. The admission of a codefendant’s 

confession implicating another defendant, however, poses 

special risks to the defendant’s confrontation rights. When 

the declarant expressly implicates another defendant yet 

renders himself unavailable for cross examination by asserting 

his Fifth Amendment right not to testify, use of his statement 

violates the defendant’s right to confront his accuser. See 

Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 137 (1968). But at 

least when (1) the jury is instructed to consider the confession 

against the declarant only, and (2) redactions are made such 

that the statement, together with other trial evidence, neither 

expressly identifies defendants nor creates any inevitable 

association between them and the criminal activity the 

statement describes, there is no Sixth Amendment violation. 

See Richardson, 481 U.S. 200, 211; United States v. 

Washington, 952 F.2d 1402, 1406–07 (D.C. Cir. 1991). 

The framework for analyzing limitations on use of 

codefendants’ statements is established by a trilogy of 

Supreme Court Confrontation Clause cases: Bruton, 391 U.S. 

123, Richardson, 481 U.S. 200, and Gray, 523 U.S. 185. The 

district judge who presided over defendants’ joint trial in 

Bruton admitted into evidence a non-testifying codefendant’s 

confession incriminating the defendant. 391 U.S. at 124. 

The Supreme Court found a Sixth Amendment violation, 

overruling a prior decision sustaining a conviction in similar 

circumstances, because that precedent placed unwarranted 

confidence in the efficacy of limiting jury instructions. Id. at 

126 (overruling Delli Paoli v. United States, 352 U.S. 232 

(1957)). The Bruton Court acknowledged that it is unrealistic 

to expect a jury to rely on a statement when deciding the guilt 

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of the confessing codefendant, yet ignore the same statement 

when considering the guilt of the defendant it mentions as an 

accomplice. Id. at 131, 135–36. Justice Stewart summed up 

the inadequacy of limiting jury instructions in such settings: 

“A basic premise of the Confrontation Clause . . . is that certain 

kinds of hearsay are at once so damaging, so suspect, and yet 

so difficult to discount, that jurors cannot be trusted to give 

such evidence the minimal weight it logically deserves, 

whatever instructions the trial judge might give.” Id. at 138 

(Stewart, J., concurring) (internal citation omitted). 

The Court has since established that non-testifying 

codefendants’ statements may be introduced at joint trials if 

sufficient redactions can be made and adequate jury 

instructions given to protect the rights of codefendants. In 

Richardson, the codefendant’s confession was fully redacted to 

eliminate all references to the defendant. 481 U.S. at 203. 

The confession only implicated the defendant when it was 

considered alongside her own testimony, placing her at the 

scene of a critical conversation the confession described. Id.

at 205–06, 208. The Court found no Confrontation Clause 

violation in Richardson because the statement was “not 

incriminating on its face,” but became potentially 

incriminating “only when linked with evidence introduced 

later at trial.” Id. at 208. Even then, the inference was not 

obvious, such that the limiting jury instructions sufficed to 

guard against the remaining risk of “inferential incrimination.” 

Id. In contrast to the “[s]pecific” and “vivid” incriminating 

statement at issue in Bruton that created an “overwhelming 

probability” that jurors would fail to heed limiting instructions, 

id. at 208–09, the redacted statement in Richardson made any 

incriminating implication sufficiently indirect that jury 

instructions could be counted on to “dissuad[e] the jury from 

entering onto the path of inference in the first place.” Id. at 

208. 

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The adequacy under the Confrontation Clause of redacting 

a non-testifying codefendant’s statement depends on how 

effectively the redaction eliminates the statement’s accusatory 

implication. Evaluations of such effectiveness are necessarily 

contextual. In Gray v. Maryland, the prosecution only 

crudely redacted a codefendant’s statement by whiting out the 

names of Gray and the other alleged perpetrator (who had since 

died), leaving blank spaces separated by commas. 523 U.S. at 

188. The police witness reading to the jury from the 

confession said “deleted” or “deletion” each time he 

encountered a blank. Id. Such redaction did little, if 

anything, to cure the prejudice to the defendant. The Court 

determined that the “blank space in an obviously redacted 

confession . . . points directly to the defendant, and it accuses 

the defendant in a manner similar to [the non-testifying 

codefendant’s] use of Bruton’s name or to a testifying 

codefendant’s accusatory finger,” and thus requires the same 

result as in Bruton. Id. at 194. Even though the redacted 

confession in Gray never named the defendant on trial, it called 

the jurors’ attention to his codefendants’ inculpation of him 

with sufficient clarity that no limiting jury instruction could 

suffice. The difference in outcomes in Gray and Richardson

depended “in significant part upon the kind of, not the simple 

fact of, inference.” Id. at 196. Gray “involve[d] inferences 

that a jury ordinarily could make immediately, even were the 

confession the very first item introduced at trial,” id., whereas 

the inferences in Richardson were attenuated. 

The Supreme Court has not yet determined the 

permissibility under the Sixth Amendment of the type of 

redaction at issue here, which eliminated names and 

identifying references to specific defendants (without signaling 

that changes had been made), but left intact some of the 

statements’ descriptions of people doing things to advance the 

crimes with which the defendants were charged. Indeed, the 

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Court in Richardson was careful to note that it “express[ed] no 

opinion on the admissibility of a confession in which the 

defendant’s name has been replaced with a symbol or neutral 

pronoun.” 481 U.S. at 211 n.5. The redactions in this case 

fall somewhere between the full redaction that Richardson

sustained, and the obviously inculpatory blank spaces and 

deletions that Gray held to be insufficient. The Court has, 

however, hinted how redactions might effectively be used in 

cases involving several perpetrators: In disapproving the 

obvious redactions in Gray, the Court noted that the 

incriminating references to “Me, deleted, deleted, and a few 

other guys” could have been changed to “Me and a few other 

guys.” 523 U.S. at 196.

Our circuit has infrequently considered the kind of 

neutral-pronoun redactions approved by the district court in 

this case. Evaluation of the potential inculpatory implications 

of a non-testifying codefendant’s redacted confession is 

necessarily contextual. We have held that putatively 

anonymized references to a defendant in a codefendant’s 

statement violated Bruton where the statement still called 

attention to the declarant’s accusation against the defendant. 

See Serio v. United States, 401 F.2d 989, 990 (D.C. Cir. 1968) 

(per curiam). Elsewhere, we found neutral-pronoun redaction 

constitutionally adequate where, describing a transaction in 

which several people were involved, a statement was redacted 

to replace the defendant’s name with neutral pronouns that, in 

context, did not inevitably refer to the defendant. See

Washington, 952 F.2d at 1406; see also United States v. 

Applewhite, 72 F.3d 140, 145 (D.C. Cir. 1995).

Serio, a case we decided immediately after Bruton and 

that, like Bruton, involved just two alleged perpetrators, held 

that the admission of a codefendant’s confession in which the 

defendant’s name was replaced with the phrase “another man” 

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violated the defendant’s confrontation right because of the 

“well-nigh inevitable association of [the defendant] as the 

‘other man’ referred to in [his codefendant’s] confession.” 

401 F.2d at 989–90. After Richardson but before Gray, 

however, we sustained in Washington the use of nonobvious, 

neutral-pronoun redaction together with limiting jury 

instructions in circumstances in which the redacted statement 

could have referred to several individuals other than the 

defendant. 952 F.2d at 1406. In that context, the neutrally 

redacted statement created no “inevitable association” between 

the defendant and the inculpatory conduct the statement 

describes. Id. (citing Serio, 401 F.2d at 990). Washington

questioned whether Serio’s “inevitable association” standard 

might be more protective of defendants’ rights than the Sixth 

Amendment requires, but left that matter undecided because 

that challenge failed even under Serio. Id. Here, too, we see 

no need to consider whether Serio is overprotective, because 

that standard was satisfied here.

In sum, at least when “all references to the defendant in a 

codefendant’s statement are replaced with indefinite pronouns 

or other general terms, the Confrontation Clause is not violated 

by the redacted statement’s admission if, when viewed 

together with other evidence, the statement does not create an 

inevitable association with the defendant, and a proper limiting 

instruction is given.” Washington, 952 F.2d at 1406–07. In 

such circumstances, provided that the jury is instructed not to 

consider the codefendant’s statements as evidence against 

anyone but the declarant himself, as happened here, Bruton is 

not violated.7

 7 Our approval of the use of neutral pronouns and other general 

terms accords with that of other circuits. See, e.g., United States v. 

Vasilakos, 508 F.3d 401, 407–08 (6th Cir. 2007) (collecting federal 

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2.

In their Bruton challenge, defendants first argue that the 

district court erred by failing to require the government to 

redact fully the codefendants’ confessions to eliminate even 

anonymized references to other perpetrators. They assert that 

neutral-pronoun redactions do not adequately protect 

defendants’ confrontation rights because they leave in place 

inevitable associations with the defendants. In their view, 

only full redaction would suffice. Defendants further contend 

that, even if the Sixth Amendment permits jurors to hear 

anonymized references to defendants’ criminal activity, the 

redactions here were inadequate. The sheer number of 

redactions, combined with grammatical errors in redaction, 

they claim made it clear to the jury in this case that the 

confessions were altered, and thus impermissibly pointed the 

finger at them.

We do not accept the defendants’ claim that anything short 

of full redaction violates their confrontation rights. The 

prosecution made full redactions in several places where it 

could do so without creating unacceptable confusion or 

distortion. But, as Washington makes clear, the Confrontation 

Clause does not always mandate full redactions. Carefully 

made neutral-pronoun redactions can avoid the defect of 

elisions so crude that they “obviously refer directly to 

someone, often obviously the defendant.” Gray, 523 U.S. at 

196. The critical question is whether the redactions 

adequately conceal the fact that the declarant identified the 

defendant in particular—a fact that, if known, would make it 

 

appellate decisions); see also United States v. Ramos-Cardenas, 524 

F.3d 600, 608–09 (5th Cir. 2008); United States v. Vega Molina, 407 

F.3d 511, 519–21 (1st Cir. 2005); United States v. Sutton, 337 F.3d 

792, 799–801 (7th Cir. 2003).

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unlikely that a jury would be able to follow a limiting 

instruction. See id. 

Viewing the text of the statements as a whole and in the 

context of the facts and evidence in the case, we disagree that 

the redactions made it obvious that the statements referred to 

specific defendants. The neutral-pronoun redactions here 

were a far cry from those in Gray, where the method of 

redaction only strengthened the inference that the 

Confrontation Clause required be attenuated. Despite the 

need for frequent redactions in this case, each resulting 

statement resembled a confession that a defendant might have 

made if he were trying to avoid identifying his co-conspirators. 

A defendant endeavoring not to point the finger at his 

confederates would need repeatedly to rely on the kinds of 

vague references, such as “them” and “the other guy,” that 

these redacted statements use. In fact, even before his 

statement was redacted, Clarke referred to his co-conspirators 

as “fella” or “fellas” six times in two transcript pages. The 

government noted such speech patterns, making efforts when 

crafting the redactions to mimic the speaker’s own language 

patterns and word choices to make the redactions 

inconspicuous. The single, ungrammatical redaction 

identified by defendants—in which Clarke’s statement 

erroneously omitted a definite article before referring to “other 

guy”—did not make it obvious that the statement had been 

redacted: the awkward language could just as plausibly have 

resulted from a misstatement (by either the declarant or 

testifying officer) or typographical error in transcribing the 

confession.

Defendants also contend that the confessions, redacted as 

they were, violated their confrontation rights because, when 

considered alongside the other evidence presented at trial, the 

confessions created inevitable inculpatory associations with 

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particular defendants. When a confession is redacted with 

neutral pronouns, a jury, after hearing all of the evidence 

presented in the case, may still very well be able to draw 

inferences that the “other guy” mentioned in the confession 

was actually one of the defendants. Bruton is not violated, 

however, whenever a jury may be able to draw such an 

inference. Instead, it is violated when the inferences are so 

strong and obvious that a jury cannot be expected to follow 

limiting instructions. See Gray, 523 U.S. at 196.

The evidence identified more than a dozen different men 

involved in the crimes charged in this case, making it unlikely 

that the jury would readily link a statement’s mention of a 

“person” or “guy” to a specific defendant. See Washington, 

952 F.2d at 1406; see also United States v. Vasilakos, 508 F.3d 

401, 408 (6th Cir. 2007); United States v. Vega Molina, 407 

F.3d 511, 520 (1st Cir. 2005); United States v. Sutton, 337 F.3d 

792, 799 (7th Cir. 2003). There were seven defendants 

standing trial and four cooperating co-conspirators who 

testified against them, plus several unindicted individuals 

whom the cooperators implicated in the hostage taking, not to 

mention the participants in the other kidnappings admitted into 

evidence, whom the jury could not be sure played no role in 

this case. To further attenuate any inculpatory inference, 

Clarke’s redacted statements repeatedly referred to someone 

named “Igloo,” an apparently fictitious character made up by 

Clarke, to whom he ascribed the actions of several different 

members of the conspiracy. Because of the number of 

identified participants, the statements, redacted as they were 

and accompanied by limiting instructions, supported no 

“inevitable association” between the persons described and 

any of the alleged co-conspirators standing trial, let alone a 

particular defendant.

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Defendants contend that the redacted statements 

impermissibly identified them because of the recognizable 

roles they played in the crime. Clarke and Demerieux acted as 

guards at the camp, and Sealey and Nixon were the gunmen 

who abducted Maharaj from the bar. Each of Clarke and 

Demerieux’s redacted statements refers to the “other guy” or 

“another fella” at the camp with the victim. Sealey’s redacted 

statement refers to himself and “the other man” abducting the 

victim. Defendants argue that, despite those redactions, the 

jury would inevitably associate each of them with a particular, 

unnamed “guy” or “fella” based on other trial testimony: 

Cooperators Jason Percival and Russel Joseph both stated that 

Clarke and Demerieux were at the campsite for the vast 

majority of the time between when Maharaj was abducted and 

when he died, and, in testifying that they were present when the 

victim was abducted, they identified Sealey and Nixon as the 

men who entered the bar and abducted Maharaj. 

The discernible roles some defendants played were not so 

clear and exclusive as defendants contend, however, but often 

overlapped with the activities of other defendants and 

co-conspirators. For example, the evidence showed that, 

when Clarke and Demerieux were guarding the hostage at the 

camp, there were often other men, whether defendants or 

cooperating co-conspirators, present at the campsite. In light 

of the multiple comings and goings at the campsite, any 

reference to someone else there did not obviously refer to 

Clarke or Demerieux. 8 Similarly, although the testimony 

showed that Sealey and Nixon were the two gunmen who

 8 Clarke and Demerieux also argue that because their statements 

were interlocking and reinforced one another, it furthered the 

inevitable association. Given our conclusion the redactions 

obscured the references to each man in the other’s statement, we 

disagree that the statements were interlocking.

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abducted Maharaj from the bar, it also showed that many other 

people were at the scene of the abduction or involved in the 

getaway. Accordingly, even in light of the evidence 

introduced at trial concerning each defendant’s role in the 

hostage taking, anonymized references to the “other guy” or 

“another fella” in the confessions avoided creating an 

inevitable association between a confession and any particular 

complaining defendant. 

Inevitable associations were not created, in large part, 

because the district court established guidelines for redaction, 

and closely supervised the redaction process in order to ensure 

that the admission of the confessions at trial did not violate 

Bruton and its progeny:

First, the trial judge required full redactions where 

feasible without distorting the statement’s meaning. 

See Richardson, 481 U.S. at 211. 

Second, when it was impossible to redact fully a 

portion of a confession, the district court directed 

the government to use only non-obvious, partial 

redactions, replacing the defendants’ proper names 

or nicknames with a variety of neutral pronouns to 

make the resultant statements appear natural and 

match the defendants’ own speech. 

Third, the court required that the statements be 

scrubbed of any other designations or identifiers 

based on a defendant’s physical characteristics or 

role in the hostage taking (such as driver or guard). 

See Harrington v. California, 395 U.S. 250, 253 

(1969); United States v. Nash, 482 F.3d 1209, 1218 

(10th Cir. 2007); United States v. Hoover, 246 F.3d 

1054, 1059 (7th Cir. 2001).

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Fourth, the court directed that redactions avoid 

referring to specific numbers of persons, in order 

further to weaken the jury’s ability to correlate the 

statements’ references to unnamed individuals with 

members of otherwise-identified pairs or clusters of 

defendants.

Fifth, the court reviewed drafts of the prosecution’s 

redacted statements and required additional 

changes to conform them to the court’s Bruton

guidelines. That safeguard helped to avoid 

clumsiness in redactions that could have been 

inculpatory.

Sixth, by only allowing prosecution witnesses to 

use the statements to aid in their testimony without 

admitting the documents themselves into evidence, 

the court ensured that the jury did not see written 

(and perhaps discernibly altered) copies of the 

redacted confessions.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the district 

court recognized that redactions would be effective 

to protect defendants’ confrontation rights because 

of the large number of actors involved in the 

alleged crime. As the court observed, the greater 

the number of alleged perpetrators involved in the 

charged offense, the more indirect the inference 

that the jury could draw from the redacted 

statements.

Given the context of this case and the care the district court 

took regarding use of codefendants’ redacted statements, any 

inferences created by the statements were attenuated. 

Defendants do not contend, nor do we believe based on our 

review of the record, that a jury could from a statement alone

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immediately make a connection between a specific defendant 

and one of the “guys,” “fellas,” or other people the statement 

mentions. When considered along with the other evidence 

presented at trial and with appropriate limiting instructions, the 

redacted confessions introduced here created no inevitable 

association between the persons the declarants described and 

particular defendants.9

For all of these reasons, we conclude that the redacted 

statements admitted into evidence at defendants’ trial did not 

violate Bruton.

 9 Defendants also argue that the Supreme Court’s decision in 

Crawford, should increase the skepticism with which we review 

Bruton claims. See 541 U.S. 36. Crawford announced a general 

rule of inadmissibility of out-of-court statements by witnesses who 

are unavailable and so not subject to cross-examination. The Court 

there dealt with statements that, unlike the statements here, were not 

otherwise admissible as codefendant confessions. The Crawford

Court held that the admissibility against a defendant of a testimonial 

statement by a non-testifying declarant depends, not merely on the 

statement’s reliability, but on whether the defendant had a prior 

opportunity to cross-examine the declarant, because the 

Confrontation Clause establishes “that reliability be assessed in a 

particular manner: by testing in the crucible of cross-examination.” 

Id. at 61. Crawford applies to statements admitted against a 

defendant; a statement that has been effectively Bruton-ized, 

however, is one that has been redacted so that it can, with appropriate 

limiting jury instructions, be deployed only against the declarant and 

not against the objecting codefendant. See Bruton, 391 U.S. at 135–

36; see also Richardson, 481 U.S. at 206. Crawford accordingly 

does not apply here, where we have determined that the statements 

are admissible under the Bruton line of cases because, properly used, 

they create no inevitable inculpating association with defendants.

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3.

Finally, we conclude that the error acknowledged by the 

government—cooperating co-conspirator Leon Nurse’s use of 

Nixon’s name while testifying about the contents of an out-of 

court confession made by Sealey—was harmless. A Bruton 

error does not necessarily require reversal, because “[i]n some 

cases the properly admitted evidence of guilt is so 

overwhelming, and the prejudicial effect of the codefendant’s 

admission is so insignificant by comparison, that it is clear 

beyond a reasonable doubt that the improper use of the 

admission was harmless error.” Schneble v. Florida, 405 U.S. 

427, 430 (1972). This is such a case.

At trial, cooperator Nurse testified that, when he and 

Sealey were incarcerated pending trial, Sealey told Nurse 

about his participation in the kidnapping. Nurse had been 

instructed for his testimony regarding Sealey’s out-of-court 

statement not to refer to any other defendant by name, but 

violated that instruction by naming Nixon when recounting 

Sealy’s confession. Nurse recounted that Sealey “said at the 

scene—at the scene of the kidnapping, [s]ir, he said that Mr. 

Nixon didn’t really want to come out of the—.” Clarke, 767 

F. Supp. 2d at 35. Recognizing the error, the district court 

immediately instructed the jury to disregard that piece of 

testimony. The government concedes that was a Bruton

violation. 

The error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt in view 

of its limited inculpatory value and the ample other evidence of 

Nixon’s guilt presented during the ten-week trial. Nurse used 

Nixon’s name only a single time. That single, explicit 

reference merely placed Nixon at the scene of the hostage 

taking, and did not describe his ensuing actions. In 

comparison to that isolated utterance, the other evidence of 

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Nixon’s guilt was overwhelming. Cooperators Joseph and 

Percival each testified in detail about Nixon’s involvement in 

the hostage taking. Joseph testified that he drove Nixon and 

Sealey to the bar where Maharaj was abducted, that Nixon was 

armed, and that Nixon entered the bar and moments later 

returned with Sealey and the victim. After Nixon and Sealey 

forced Maharaj into the back of the getaway car, Joseph stated, 

he drove the group to a cocoa field and Nixon and Sealey led 

the victim into the field and left him there. Joseph further 

recounted that he and Nixon later returned to move Maharaj 

from the cocoa field to the campsite where Clarke and

Demerieux guarded him. Cooperator Percival’s testimony 

closely paralleled and reinforced Joseph’s account. Both men 

also testified that, during the abduction, Nixon wore a Rasta 

hat, a detail that was corroborated by an eyewitness who did 

not participate in the abduction. Given the overwhelming 

evidence of Nixon’s guilt, Nurse’s single reference to Nixon 

was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

V.

Brady/Napue Claim

The Constitution’s “fair trial guarantee,” United States v. 

Ruiz, 536 U.S. 622, 628 (2002), requires the prosecution to 

timely turn over any information in the government’s 

possession that is materially favorable to a criminal defendant, 

Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), and forbids the 

prosecution’s introduction of false testimony, Napue v. Illinois, 

360 U.S. 264 (1959). Those are grave obligations, grounded 

in both the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution. 

See Ruiz, 536 U.S. at 628. 

Six of the defendants—Clarke, De Four, Nixon, Sealey, 

Demerieux, and Pierre—argue that the prosecution violated 

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both Brady and Napue. Specifically, those defendants object 

that Agent William Clauss’s and Sergeant Wendell Lucas’s 

testimony misleadingly implied that Clarke led them to the 

campsite where Maharaj had been held, when in fact Clarke led 

them to another location. The defendants also argue that the 

prosecutors violated both Brady and Napue when they elicited 

testimony from Percival indicating that Demerieux “hit the 

man [i.e., Maharaj] in his head with a big stone and dent his 

head,” even though available x-ray evidence revealed no such 

head injury. Lastly, the defendants argue that the prosecution 

breached its Brady obligations when it failed timely to turn 

over cooperator Russell Joseph’s initial confession, which 

identified someone other than De Four as a driver in the 

kidnapping.10 

The prosecution’s behavior leaves much to be desired, 

falling far short of this court’s expectations. Nevertheless, 

each of the defendants’ claims ultimately fails on the merits.

A Brady violation occurs when the prosecution (i) fails to 

disclose to the defense, whether willfully or inadvertently, (ii) 

exculpatory or impeachment evidence that is favorable to the 

accused, and (iii) the withholding of that information 

 10 Before the district court, Clarke and Demerieux moved for a new 

trial based on the campsite issue; Demerieux moved for a new trial 

based on the x-ray evidence; and De Four and Sealey moved for a 

new trial based on the Joseph confession. The other defendants did 

not raise or join those individual claims below, and so review as to 

them is for plain error only. See United States v. Johnson, 437 F.3d 

69, 74 (D.C. Cir. 2006). Moreover, because the defendants’ brief 

addresses the Brady and Napue claims only as they specifically 

relate to Clarke, Demerieux, and De Four, all of the other defendants 

on each claim have failed to make even a plausible argument for 

relief, so their arguments fail at the starting gate. 

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prejudices the defense. See United States v. Andrews, 532 

F.3d 900, 905 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (citing Strickler v. Greene, 527 

U.S. 263, 281–82 (1999)); see also Brady, 373 U.S. at 87. 

When, as here, disclosure by the prosecution happened late 

rather than not at all, the defendant must show a “reasonable 

probability that an earlier disclosure would have changed the 

trial’s result” to establish prejudice. United States v. Dean, 55 

F.3d 640, 663 (D.C. Cir. 1995); see also United States v. 

(Ralph) Wilson, 160 F.3d 732, 742 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (defendant 

bears burden of proving “reasonable probability”). In this 

context, a “reasonable probability” means “a probability 

sufficient to undermine our confidence in the actual outcome 

that the jury would have acquitted.” United States v. 

Tarrantino, 846 F.2d 1384, 1417 (D.C. Cir. 1988). 

The district court denied each of the Brady claims. The 

government argues that the ruling should be reviewed only for 

clear error, reasoning that “[t]he clearly erroneous standard 

ordinarily governs review of a judge’s findings in a criminal 

case on issues other than the defendant’s guilt,” including 

review of a district court’s “conclusion that [the defendant] 

suffered no prejudice by his late access to the evidence[.]” 

United States v. Paxson, 861 F.2d 730, 737 (D.C. Cir. 1988) 

(first alteration in original). Since Paxson was decided, 

however, the Supreme Court has clarified that “there is never a 

real ‘Brady violation’ unless the nondisclosure was so serious 

that there is a reasonable probability that the suppressed 

evidence would have produced a different verdict.” Strickler, 

527 U.S. at 281. That prejudice element requires an inquiry 

into “material[ity],” Andrews, 532 F.3d at 905, and 

materiality under Brady is a “question of law,” subject to de 

novo review, United States v. Oruche, 484 F.3d 590, 595 (D.C. 

Cir. 2007). Accordingly, our review is de novo. 

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A Napue violation occurs when the government 

introduces false or misleading testimony or allows it to go 

uncorrected, see Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150, 153 

(1972), even though the government knew or should have 

known that the testimony was false, see, e.g., United States v. 

Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 103 (1976). If a defendant makes that 

showing, a new trial is required if there is “any reasonable 

likelihood that the false testimony could have affected the 

judgment of the jury[.]” United States v. Gale, 314 F.3d 1, 4 

(D.C. Cir. 2003) (quoting Agurs, 427 U.S. at 103).

Because none of the Napue violations asserted on appeal 

was raised below, we review for plain error, reversing only if 

we perceive that “(1) there is error (2) that is plain and (3) that 

affects substantial rights, and (4) . . . the error seriously affects 

the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial 

proceedings.” Johnson, 437 F.3d at 74 (citing United States v. 

Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 732 (1993)). 

A.

At trial, both Agent Clauss’s and Sergeant Lucas’s 

testimony misleadingly indicated that Clarke led them to the 

campsite where Maharaj was held. But, in fact, Maharaj was 

never held at that campsite, and the government knew the 

testimony was misleading at the time it was given. The 

government nevertheless chose not to reveal that to the defense 

until the overnight recess after the defense cross-examination 

of Agent Clauss, when it faxed a diagram of the campsite with 

a cover memo stating it was “believed to be Clauss diagram 

from false campsite.” J.A. 3936–38. The prosecution 

admitted that “[w]e knew, the government knew that this was 

not going to be the right campsite.” J.A. 3945. 

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The district court found both that “the government knew” 

all along that the testimony was about a false campsite, and that 

the testimony misled the court (“I know I didn’t know it”), and 

“confused” the jury. J.A. 3964–65. The district court 

nevertheless denied the motion for a new trial because, 

“notwithstanding the government’s failure to disclose the 

evidence earlier, Clarke was able to incorporate it into his 

defense.” Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d at 53. 

The government’s use of knowingly misleading testimony 

that confuses the court, jury, and defense alike, compounded 

by its greatly delayed release of information revealing the 

deceptive content, is deeply disappointing and troubling 

behavior, unbefitting those who litigate in the name of the 

United States. See, e.g., United States v. Ash, 413 U.S. 300, 

319 (1973) (“The primary safeguard against abuses of [the 

prosecutorial process] is the ethical responsibility of the 

prosecutor, who, as so often has been said, may ‘strike hard 

blows’ but not ‘foul ones.’”) (quoting Berger v. United States, 

295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935)). 

But prosecutorial misbehavior alone does not a Brady

violation make. A reasonable possibility of concrete 

prejudice from the false testimony or the delayed disclosure 

must be shown. That has not been demonstrated here. 

Moreover, the testimony was corrected, and Clarke failed to 

demonstrate that the misleading content of the initial testimony 

could nevertheless have affected the judgment of the jury. 

Clarke’s Napue challenge thus also fails. 

To begin with, all parties agreed on a stipulation to be read 

to the jury exposing the government’s misleading presentation:

The parties, meaning the government, the United States of 

America, and Mr. Clarke, stipulate and agree that the 

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campsite that FBI Agent Clauss and Sergeant Lucas 

testified about that was visited by Zion Clarke in the 

custody of law enforcement personnel on January 6, 2006, 

was not a location to where Mr. Maharaj was ever taken or 

at which he was ever held. 

J.A. 4713–14.

That stipulation dispelled the confusion and set the 

groundwork for defense arguments countering the testimony. 

Indeed, it was materially indistinguishable from Clarke’s 

proposed curative instruction to the jury. 11 The only 

difference is that the stipulation did not include the phrase “it is 

now conceded by the government.” The defendants, 

however, have not demonstrated how the omission of that 

single phrase could have had any material impact on the jury’s 

consideration of all the relevant evidence presented in the case. 

Clarke’s counsel, moreover, used that stipulation in closing 

arguments to attack Agent Clauss and Sergeant Lucas’ 

credibility. The jury thus was fully aware that both agents had 

misled them, and that the campsite to which Clarke had led law 

enforcement was not, in fact, a crime scene. That left the jury 

free to draw whatever inference it found more persuasive from 

Clarke’s actions. 

Defendants object that earlier disclosure would have 

permitted a more thoroughgoing presentation of a defense 

theory that Clarke led police to the wrong campsite precisely 

because he was not involved in the actual crime. But 

 11 Clarke’s counsel proposed the following stipulation: “[Y]ou 

heard testimony yesterday that Zion Clarke led agents to the 

campsite where Mr. Maharaj was held. It is now conceded by the 

government that that was not the campsite where Mr. Maharaj was 

held.” J.A. 3963.

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defendants identify no evidence that Clarke was unable to 

present or any argument that he was precluded from making as 

a result of the tardy disclosure. Nor did Clarke request a 

continuance to develop this defense or ask that a mistrial be 

declared. The specific showing of concrete prejudice that 

Brady requires thus has not been made. 

Finally, the extensive evidence of Clarke’s guilt confirms 

that the ill-timed disclosure could not have affected the 

outcome. The jury heard Clarke’s four separate, “exhaustive

and detailed” confessions, Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d at 54, as 

well as corroborating testimony from Joseph and Percival. 

Most relevantly, the jury heard that, on the day after leading 

officers to the false campsite, Clarke led them to the site where 

Maharaj was held and ultimately buried. Accordingly, the 

defendants have not met their burden of demonstrating a 

reasonable probability that either the misleading testimony or 

its belated disclosure made a difference in the outcome of their 

cases. 

B.

At trial, prosecutors asked Percival if Kenneth Pierre 

(Wayne Pierre’s brother, an uncharged, non-testifying, alleged 

co-conspirator) had said anything about Maharaj’s condition 

during the kidnapping. According to Percival’s reply, 

Kenneth Pierre had said that Demerieux “hit the man in his 

head with a big stone and dent his head.” J.A. 3436. But 

when Trinidadian police x-rayed Maharaj’s skull to investigate 

this claim, they found no such damage to his skull. 

Defendants did not learn of this x-ray evidence until the 

government turned over Agent Clauss’s grand jury testimony 

referring to the x-ray weeks after Percival testified.

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Demerieux’s counsel moved for a mistrial, arguing that 

she would have obtained testimony from the person who 

conducted the x-ray if she had known earlier that it existed. 

But the prosecution noted that Dr. Des Vignes, the Trinidadian 

forensic pathologist who conducted Maharaj’s autopsy, had 

reported that he “did not see any fracture on [Maharaj’s] head,” 

and that all parties had that report long in advance of Percival’s 

testimony. J.A. 4610–11, Gov’t Br. 136. The district court 

denied the motion for a mistrial, finding that “the evidence was 

disclosed in time for [Demerieux’s] counsel to make effective 

use of it.” Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d at 41. 

This Brady claim fails because there is no reasonable 

probability that earlier disclosure would have affected the 

jury’s verdict. First, the substance of the x-ray evidence—the 

absence of any fractures in Maharaj’s skull—had already been 

disclosed to the defense through Dr. Des Vignes’s report, 

which had been released to defense counsel well before 

Percival’s testimony. Thus the delayed release of the x-ray 

itself did not deprive the defense of its powerful ammunition 

for cross-examination. 

Second, Demerieux’s counsel made extensive use of the 

late-developing x-ray evidence to undermine Percival’s 

credibility, including by dramatically confronting the 

Trinidadian forensic pathologist with the x-ray of Maharaj’s 

skull showing no fracture. Demerieux’s closing argument 

underscored that the x-ray was “proof positive [that] what 

Jason Percival claims happened didn’t happen.” J.A. 5131. 

Demerieux fails to demonstrate how earlier release of the x-ray 

evidence would have made it any clearer to the jury that, 

whatever else Mr. Maharaj may have suffered, there was no 

support for Percival’s testimony that Demerieux hit Mr. 

Maharaj over the head with a rock. 

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Third, earlier access to the x-ray evidence could not have 

overcome the abundant evidence of Demerieux’s guilt, 

including his two confessions, and Joseph’s testimony that 

Demerieux guarded Maharaj and took part in his 

dismemberment. The reality is that the alleged assault with 

the rock formed a small part of a very large trial. Evidence of 

Demeriux’s involvement in a brutal kidnapping and in 

dismembering Mr. Maharaj’s body made the issue of whether 

Mr. Maharaj was also hit with a rock of little relevance. There 

thus is no reasonable possibility that the delayed disclosure 

affected the jury’s judgment, or that earlier disclosure would 

have made any difference on the jury’s consideration of the 

case.

Finally, Demerieux’s Napue claim also fails. For many 

of the same reasons, he has not shown any reasonable 

probability that the misleading testimony influenced the jury’s 

verdict. 

C.

In his initial confession after his arrest in 2006, Russell

Joseph claimed that Ricardo Stevenson (who was not charged 

in this case) drove the “clear car” after Maharaj’s abduction.12 

But at trial, Joseph testified that defendant De Four drove the 

clear car. The defense learned of the earlier confession a mere 

two hours before Joseph took the stand.

De Four promptly raised a Brady objection. His counsel 

acknowledged, however, that the disclosure came in time for 

him “to use” the initial confession in cross-examination. In 

 12 The “clear car” was tasked with clearing the roads ahead of the 

get-away car, watching for police, and relaying information back. 

Gov’t Br. 8.

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addition, the court granted a mid-trial continuance that 

afforded De Four’s counsel an “opportunity to conduct an 

additional investigation in Trinidad,” including five days to 

depose witnesses there. J.A. 4018. 

The district court subsequently denied De Four’s Brady

motion, reasoning that the disclosure came early in a 

two-month long trial and that the lengthy continuance mid-trial 

had allowed the defendants to conduct further investigation. 

For that reason, the “disclosure occurred in time for defense 

counsel to use it effectively.” Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d at 44. 

The court also held that any error was harmless, because the 

evidence of De Four’s guilt was “overwhelming.” Id. at 46–

47.

The district court properly denied the Brady claim because 

the belated disclosure was not prejudicial. The record shows 

that De Four made powerful use of Joseph’s contradictory 

statements. De Four forced Joseph to admit on the stand and 

in front of the jury that he had lied to police when he accused 

an innocent man in a capital crime, and that he had done so to 

protect himself. And De Four’s counsel skewered the 

inconsistency in Joseph’s explanation for his lies, which was 

that Trinidadian police told him to leave the “soldiers” out of 

his account. As it turns out, both Stevenson and De Four were 

soldiers in the Trinidadian military, so there was no reason to 

finger Stevenson rather than De Four in the initial confession. 

But devastating cross-examination alone does not answer 

De Four’s claim of prejudice. He argues that the belated 

disclosure impaired his entire defense strategy. More 

specifically, De Four argues that the pre-trial disclosure that 

Brady required would have allowed him to argue that Joseph 

was right the first time and that Stevenson was the real clear car 

driver. In so doing, De Four continues, his defense could have 

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undermined other critical testimony from Percival linking him 

to the crime by demonstrating a pattern of kidnappings in 

which Stevenson was the clear car driver. 

De Four, however, does not argue that earlier disclosure 

would have prompted a different strategy at trial. Instead, he 

claims that he would have made the same arguments that 

ultimately “foundered at trial for lack of proof,” Def. Br. 108, 

but that he would have provided more evidence to back them 

up. This is not a case, in other words, in which the defense 

would have had to turn on a dime to change its trial strategy in 

light of late-disclosed evidence. Instead, the initial Joseph 

confession fit hand-in-glove with the third-party defense 

strategy De Four’s counsel had planned all along. 

De Four claims that earlier disclosure would have alerted 

him to the importance of the Gopaul kidnapping, a previous 

crime in which Stevenson drove the clear car. Armed with 

that evidence, De Four argues that he would have had a better 

shot at convincing the jury that Percival had orchestrated a web 

of lies designed to frame him. 

The district court had already ruled that the government 

could not introduce evidence about the Gopaul kidnapping, 

given its potential to prejudice the jury. The record shows that 

De Four had ample time to reevaluate the importance of the 

Gopaul kidnapping and, if he desired, seek the court’s 

permission to incorporate it into his third-party defense. Early 

in June, just after the start of the trial, De Four had a transcript 

of Percival’s testimony identifying Stevenson as the clear car 

driver in the Gopaul kidnapping. In July, his counsel 

interviewed Stevenson in Trinidad during a week-long break in 

the trial. If De Four needed still more time to investigate after 

the disclosure of Joseph’s confession, he could have sought a 

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further continuance from the district court for that purpose. 

But he did not. 

On top of that, overwhelming evidence supported the 

jury’s decision to convict. De Four confessed at length to his 

participation in the crime. His cell phone records 

corroborated that confession. And other witnesses confirmed 

De Four’s role in the crime, including one witness who 

testified that De Four actively participated in planning the 

abduction and later reported back on its success. Nothing in 

Joseph’s first confession or in the Gopaul case lends credibility 

to De Four’s argument that the police tricked him into 

confessing. 

De Four himself admits, in fact, that the jury was not 

“required to acquit him if they believed that he did not drive the 

clear car,” and argues only that “the Government’s case against 

him would surely have been weaker.” Def. Br. 108. Maybe 

so, but not so much weaker that it would have made a 

difference. The evidentiary weight against De Four 

eliminates any reasonable probability that more or earlier 

investigation would have changed the outcome.13

Finally, all six defendants ask us to consider the 

cumulative impact of the Brady and Napue violations on the 

trial. That approach might work in a case where multiple 

errors affect the same defendant. If the prosecution fails to 

turn over two pieces of impeachment evidence, for example, an 

error-by-error approach might find no Brady violation in either 

case because for each scenario the evidence as a 

whole—including the evidence left unimpeached because of 

 13 The district court also denied Sealey’s Brady motion arising from 

this same tardy disclosure. Because Sealey’s arguments on appeal 

make no showing of prejudice, his claim fails as well.

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the other alleged violation—would be enough to sustain the 

conviction. But the synergistic force of the omitted evidence 

considered together might well generate a reasonable 

probability of altering the evidentiary balance. Taking all the 

errors together thus keeps the Brady inquiry from devolving 

into a game of evidentiary whack-a-mole. See Kyles v. 

Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 420 (1995) (“[T]he state’s disclosure 

obligation turns on the cumulative effect of all suppressed 

evidence favorable to the defense, not on the evidence 

considered item by item.”). 

But a cumulative approach does not help the defendants 

here. Each alleged violation only affected one of the 

defendants, and no two errors affected the same defendants. 

There simply was no defendant-specific cumulative impact 

that could alter the prejudicial effect of the prosecution’s 

substantial missteps.

VI.

Miranda Claims

Sealey and Demerieux challenge the denial of their 

motions to suppress custodial statements that they gave to the 

Trinidadian police and to the FBI on the ground that their 

statements were obtained in violation of Miranda v. Arizona, 

384 U.S. 436 (1966). Because the Trinidadian and FBI 

interrogations were independent and distinct, and because 

Sealey and Demerieux do not challenge the legal sufficiency of 

the Miranda warnings that the FBI gave before questioning, we 

hold that no violation of Miranda occurred.14

 14 De Four and Straker purport to join Demerieux’s and Sealey’s 

Miranda claims. Def. Br. 115 n.50. But “Fifth Amendment rights 

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A.

1.

The FBI began its investigation into the Maharaj hostage 

taking in April 2005, led by Special Agent Clauss. A separate 

investigation by Trinidadian police was already underway, led 

by Constable Phillip Forbes. Between April 2005 and 

January 2006, FBI Agent Clauss flew to Trinidad five times. 

He traveled there twice in April or May 2005, to begin the 

investigation. He returned in October, at which time the 

Trinidadian police brought a new witness to the U.S. Embassy 

for an interview with FBI agents. Constable Forbes remained 

present during the interview, but did not ask any questions. 

The following month, Agent Clauss returned to meet the 

new Trinidadian homicide detective assigned to the case, 

Sergeant Lucas. Agent Clauss informed Sergeant Lucas that 

the FBI had an ongoing investigation, but did not attempt to 

direct the investigation of the Trinidadian police. Agent 

Clauss explained that the Trinidadian police “were conducting 

their own investigation regarding what they believed was a 

homicide,” while he and his partner, FBI Agent Edgar Cruz, 

were investigating the hostage taking. J.A. 2479. “They 

were parallel investigations that were clearly similar in 

nature,” Agent Clauss testified, “but I didn’t feel a need to tell 

them what they should or shouldn’t do, nor would I be in a 

place to do that[.]” Id. 

Agents Clauss and Cruz returned to Trinidad on January 3, 

2006, and met with Sergeant Lucas and his team of 

 

are, a fortiori, personal rights” in which De Four and Straker cannot 

share. Bryson v. United States, 419 F.2d 695, 699 (D.C. Cir. 1969).

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investigators. Sergeant Lucas told Agent Cruz that the 

Trinidadian police planned to make their first arrests the 

following morning. True to their word, the Trinidadian police 

arrested Clarke and Demerieux the next day. The FBI was not 

invited to participate in the arrests. But Agents Clauss and 

Cruz did question Demerieux later that day with “members of 

the Trinidad[ian] police force[.]” United States v. Clarke, 611 

F. Supp. 2d 12, 40 (D.D.C. 2009). 

Demerieux was again interviewed by the Trinidadian 

police and FBI agents on January 5th, “albeit briefly.” 

Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d at 40. The district court found that, 

during both interviews, Demerieux (i) was “notified of his 

rights” under both U.S. and Trinidadian law, (ii) “agreed to 

waive his rights,” (iii) “did not request a lawyer,” and (iv) “was 

not mistreated, threatened or coerced by law enforcement[.]” 

Id. at 41. Concluding that they had insufficient evidence to 

hold Demerieux, the Trinidadian police released him. Id.

After his arrest, Clarke, who was in Trinidadian custody, 

agreed to show the Trinidadian police a forest camp where he 

claimed Maharaj had been held. Agents Clauss and Cruz 

were invited to accompany a “large group of Trinidad[ian] 

police officers” to the site. Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d at 26. 

The next day, Clarke identified the location “where the two 

containers holding the victim’s remains were buried.” Clarke, 

767 F. Supp. 2d at 21. The FBI later assisted with the 

recovery and identification of those remains. Id. 

The Trinidadian police also arrested Straker on January 

6th. Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 84. A few days later, 

Sergeant Lucas informed Agent Clauss of the arrest. Id. at 85. 

Sergeant Lucas then allowed Agent Clauss to interview 

Straker, remaining present during that interview. Id.

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On March 31, 2006, the Trinidadian police rearrested 

Demerieux, and Sergeant Lucas informed Agent Clauss of the 

arrest later that same day. Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d at 41. The 

district court found that, when Agent Clauss and Sergeant 

Lucas spoke on the phone, they “did not discuss the substance 

of the investigation and Clauss did not attempt to direct the 

investigative efforts of the Trinidad[ian] police in any way.” 

Id.

2.

When the Trinidadian police rearrested Demerieux, they 

“informed him of his rights under Trinidad[ian] law,” which 

include, among others, the right to remain silent, the right to 

speak with a legal representative, relative, or friend, and a 

warning that statements may be used against the accused in 

court. Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d at 22, 41. Demerieux neither 

invoked his rights nor requested to contact a lawyer. Once at 

the police station, Demerieux “indicated that he wanted to give 

a statement.” Id. at 42. The Trinidadian police reiterated the 

warnings required under Trinidadian law, and specifically 

advised Demerieux “that he had the right to contact a lawyer, 

relative or friend.” Id. Demerieux reaffirmed his desire to 

give a statement. The Trinidadian police then contacted a 

Justice of the Peace, who met privately with Demerieux, 

questioning him about how the police had treated him and 

whether he had voluntarily agreed to give a statement. Id. 

Demerieux said that he had been treated well and confirmed his 

desire to give a statement. The Justice of the Peace explained 

to Demerieux that he had the right to contact an attorney and 

informed him that he did not have to give a statement. Id. 

Once that meeting concluded, “Demerieux was ready to give a 

formal statement.” Id.

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A Trinidadian officer transcribed Demerieux’s statement 

by hand, including “a certification that expressed Demerieux’s

understanding of his rights, his waiver of his rights and his 

desire to give a statement.” Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d at 42. 

That certification was read aloud to Demerieux, who indicated 

his understanding and signed his name. After finishing his 

statement, Demerieux was given the opportunity to review it, 

and the Trinidadian police also read it aloud to him. Id. 

After Demerieux made several changes, he “signed the 

statement and acknowledged that it was true and had been 

made of his own free will.” Id.

Agents Clauss and Cruz arrived back in Trinidad the next 

day. Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d at 43. The Trinidadian police 

“granted the FBI access to Demerieux,” who “agreed to 

conduct an interview with them.” Id. Agent Clauss, though 

aware that Demerieux had given a statement the day before, 

testified that he had neither seen it nor discussed its substance 

with anyone from the Trinidadian police. Id.

Agents Clauss and Cruz then began their own interview 

with Demerieux. They presented him with an international 

advice of rights form, which they read to him “verbatim[.]” 

Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d at 43. The form generally advised 

Demerieux of his Miranda rights, but informed him that 

appointment of counsel could not be assured while he 

remained in foreign custody.

15 Agent Clauss also “explained 

Demerieux’s rights to him in a more informal way.” Id.

 15 The form stated in full:

We are representatives of the U.S. government. According to 

our laws, you are entitled to certain rights. Before we ask you 

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any questions, we want to be certain that you understand such 

rights.

You do not have to speak to us nor do you have to answer any 

questions. Even though you may have spoke[n] to the 

Trinidad[ian] authorities, you do not have to speak to us right 

now. If you do speak to us, everything that you say can be used 

against you in a court of law, in the United States or anywhere 

else.

In the United States, you would have the right to seek advice from 

an attorney before we asked you any questions and to have an 

attorney with you during your interrogation. If you were in the 

United States and could not afford an attorney, you would be 

provided an attorney at no cost before submitting to any 

questions, if you so desired. Since you are not in our custody, 

nor are we in the United States, we cannot assure that you will 

have access to an attorney, nor can we assure that you will be 

provided with an attorney before we ask you any questions, or 

when we are asking such questions. If you wish to have an 

attorney but Trinidad[ian] authorities do not allow you access to 

one, or if they refuse to provide you an attorney at this time, you 

may opt not to speak to us. If you decide to speak to us without 

an attorney present, you reserve the right to decline to answer our 

questions at any time.

Moreover, you should understand that if you choose not to speak 

to us, that fact may not be used as evidence against you in a court 

of law in the United States.

It ends with the following statement and waiver of rights:

I have read this notice of my rights and I understand what my 

rights are.

I am prepared to give a statement and to answer questions.

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“After the verbal warnings, Demerieux then initialed and 

signed the form, waiving his rights and agreeing to speak to the 

agents.” Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d at 43. Demerieux never 

requested an attorney. Id. The two FBI agents conducted the 

three-hour interview alone, without anyone from the 

Trinidadian police participating. Id. The district court found 

that “the FBI treated Demerieux fairly and there is no evidence

of any coercive tactics.” Id.

3.

The Trinidadian police arrested Sealey on August 8, 2006. 

Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 102. Later that day, Sealey told a 

Trinidadian police officer that he wanted to talk about the 

kidnapping. In response, the officer “identified herself as a 

Trinidad[ian] police officer, and cautioned him as to his rights 

under Trinidad[ian] law[.]” Id. After Sealey reiterated his 

desire to talk, the Trinidadian officer “requested the presence 

of a Justice of the Peace.” Id. The Justice of the Peace spoke 

“privately with Sealey.” Id. at 102. After that meeting, the 

Justice of the Peace advised the officer that Sealey wanted to

speak with his father. Id. Sealey, his father, and the Justice 

of the Peace then had a private meeting, at which, according to 

the Justice of the Peace’s handwritten certification, Sealey 

 

I do not wish to have an attorney at this time.

I understand and know what I am doing.

I have received no promises or threats nor have I been subjected 

to pressure or coercion of any sort.

Dkt. 258-5 (Aug. 11, 2008).

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confirmed that he was making his statement “knowingly and 

voluntarily.” Id. 

Meanwhile, having been notified of Sealey’s arrest, FBI 

Agent Marvin Freeman arrived at the police station. Straker, 

596 F. Supp. 2d at 102. The Trinidadian officers did not 

“include Freeman in their preparations, having had no 

discussions with him about the investigation before that day.” 

Id. at 103. During Sealey’s interview by Trinidadian officers, 

Agent Freeman sat in an adjacent cubicle “over 10 feet away 

and could hear the interview taking place.” Id. The 

Trinidadian police officers did not consult with Agent Freeman 

during the interview, and “Freeman did not make any 

suggestions to the officers about any areas of inquiry.” Id.

One Trinidadian police officer read Sealey his rights under 

Trinidadian law, and asked him to sign the following 

statement: “‘I, Michael Bourne, also known as Christopher 

Sealey and Boyie, wish to make a statement. I want someone 

to write down what I say. I have been told that I need not say 

anything unless I wish to do so and that whatever I say may be 

given in evidence. I have also been told that I have the right to 

retain a legal adviser.’” Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 103. 

Sealey signed the statement, and Sealey’s father and the Justice 

of the Peace signed as witnesses. Id. 

Sealey confessed to his role in the kidnapping, and a 

Trinidadian police officer handwrote a transcript. Straker, 

596 F. Supp. 2d at 103. She then read the transcript to Sealey, 

who made corrections, each of which he signed. Id. Sealey 

also handwrote the following statement: “The above 

statement has been read to me, and I have been told that I can 

correct or add anything I wish. This statement is true. I have 

made it of my own free will.” Id. Sealey’s father and the 

Justice of the Peace signed as witnesses, and the Justice of the 

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Peace wrote an additional certification about the interview, 

“summarizing his initial private meeting with Sealey and his 

father and Sealey’s waiver of rights, and then confirming that 

Sealey had been read the full statement in the presence of his 

father before making the handwritten certification that it was 

correct.” Id. at 104.

After they finished questioning Sealey, the Trinidadian 

police allowed Agent Freeman to interview him. Straker, 596 

F. Supp. 2d at 104. Agent Freeman read Sealey his rights 

based on an “‘international advice of rights’ form.” Id.; see 

supra note 15. Sealey signed the form, and his father, who 

remained present throughout, signed as a witness, along with 

another Trinidadian police officer. Id. at 105. The district 

court found that “Sealey did not ask to stop the interview, nor 

did he appear to be in distress or discomfort.” Straker, 596 F. 

Supp. 2d. at 105.

B.

Before trial, Demerieux moved to suppress his March 31st 

statement to the Trinidadian police, and his April 1st statement 

to the FBI. Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d at 40. Sealey likewise 

moved to suppress the statements he made on August 8, 2006, 

both to the Trinidadian police and to the FBI. Straker, 596 F. 

Supp. 2d at 105. 

As relevant here, both argued that the statements were 

inadmissible because the Trinidadian police and the FBI were 

engaged in a “joint venture,” and accordingly Miranda 

warnings were required before the interviews by the 

Trinidadian police. Id.; Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d at 40. They 

also contended that the statements should be suppressed 

because they were involuntary. See Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d 

at 105; Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d at 40. 

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The district court rejected both motions. See Straker, 596 

F. Supp. 2d at 108–09; Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d at 44–45. 

Relying on the government’s concession, the court assumed 

that Miranda applies to FBI questioning of non-resident aliens 

held in foreign custody abroad. Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d at 29 

& n.12 (quoting Gov’t Opp’n to Clarke Mot. at 20 (Dkt. No. 

353)); see also id. at 43–44. The court noted, however, that 

Miranda did not govern the interrogations by the Trinidadian 

police unless those interrogations were “the product of a joint 

venture,” which exists when “‘United States law enforcement 

agents actively participate in the questioning of the defendant 

or the foreign officials act as agents or virtual agents of the 

United States.’” Id. at 43–44 (quoting Straker, 596 F. Supp. 

2d at 106). 

With respect to Demerieux’s March 31st statement to the 

Trinidadian police, the court found no “active participation” by 

the FBI, as Agents “Clauss and Cruz did not even arrive in 

Trinidad until the following day[.]” Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d 

at 44. The district court further determined that the “two law 

enforcement entities were conducting independent 

investigations, they were not sharing information, and the FBI 

was in no way directing the activities of the Trinidad[ian] 

police.” Id. Finding “no evidence that the Trinidad[ian] 

police were acting as agents, or virtual agents, of the FBI at the 

time he made his statement on March 31,” the district court 

concluded that there was no joint venture. Id. The court 

further found that “Demerieux was well aware of his rights, 

voluntarily agreed to waive those rights, and gave a statement 

to the Trinidad[ian] police of his own free will.” Id. The 

court reached the same conclusion about the voluntariness of 

Demerieux’s April 1st statement to the FBI. Id. at 44–45.

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With respect to Sealey’s August 8th statements, the 

district court found “simply no evidence” that the separate 

interviews of Sealey by the Trinidadian police and the FBI 

amounted to a joint venture. Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 106. 

The district court found that the testimony “overwhelmingly 

established that there were two distinct interviews[.]” Id. 

The court also determined that “the Trinidad[ian] police and 

Freeman were not acting jointly with respect to the 

investigation of Sealey at the time the interview took place,” 

finding that the FBI (i) “did not participate in Sealey’s arrest on 

August 8, 2006”; (ii) “was [not] even remotely involved in 

setting up Sealey’s interview with the Trinidad[ian] police”; 

and (iii) “was not allowed to participate in the Trinidad[ian] 

officers’ interview of Sealey, observe the interview, or submit 

any questions,” but was instead “only permitted to conduct [its] 

own separate interview.” Id. at 106–07. Thus, “under even a 

broad view of the ‘joint venture’ standard,” the district court 

concluded, “[w]hatever information-sharing or cooperation 

might have occurred with respect to other defendants, there is 

nothing to support a finding that the Trinidad[ian] police and 

the FBI were acting ‘jointly’ on August 8, 2006[.]” Id. at 107.

C.

The parties dispute the standard of review applicable to the 

joint-venture question. Demerieux and Sealey contend that 

the district court’s factual findings are reviewed for clear error, 

but that the ultimate question of whether the facts found 

constitute a joint venture is a legal question reviewed de novo. 

That is analogous to how we review a district court’s 

conclusion that, under the totality of the circumstances, an 

accused “waived his fifth and six[th] amendment rights 

‘voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently.’” United States v. 

Yunis, 859 F.2d 953, 958 (D.C. Cir. 1988) (quoting Miranda, 

384 U.S. at 444). The government, by contrast, argues that 

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our review is for clear error only. We need not resolve the 

question in this case because, even reviewing de novo, we 

affirm.

D.

1.

We note at the outset that the government concedes that 

the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination 

protects nonresident aliens facing criminal trial in the United 

States, even when, as here, the questioning by federal 

authorities took place abroad. Gov’t Br. 187–88 n.93 

(“Below, the government conceded the applicability of the 

Fifth Amendment to the FBI’s overseas actions.”); Oral Arg. 

Tr. 135:18–19 (“[W]e appropriately concede it[.]”); see also In 

re Terrorist Bombings of U.S. Embassies in E. Africa, 552 F.3d 

177, 198–201 (2d Cir. 2008) (so concluding). Relatedly, 

despite some equivocation below, see Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d 

at 29 n.12, the government has conceded on appeal the 

applicability of Miranda to interrogations by U.S. authorities 

of individuals in foreign police custody, see Oral Arg. Tr. 135; 

Gov’t Br. 187–88 n.93. For those reasons, we assume, 

without deciding, that Miranda applies to statements obtained 

by U.S. authorities from suspects held in foreign custody 

abroad. 

The Fifth Amendment’s self-incrimination clause 

provides that no “person” “shall be compelled in any criminal 

case to be a witness against himself.” U.S.CONST. AMEND. V. 

As the Supreme Court held in Miranda, that privilege against 

compelled self-incrimination is “applicable during a period of 

custodial interrogation.” 384 U.S. at 460–61. That is 

because “the compulsion to speak in the isolated setting of the 

police station may well be greater than in courts or other 

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official investigations,” id. at 461, which “heightens the risk 

that an individual will not be ‘accorded his privilege under the 

Fifth Amendment . . . not to be compelled to incriminate 

himself,’” Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428, 435 

(2000) (quoting Miranda, 384 U.S. at 439) (alterations in 

original).

To protect against that risk, Miranda set forth “concrete 

constitutional guidelines for law enforcement agencies and 

courts to follow.” 384 U.S. at 442. “Those guidelines 

established that the admissibility in evidence of any statement 

given during custodial interrogation of a suspect would depend 

on whether the police provided the suspect with four 

warnings”: that “a suspect ‘has the right to remain silent, that 

anything he says can be used against him in a court of law, that 

he has the right to the presence of an attorney, and that if he 

cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed for him prior to 

any questioning if he so desires.’” Dickerson, 530 U.S. at 435 

(quoting Miranda, 384 U.S. at 479).

A different rule applies, however, to statements obtained 

abroad by foreign officials. See Wayne R. LaFave et al., 2 

Criminal Procedure § 6.10(d) (3d ed. 2013) (“[T]hough a 

defendant may be entitled to keep out of a prosecution in this 

country a confession by him which was involuntarily given to a 

foreign policeman, he may not obtain the suppression of a 

confession obtained by such an official merely because the 

Miranda warnings were not given.”). As a prophylactic rule, 

Miranda safeguards the constitutional privilege against 

compelled self-incrimination by deterring negligent or willful 

police misconduct that could impinge upon the Fifth 

Amendment right. See Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U.S. 298, 308 

(1985) (noting a principal aim of Miranda is “deterrence”); 

Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433, 447 (1974) (discussing the 

“deterrent purpose of the exclusionary rule”). But because the 

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Miranda exclusionary rule would “have little, if any, deterrent 

effect upon foreign police officers,” In re Terrorist Bombings, 

552 F.3d at 202, courts have held that “statements obtained 

from a defendant by foreign law enforcement officers, even 

without Miranda warnings, generally are admissible” as long 

as they are “voluntary,” United States v. Abu Ali, 528 F.3d 210, 

227 (4th Cir. 2008); see also LaFave, supra, § 6.10(d) n.59 (it 

is “commonly assumed” that the voluntariness requirement 

still applies to confessions obtained during overseas 

interrogations by foreign officers, but “it may well be that . . . 

the defendant can object only if the confession was obtained by 

methods making its reliability suspect or, perhaps, by methods 

which ‘shock the conscience’”).16

Under the “joint venture” doctrine, custodial statements 

obtained by foreign officials without Miranda warnings are 

inadmissible in United States courts if those officials were 

“engaged in a joint venture with, or . . . were acting as agents 

of, United States law enforcement officers.” Abu Ali, 528 

F.3d at 228. Demerieux and Sealey argue that the FBI and the 

Trinidadian police were engaged in such a coordinated, joint 

investigation, and accordingly the statements given to the 

Trinidadian police without Miranda warnings must be 

 16 We have never decided what standard determines the 

admissibility of statements obtained abroad by foreign police 

officers, though it has been suggested that the ordinary voluntariness 

standard governs. See Yunis, 859 F.2d at 971 (Mikva, J., specially 

concurring) (arguing that voluntariness standard should apply 

because, “[i]n Bram v. United States, 168 U.S. 532 (1897), the Court 

excluded a confession from an American trial, notwithstanding that 

the coercive interrogation was conducted by a foreign police officer 

in a foreign country”). We need not decide that question today 

because Demerieux and Sealey do not dispute voluntariness distinct 

from their Miranda claims.

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suppressed. Demerieux and Sealey also argue that their 

statements to the FBI should have been suppressed under 

Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600 (2004), which generally 

prevents police from sanitizing an unwarned statement by 

giving the suspect after-the-fact Miranda warnings and then 

having the suspect repeat the incriminating statement. 

2.

The “joint venture” doctrine ensures that United States 

law enforcement agents cannot circumvent their obligations 

under Miranda just by outsourcing custodial interrogation to 

foreign agents while still “actively participat[ing] in the 

questioning conducted by foreign authorities,” United States v. 

Yousef, 327 F.3d 56, 145 (2d Cir. 2003), or by having “the 

foreign officials act as [their] agents or virtual agents,” Straker, 

596 F. Supp. 2d at 106. 

Demerieux and Sealey acknowledge that the FBI did not 

participate at all, let alone “actively participate,” Yousef, 327 

F.3d at 145, in the Trinidadian police interrogations, Oral Arg. 

Tr. 119:25–120:1 (“[T]his was clearly not a joint venture in the 

questioning[.]”). And Demerieux and Sealey do not attack as 

clear error the district court’s factual findings concerning the 

operational independence of the interrogations. Id. at 109:8–

9. Indeed, Demerieux and Sealey concede that, if the inquiry 

is confined to the days of their respective interrogations, there 

is nothing to support a conclusion that the Trinidadian police 

and the FBI were acting jointly. Id. at 109:11–14.

Focusing instead on several preceding incidents of 

cooperation between the two law enforcement agencies, 

Demerieux and Sealey assert that the cooperation rose to the 

level of a “prior joint investigative venture” from which the 

interrogations by the Trinidadian police “sprang.” Def. Br. 

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120. They point in particular to: (i) Agent Clauss’s meeting 

with the Trinidadian police in late 2005 and the resulting 

exchange of information between the two law enforcement 

agencies; (ii) the Trinidadian police’s aid to the FBI in securing 

an interview of a cooperating witness in January 2006; (iii) the 

joint trips by the FBI and the Trinidadian police to investigate 

campsite where Maharaj was said to be held and where 

Maharaj was buried, and the forensic assistance provided by 

the FBI during the discovery and autopsy of Maharaj’s 

remains; and (iv) the joint interview of Straker by the FBI and 

the Trinidadian police on January 9, 2006. 

We need not decide whether the joint-venture inquiry 

turns on the amount of coordination across the whole 

eighteen-month, multi-defendant investigation or only in the 

discrete interrogations to which Miranda could apply. 

Compare United States v. Emery, 591 F.2d 1266, 1268 (9th 

Cir. 1978) (inquiring into the totality of the involvement of 

U.S. law enforcement agents in the investigation and arrest of 

suspects), with Yousef, 327 F.3d 145–46 (inquiring into U.S. 

law enforcement officers’ participation in the interrogations to 

which Miranda could have applied). Even assuming that the 

nature of the full investigative relationship governs, the 

isolated incidents of routine cooperation between the 

Trinidadian police and the FBI do not amount to the type of 

closely coordinated investigative effort that would trigger the 

joint venture doctrine. 

To begin with, there was no “coordination and direction” 

of the Trinidadian investigation by the FBI. See Abu Ali, 528 

F.3d at 229. Nor is there evidence of “active” or “substantial” 

participation by U.S. law enforcement agents in the 

Trinidadian investigation. While FBI officers were physically 

present during one Trinidadian interrogation, such silent 

observation does not make the interrogation the FBI’s own for 

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purposes of Miranda. See id. (“[M]ere presence at an 

interrogation does not constitute the ‘active’ or ‘substantial’ 

participation necessary for a ‘joint venture[.]’”); see also 

Pfeifer v. Bureau of Prisons, 615 F.2d 873, 877 (9th Cir. 1980); 

Kilday v. United States, 481 F.2d 655, 656 (5th Cir. 1973). 

Nor is it enough that foreign law enforcement agents granted a 

U.S. law enforcement agent permission to question a suspect. 

See United States v. Heller, 625 F.2d 594, 599–600 & n.7 (5th 

Cir. 1980) (no joint venture where U.S. officers had to get 

permission from British authorities to interview the suspect, 

Mirandized the suspect when questioning him, and did not 

discuss with British authorities the separate un-Mirandized 

interrogation those authorities had conducted).

Likewise, the forensic assistance provided by the FBI 

during the recovery, autopsy, and identification of Maharaj’s 

remains does not trigger Miranda both because the assistance 

was limited in time and scope, and because it served the FBI’s 

own independent investigative efforts. See United States v. 

Bagaric, 706 F.2d 42, 69 (2d Cir. 1983) (“[C]lose cooperation 

between American and Canadian officials [was] insufficient to 

upset [the trial court’s] finding that [the Canadian official] 

conducted the search on his own country’s authority and in 

connection with an ongoing Canadian investigation.”); see also

Heller, 625 F.2d at 599–600 (no joint venture when, inter alia, 

participation by U.S. law enforcement officers in suspect’s 

arrest “was peripheral at most”); United States v. Mundt, 508 

F.2d 904, 906–07 (10th Cir. 1974) (Miranda inapplicable 

where U.S. law enforcement officer “merely . . . played a 

substantial part in the events which led up to the arrest of 

[defendant], but once the arrest was made the Peruvian Police 

took over”). 

Instead, the types of joint ventures that have triggered 

Miranda have involved levels of coordination and interaction 

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far more extensive than what occurred here. There is no 

evidence in this case, for example, that the Trinidadian police 

were “acting on behalf of” the FBI “in an effort to extradite” 

Demerieux and Sealey to the United States. Cranford v. 

Rodriguez, 512 F.2d 860, 863 (10th Cir. 1975).

 

Nor is this case like Emery, 591 F.2d at 1268, on which 

Demerieux and Sealey heavily rely. There, agents of the U.S. 

Drug Enforcement Agency contacted Mexican officials about 

suspected drug activity, coordinated surveillance, supplied an 

undercover agent as the pilot for a drug transport plane in a 

Mexican sting operation, signaled when to arrest the suspects 

after determining that drugs were located in suitcases, and were 

present at the suspects’ interrogation. See id. Such extensive 

coordination, active participation, and direction by U.S. law 

enforcement officers far surpasses the limited cooperation 

between the Trinidadian police and the FBI here.17 

Indeed, if the isolated and infrequent interactions and 

courtesies that occurred here sufficed, all manner of routine 

international cooperation would be subject to Miranda’s 

strictures regardless of whether U.S. law enforcement officers 

have any practical authority over or responsibility for the 

interrogations and investigative measures undertaken by 

foreign officials. Miranda is a prophylaxis designed to 

regulate and deter the coercive conduct of domestic law 

enforcement officers. See In re Terrorist Bombings, 552 F.3d 

at 202. It is not meant to police independent foreign 

investigative activities that U.S. law enforcement officers do 

not direct and cannot control. 

 17 We have found no case, and defendants have cited none, in which 

the type of occasional interactions at issue here amounted to a joint 

venture. 

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3.

Because there was no joint venture, Seibert does not 

require suppression either. In Seibert, the Supreme Court 

evaluated a police protocol under which the interrogating 

officer deliberately withheld Miranda warnings until the 

suspect confessed, and then gave the full Miranda warnings 

post hoc before having the suspect repeat the confession. 

Seibert, 542 U.S. at 605–07 (plurality). 

When confronted with such question-first-and-warn-later 

tactics, courts must determine “whether it would be reasonable 

to find that in these circumstances the warnings could function 

‘effectively’ as Miranda requires.” Seibert, 542 U.S. at 611–

12. The Seibert plurality focused on such factors as “the 

completeness and detail of the questions and answers in the 

first round of interrogation, the overlapping content of the two 

statements, the timing and setting of the first and the second, 

the continuity of police personnel, and the degree to which the 

interrogator’s questions treated the second round as continuous 

with the first.” Id. at 615. Concurring in the judgment, 

Justice Kennedy stated that he “would apply a narrower test 

applicable only in the infrequent case . . . in which the two-step 

interrogation technique was used in a calculated way to 

undermine the Miranda warning.” Id. at 622 (Kennedy, J., 

concurring in the judgment).

In light of the fractured decision in Seibert, courts have 

debated whether the plurality opinion’s multifactor test 

controls, or whether Justice Kennedy’s concurrence is the 

narrower rationale that is binding under Marks v. United 

States, 430 U.S. 188, 193 (1977). Compare United States v. 

Courtney, 463 F.3d 333, 338 (5th Cir. 2006) (“[W]e find 

Seibert’s holding in Justice Kennedy’s opinion concurring in 

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the judgment.”), with United States v. Heron, 564 F.3d 879, 

884 (7th Cir. 2009) (“[T]he Marks rule is not applicable to 

Seibert,” as “Justice Kennedy’s intent-based test was rejected 

by both the plurality opinion and the dissent[.]”). 

We need not pick sides in that debate because (i) Seibert

does not apply on these facts and, even if it did, 

(ii) Demerieux’s and Sealey’s statements were admissible 

under both the plurality’s and Justice Kennedy’s tests.

First, Seibert applies only when the accused is questioned 

first, then warned later. See 542 U.S. at 611–12. That did not 

happen here. The district court found—and Demerieux and 

Sealey do not dispute—that the Trinidadian police’s warnings 

under Trinidadian law were “functionally equivalent” to those 

required by Miranda. Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 107 n.24; 

Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d at 44 n.27; see also Oral Arg. Tr. 

111:9–18. Simply put, there was no two-step interrogation 

because (i) the Trinidadian police and the FBI were not acting 

in concert and, in any event, (ii) both gave warnings the 

adequacy of which under Miranda Demerieux and Sealey do 

not challenge. 

Second, Justice Kennedy’s test applies only when police 

deliberately use a two-step interrogation to thwart Miranda. 

See Seibert, 542 U.S. at 622 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the 

judgment). Such deliberate evasion is absent in this case. 

Demerieux and Sealey concede both that “there was no 

evidence of a protocol that directed the FBI to swoop in after 

[the Trinidadian police] secured a confession,” Reply Br. 59, 

and that the Trinidadian police and the FBI were not acting 

jointly on the days of their interrogations, see Oral Arg. Tr. 

119:25–120:6. There accordingly was no “interrogation 

technique designed to . . . undermine[] the Miranda warning 

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and obscure[] its meaning.” Seibert, 542 U.S. at 618 

(Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment). 

Third, even under the Seibert plurality’s multifactor test, 

Demerieux’s and Sealey’s claim would fail. Although both 

the Trinidadian police and the FBI thoroughly questioned 

Demerieux and Sealey, and thus elicited confessions the 

content of which largely overlaps, those two factors do not 

outbalance the other considerations demonstrating the efficacy 

of the intervening FBI Miranda warnings. To start, given the 

timing and setting of the first statement to the Trinidadian 

police and the second statement to the FBI, “a reasonable 

person” “could have seen” the FBI’s questioning “as a new and 

distinct experience” during which he retained “a genuine 

choice whether to follow up on the earlier admission” to the 

Trinidadian police. Seibert, 542 U.S. at 615–16. The 

Trinidadian police began their interviews by apprising 

Demerieux and Sealey of their rights under Trinidadian law, 

while the FBI informed them of their rights under U.S. law. 

Those separate rounds of separate warnings not only made 

Demerieux and Sealey aware that each round of questioning 

was distinct, but also reminded them on each occasion that they 

had the right to remain silent. The distinctness of the 

interrogations is particularly stark for Demerieux, whose 

interrogation by the FBI came a day after his interrogation by 

the Trinidadian police. See Clarke, 611 F. Supp. 2d at 42. 

Furthermore, unlike in Seibert, there was a sharp 

discontinuity of police personnel, and the FBI did not “treat[] 

the second [interrogation] as continuous with the first.” 

Seibert, 542 U.S. at 615. Not only were the FBI agents who 

interrogated Demerieux and Sealey different from the 

Trinidadian police officers who initially questioned them, but 

the FBI agents represented an entirely different law 

enforcement authority from an entirely different country. 

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Equally importantly, the FBI agents did not refer back to 

the prior Trinidadian interrogations in an effort to elicit the 

same confessions. In Seibert, by contrast, the “same officer” 

who conducted the first, unwarned interrogation returned “only 

15 to 20 minutes” later and led the suspect “over the same 

ground again.” 542 U.S. at 613, 616. Indeed, that officer 

“set the scene” for the second round of questioning “by saying 

‘we’ve been talking for a little while about what happened on 

Wednesday the twelfth, haven’t we?’” Id. at 616. And when

the suspect equivocated or departed from her prior statement, 

the officer referred “back to the confession already given,” 

reinforcing the impression “that the further questioning was a 

mere continuation” of the earlier interrogation. Id. Here, a 

reasonable person would have viewed the Trinidadian police’s 

and the FBI’s interrogations as two “independent 

interrogations.” Id. at 614.

VII.

Edwards Claim

Defendant Straker separately challenges the denial of his 

motion to suppress the statement he gave to the FBI on July 29, 

2007, on the ground that it was obtained after he had invoked 

the right to counsel, in violation of Edwards v. Arizona, 451 

U.S. 477 (1981). Because Straker voluntarily reinitiated 

communication with the FBI, we reject his claim.18

 18 De Four and Sealey purport to join Straker’s argument. Def. Br. 

133 n.58. However, they cannot vicariously invoke Straker’s 

personal Fifth and Sixth Amendment protections under Edwards. 

See supra note 14, supra; see also United States v. Sabatino, 943 

F.2d 94, 96 n.1 (1st Cir. 1991) (“Sixth Amendment rights . . . are 

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A.

1.

The Trinidadian police arrested Straker on January 6, 

2006, interrogating him once that day and again the next. 

Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 84–85. On both occasions the 

Trinidadian police informed Straker of his rights under 

Trinidadian law before questioning him, including the “right to 

remain silent, the right to communicate with a legal 

representative, relative, or friend, and a caution that the 

statement may be used against the accused.” Id. at 85. 

Straker denied any knowledge of the kidnapping or killing. 

Id. A day later, on January 8th, Straker met with his attorney, 

who told “Straker not to sign any documents or speak to 

anyone.” Id.

On January 9th, Sergeant Lucas allowed the FBI to 

interview Straker. Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 85. During the 

interview, Sergeant Lucas and three FBI agents—Clauss, Cruz, 

and Freeman—sat at the table across from Straker. Id. Agent Clauss read the standard FBI international 

advice-of-rights form to Straker, advising him of his Miranda

rights with the standard caveat that appointment of counsel 

cannot be assured while he remains in foreign custody. Id. at 

86. Discussions were “calm [and] relaxed.” J.A. 2187. 

Straker’s conversational tone left both Sergeant Lucas and 

Agent Cruz with the “distinct impression that [Straker] wanted 

to cooperate,” J.A. 2291 (Agent Cruz), and was “trying to 

make a deal or something,” J.A. 2161 (Sgt. Lucas).

 

personal in nature and cannot vicariously be asserted[.]”) (citing 

Gannett Co. v. DePasquale, 443 U.S. 368, 380 (1979)).

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About halfway through the interview, Straker told the 

agents that he had an attorney. Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 86. 

Straker said that he did not wish to talk about the details of the 

case “at this time,” but would “rather talk to my attorney before 

I talk any further.” J.A. 2257. The session continued “for 

another hour or so,” with “intermittent questions from the FBI 

about Straker’s biographical and family information” and 

Straker otherwise “‘leading most of the conversation.’” 

Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 86. Near the end of the session, 

Straker said that “‘after having access to his attorney, he would 

be willing to speak to the agents.’” Id. at 87. Agent Clauss 

then advised Straker that, “after he talked to his attorney, if he 

wanted to make an attempt to contact” them, they “would be 

willing to follow up with him at that point.” J.A. 2191. To 

that end, Agent Freeman gave Straker his card, which 

contained his contact information at the U.S. Embassy in 

Trinidad. Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 87. The FBI then 

ended the interview. Id. 

“[A]bout two weeks” later, having met with his lawyer in 

the interim, Straker attempted to contact Agent Freeman by 

telephone. Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 88–89, 94. There is 

no recording of Straker’s message, but Agent Freeman testified 

that “it was to the effect of ‘this is Anderson Straker; can you 

contact me?’” Id. at 89. Agent Freeman never returned 

Straker’s call, however, because he was advised “not to do so” 

by a Trinidadian official in light of Straker’s “legal 

representation” in Trinidadian courts. Id. at 89.

Straker was formally charged by the Trinidadian 

authorities on January 10, 2006, and he remained “in custody 

in Trinidad” for the next eighteen months. Straker, 596 F. 

Supp. 2d at 87–89. The FBI did not attempt to contact him at 

any point during those intervening months. Id. at 89. 

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2.

Straker was formally indicted in the United States on 

September 20, 2006. Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 89. But he 

remained in Trinidadian custody until his extradition to the 

United States on July 29, 2007. Id. After formally arresting 

Straker at the airport in Trinidad, Agent Clauss orally advised 

Straker of his Miranda rights and gave him an FBI advice of 

rights form, which included the full Miranda warnings. Id. at 

89 & n.13. Straker signed the form’s waiver of rights, 

indicating that “I have read this statement of my rights and I 

understand what my rights are. At this time, I am willing to 

answer questions without a lawyer present.” Id. at 89. Both 

Clauss and Cruz signed as witnesses, and, according to their 

testimony, “Straker appeared willing to sign and . . . did not 

raise any questions about his rights.” Id.

The FBI interviewed Straker upon arrival in Puerto Rico. 

Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 90. Straker did not ask to stop the 

questioning “and overall seemed ‘cooperative.’” Id. 

According to FBI notes, Straker “acknowledged having a role 

in planning the kidnapping of Balram Maharaj and described 

the roles of several co-defendants.” Id. 

B.

Straker moved to suppress his July 29, 2007 statement to 

the FBI. He argued that, because he had invoked his right to 

counsel when the FBI interviewed him in Trinidad in January 

2006, the FBI was barred from subjecting him to further 

custodial interrogation eighteen months later when he was 

extradited to the United States. See Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d 

at 84. Straker grounded his argument on Edwards v. Arizona, 

which held that, once a suspect invokes his right to counsel,

police generally may not obtain a waiver of that right just by 

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later reopening the interrogation. 451 U.S. at 484–85. 

Instead, the suspect must himself reinitiate any discussion. Id. 

Straker argued that he had done nothing to invite a resumption 

of questioning, thus rendering his waiver of Miranda rights 

invalid. 

The district court denied Straker’s motion. Straker, 596 

F. Supp. 2d at 99–100. The court again relied on the 

government’s concession that “the Fifth Amendment privilege 

against self-incrimination protects nonresident aliens facing a 

criminal trial in the United States even where the questioning 

by United States authorities takes place abroad.” Id. at 90–91. 

The district court then noted that Edwards establishes a 

“bright-line” rule “barring police interrogation of a subject 

who has invoked his right to counsel unless the subject initiates 

further communications with the police.” Id. at 91 (citing 

Arizona v. Roberson, 486 U.S. 675, 681–82 (1988); Minnick v. 

Mississippi, 498 U.S. 146, 151–52 (1990)). Describing it as a 

“close call,” the district court concluded that the message 

Straker left for Agent Freeman a few weeks after the January 9, 

2006 interview “initiated” further communication with the FBI 

under Oregon v. Bradshaw, 462 U.S. 1039 (1983) (plurality), 

and that Straker had voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently 

waived his right to counsel. Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 93–

95.

In so concluding, the district court credited the testimony 

of Agent Freeman, finding that Straker left “at least one voice 

mail message about two weeks after the January 9 interview, 

asking Freeman to call him.” Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 94. 

The court also considered “the context in which the message 

was left” to be “important,” stressing that Straker had said in 

the first interview that “he wanted to leave the door open for 

further discussions” after he consulted his lawyer. Id. 

Straker then, of his own initiative, used the business card that 

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the FBI agent had left him “for th[e] purpose” of reopening 

communication to call and ask Agent Freeman to speak with 

him. Id. In the district court’s view, that sequence of events 

could “reasonably be construed to indicate that [Straker’s] 

initiation of communication [was] directed toward the 

investigation.” Id.

The district court also concluded that, upon his 

extradition, Straker voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently 

waived his Fifth Amendment right to counsel before giving his 

July 29, 2007 statement, finding that (i) Straker had 

“familiarity generally with the Miranda warnings from his 

January 2006 interview”; (ii) Straker was properly advised of 

his Miranda rights by Agent Clauss on July 29, 2007 and 

agreed to waive those rights by signing the waiver on the FBI’s 

advice of rights form; (iii) the only “coercive circumstance” on 

July 29th was the handcuffs Straker wore; and (iv) the FBI had 

no contact with Straker in the eighteen months between the 

January 2006 interview and the July 2007 interview, leaving no 

opportunity for the FBI to “badger” Straker into signing the 

waiver. 596 F. Supp. 2d at 95–96. Finally, the court held 

that this waiver applied as well to Straker’s Sixth Amendment 

right to counsel post-indictment. Id. at 100 (citing Patterson 

v. Illinois, 487 U.S. 285 (1988)).

C.

The district court’s factual findings are reviewed for clear 

error. See Yunis, 859 F.2d at 958. The government argues 

that “initiation” is a fact question reviewed for clear error. 

Straker argues, however, that the ultimate question of whether 

those facts amount to an “initiation” under Edwards is 

reviewed de novo. Straker is correct. The question whether a 

given set of facts meets the legal threshold needed to overcome 

Edwards’s prophylactic protection of Fifth and Sixth 

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Amendment rights is reviewed de novo. See United States v. 

Whaley, 13 F.3d 963, 968–69 (6th Cir. 1994) (“While we 

accept, unless clearly erroneous, the facts that the district court 

found, whether those facts together constitute an ‘initiation’ 

under Edwards is a legal question we review de novo.”); cf. 

Yunis, 859 F.2d at 958 (waiver of Fifth and Sixth Amendment 

rights). 

D.

1.

Because the government does not contest the issue, we 

assume without deciding that both the Fifth Amendment 

privilege against self-incrimination and the Miranda and 

Edwards doctrines govern the admissibility at trial of 

statements obtained by U.S. authorities from nonresident 

aliens who first assert their right to counsel while held in 

foreign custody. 

Ordinarily a suspect can waive his Miranda rights. See 

Maryland v. Shatzer, 559 U.S. 98, 104 (2010). But special 

protections apply once the suspect has invoked his 

constitutional right to counsel during custodial interrogation. 

When that happens, the Supreme Court has interposed a 

“second layer of prophylaxis.” Id. (quoting McNeil v. 

Wisconsin, 501 U.S. 171, 176 (1991)). “[W]hen an accused 

has invoked his right to have counsel present during custodial 

interrogation, a valid waiver of that right cannot be established 

by showing only that he responded to further police-initiated 

custodial interrogation.” Edwards, 451 U.S. at 484. That is 

because, “if a suspect believes that he is not capable of 

undergoing [custodial] questioning without advice of counsel, 

then it is presumed that any subsequent waiver . . . is itself the 

product of the ‘inherently compelling pressures’ [of custodial 

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interrogation] and not the purely voluntary choice of the 

suspect.” Roberson, 486 U.S. at 681 (quoting Miranda, 384 

U.S. at 467); see also Montejo v. Louisiana, 556 U.S. 778, 

794–95 (2009) (Edwards prevents police from “badgering” a 

defendant into waiving his previously asserted “right to have 

counsel during custodial interrogation—which right happens 

to be guaranteed (once the adversary judicial process has 

begun) by [both the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.]”). 

Consequently, it is only when the subsequent questioning is “at 

the suspect’s own instigation” that a valid waiver of Miranda

rights will be found. Shatzer, 559 U.S. at 104 (internal 

quotation marks omitted).

The government does not dispute that Straker exercised 

his right to counsel during the January 9, 2006 interrogation 

when he said that he wanted to speak to his lawyer. As the 

case comes to us, the government has also conceded that 

Straker was in Miranda custody at the time of that 

interrogation, and that there was no break in that custody 

during the eighteen months leading up to the FBI’s July 29, 

2007 interrogation. Gov’t Br. 191 n.96. We thus assume 

that the “judicially prescribed prophylaxis” of Edwards applies 

on these facts, Shatzer, 559 U.S. at 105, without needing to 

decide whether and for how long Edwards applies while the 

accused is held in continuing foreign custody. In addition, 

because Straker does not argue that any purported initiation of 

conversation with the FBI lapsed during the year and a half 

between when he left his phone message for Agent Freeman 

and the interrogation at which he confessed, we need not 

decide if an officer must immediately act upon, or whether a 

waiver of Miranda rights must follow closely on the heels of, a 

suspect’s “initiation” of conversation with the authorities.

Once Straker invoked his right to counsel during an 

interrogation to which Miranda has been stipulated to apply, 

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the FBI could not “subject [him] to further interrogation . . . 

unless [Straker] himself initiate[d] further communication, 

exchanges, or conversations with the[m].” Edwards, 451 U.S. 

at 484–85. The parties agree that the plurality opinion in 

Bradshaw governs our inquiry into whether Straker’s 

telephone call to Agent Freeman initiated discussion with the 

FBI. Straker Suppl. Br. 1 (“[T]he plurality opinion in Oregon 

v. Bradshaw does provide a framework for evaluating whether 

Straker evinced a willingness to engage in a generalized 

discussion.”); Gov’t Suppl. Br. 7–11 (arguing that the 

Bradshaw plurality controls the initiation question). 

Under the Bradshaw framework, whether Straker’s 

telephone message to Agent Freeman constitutes initiation 

turns on whether the statement “evinced a willingness and a 

desire for a generalized discussion about the investigation.” 

Bradshaw, 462 U.S. at 1045–46. On the other hand, if 

Straker’s statement concerned “routine incidents of the 

custodial relationship”—“such as a request for a drink of water 

or a request to use a telephone,” that would not suffice and the 

Edwards bar on further questioning would remain intact. Id. 

at 1045.

It bears noting that the “initiation” inquiry is distinct from, 

and antecedent to, the question whether “subsequent events 

indicated a waiver of the Fifth Amendment right to have 

counsel present during the interrogation.” Bradshaw, 462 

U.S. at 1044. The latter inquiry is rigorous, requiring that we 

determine whether the government has proven that the 

“purported waiver was knowing and intelligent,” id. at 1046, 

and “indulge in every reasonable presumption against waiver,” 

Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 404 (1977). In conducting 

the initiation inquiry, by contrast, we ask not what the suspect 

intended to do, but what intention the police officer “could 

reasonably have . . . interpreted” the suspect’s 

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statements—even if “ambiguous”—to “evince[],” without any 

legal presumption one way or the other. Bradshaw, 462 U.S. 

at 1045–46. 

Taken together and viewed from the perspective of a 

reasonable officer, both the content and the context of Straker’s 

message “evinced a willingness and a desire” to reinitiate 

communications with the FBI concerning the criminal 

investigation. Bradshaw, 462 U.S. 1045–46. Straker, in 

fact, does not dispute that he called the number Agent Freeman 

had given him and left a voicemail message “asking Freeman 

to call him back.” Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 89, 94. 

The government concedes that statement, considered in 

isolation, would not evince a desire to resume discussion of the 

investigation because it gives no specific indication of what

Straker wished to discuss. Oral Arg. Tr. 131. We agree. 

But that statement does not stand alone. When considered in 

context and on this record, an officer could reasonably have 

understood Straker’s statement as inviting renewed discussion 

about the investigation. Like the statement in 

Bradshaw—“Well, what is going to happen to me 

now?”—Straker’s message asking Freeman “to call him back,” 

Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 89, “could reasonably have been 

interpreted by the officer as relating generally to the

investigation,” Bradshaw, 462 U.S. at 1046.

First, Straker left the voicemail just a couple weeks after 

specifically advising Agent Clauss and Agent Freeman that, 

once he spoke with his lawyer, he “would be willing to speak 

to” them. J.A. 2259. Indeed, as the district court explained, 

“[t]he record is compelling that Straker made his request for 

counsel subject to an understanding that he would have an 

opportunity to contact the FBI later if he so wished.” Straker, 

596 F. Supp. 2d at 93. Viewed in that context, Straker’s 

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voluntary decision to call Agent Freeman a couple weeks later 

and leave a message asking Freeman to call him back could 

reasonably have been viewed as Straker following up where he 

left off with the FBI and initiating discussion of the

investigation. See United States v. Hart, 619 F.2d 325, 326–

27 (4th Cir. 1980) (per curiam) (concluding that defendant, 

after having twice invoked his right to counsel, reinitiated 

communication with law enforcement when “he telephoned 

the Washington Field Office stating that he wished to speak 

with the arresting agent”).

Second, when during the interview Straker “indicated that 

‘after having access to his attorney, he would be willing to 

speak to the agents,’” Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 87, Agent 

Clauss invited Straker, after talking with his attorney, to 

contact the FBI if he still wanted to talk. Agent Freeman then 

provided Straker a business card with a designated number to 

call “if he wanted to make an attempt to contact” them. J.A. 

2191. And that designated number is the one Straker used to 

make his call. 

Third, nothing about the context or content of Straker’s 

message suggests that it was “a necessary inquiry arising out of 

the incidents of the custodial relationship.” Bradshaw, 462 

U.S. at 1046. Because Straker was not in actual or even 

apparent U.S. custody during the weeks between the initial 

interrogation and Straker’s message, there is no plausible basis 

for concluding—and Straker does not even argue—that he was 

calling Agent Freeman to discuss his conditions of 

confinement or the future procedural course for him while in 

Trinidadian custody, neither of which the FBI could control. 

Moreover, when Straker called Agent Freeman, he had not yet 

been indicted in the United States, so a reasonable officer 

would not have interpreted Straker’s call as inquiring about 

extradition or other aspects of criminal processing. Nor 

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would it have made sense for Straker to call Agent Freeman to 

request a drink of water, see Bradshaw, 462 U.S. at 1045, 

discuss “procedural matters” like “bond, scheduling, and a 

preliminary hearing,” Haynes v. State, 934 So. 2d 983, 989–91 

(Miss. 2006), or talk about anything else relating to the routine 

aspects of being in police custody. 

Straker nevertheless argues (Suppl. Br. 1) that there was 

another possible reason for his call: an effort to seek the FBI’s 

aid in locating his father. He points to a conversation he had 

with Agent Clauss during the January 9th interrogation in 

which he stated that Clauss resembled his father and suggested 

that the FBI might be able to help find his father in the United 

States. Straker Suppl. Br. 8–11; see also Straker, 596 F. Supp. 

2d at 86. But the district court found that the comment was 

understood at the time to be a “joke[],” Straker, 596 F. Supp. 

2d at 86, part of what Agent Clauss described as a “jovial” 

story, not a serious request, J.A. 2187. In any event, the 

question is not whether the initiation of discussion about the 

investigation is the only possible explanation for Straker’s 

reaching out. The relevant question is whether a reasonable 

officer could have understood Straker’s telephone call as 

indicating that Straker wanted to talk generally about the 

investigation. Although we, like the district court, think this is 

a “close call,” Straker, 596 F. Supp. 2d at 94, considering the 

content and all the surrounding circumstances, the FBI agents 

could reasonably have interpreted Straker’s voluntary reaching 

out and the message he left as “evinc[ing] a willingness and a 

desire for a generalized discussion about the investigation” 

itself. Bradshaw, 462 U.S. at 1045–46.

2.

While Straker initiated conversation with the FBI relating 

to the investigation, the burden remains on the government to 

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prove that, under the totality of the circumstances, Straker 

subsequently waived his Miranda rights voluntarily, 

knowingly, and intelligently. See Bradshaw, 462 U.S. at 

1044. Reviewing the district court’s finding of waiver de 

novo, see Yunis, 859 F.2d at 958, we affirm.

To begin with, the record amply demonstrates that Straker 

understood his rights and the significance of any waiver 

decision. During Straker’s January 2006 interview, the FBI 

advised him of his Miranda rights, and he “demonstrated that 

he understood his rights well enough to make an initial 

decision declining to speak about the investigation until he had 

consulted with his Trinidad[ian] attorney.” Straker, 596 F. 

Supp. 2d at 95. Agent Clauss advised Straker of his Miranda

rights a second time during extradition, using the FBI’s 

standard advice-of-rights form. And Straker, having had 

eighteen months to consult with his attorney, signed the 

waiver-of-rights statement. Id. There is no indication that 

Straker was coerced into signing that statement. Nor was 

there any opportunity for the FBI to badger Straker into doing 

so, since no one from the FBI even contacted Straker for the 

year and a half preceding his extradition. See id. at 96–99. 

Straker does not challenge any of the district court’s 

factual findings and points to no facts undermining the 

reliability of the waiver, resting his argument entirely on the 

“presumption against waiver of constitutional rights.” Def. 

Br. 140. But the presumption is just that—a presumption that 

can be, and in this case was, overcome. 

3.

Straker footnotes an argument that, because his Sixth 

Amendment right to counsel attached after the message he left 

for Agent Freeman, that message could not have constituted a 

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waiver of that right. Def. Br. 141 n.60. Maybe. But that is 

beside the point. We agree with the district court that the 

Miranda warnings provided by the FBI during Straker’s 

extradition—after his Sixth Amendment right to counsel had 

attached—“sufficiently apprised Straker of ‘the nature of his 

Sixth Amendment rights, and of the consequences of 

abandoning those rights, so that his waiver on [that] basis will 

be considered a knowing and intelligent one.’” Straker, 596 

F. Supp. 2d at 101 (quoting Patterson, 487 U.S. at 296) 

(alteration in original). Thus, when Straker validly waived his 

Fifth Amendment rights after being given Miranda warnings, 

he waived his Sixth Amendment right to counsel as well. See 

Patterson, 487 U.S. at 300 (“So long as the accused is made 

aware of the dangers and disadvantages of self-representation 

during postindictment questioning, by use of the Miranda

warnings, his waiver of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel 

at such questioning is knowing and intelligent.”) (internal 

quotation marks omitted); see also Montejo, 556 U.S. at 795 

(“[T]he right under both [the Fifth and Sixth Amendments] is 

waived using the same procedure.”).

VIII. 

Denial of Defendants’ Motions for Severance

Defendants Sealey and Straker challenge the district 

court’s refusal to sever the charges against them, arguing that 

the evidence presented against their codefendants at trial 

compromised the jury’s ability to make an individualized 

determination of guilt as to each of them.19

 19 In footnotes, additional defendants seek to join Sealey and 

Straker’s severance arguments. The same legal standards apply to 

each defendant’s motion to sever, but the fact-specific nature of the 

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“Joint trials play a vital role in the criminal justice 

system,” promoting efficiency and avoiding the “scandal and 

inequity of inconsistent verdicts.” Zafiro v. United States, 

506 U.S. 534, 537 (1993) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

For these reasons, and to “‘conserve the time of courts, 

prosecutors, witnesses, and jurors,’” we have urged district 

courts to grant severance “sparingly.” United States v. Celis, 

608 F.3d 818, 844 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (quoting United States v. 

Mardian, 546 F.2d 973, 979 (D.C. Cir. 1976)). Severance is 

warranted where there is a “serious risk that a joint trial would 

compromise a specific trial right of one of the defendants, or 

prevent the jury from making a reliable judgment about guilt or 

innocence.” Zafiro, 506 U.S. at 539. Where joinder of 

defendants in an indictment or trial “appears to prejudice a 

defendant,” district courts should, in their discretion, order 

separate trials. Fed. R. Crim. P. 14(a). Severance is not 

required, however, “when there is substantial and independent 

evidence of each [defendant’s] significant involvement in the 

conspiracy.” United States v. Moore, 651 F.3d 30, 96 (D.C. 

Cir. 2011) (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks 

omitted), aff’d on other grounds sub nom., Smith v. United 

States, 133 S. Ct. 714 (2013). Moreover, “[a]bsent a dramatic 

disparity of evidence” against defendants whose trials might be 

joined, “any prejudice caused by joinder is best dealt with by 

 

inquiry renders adoption by reference inappropriate. See supra note 

5; United States v. Solis, 299 F.3d 420, 441 n.46 (5th Cir. 2002) 

(“[S]everance issues are fact-specific, requiring a showing of 

‘specific compelling prejudice,’ and so cannot be [] adopted by 

reference.”) (internal citation omitted). Only Sealey and Straker 

have attempted to apply the law, as they see it, to the evidence that 

pertains to them. We decline to determine in the first instance, 

without defendant-specific briefing, how the law applies to their 

codefendants as well. See generally Carducci v. Regan, 714 F.2d 

171, 177 (D.C. Cir. 1983).

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instructions to the jury to give individual consideration to each 

defendant.” United States v. Slade, 627 F.2d 293, 309 (D.C. 

Cir. 1980); see Zafiro, 506 U.S. at 539. “We review the denial 

of a motion to sever for abuse of discretion, which we will not 

find if the jury could reasonably compartmentalize the 

evidence introduced against each individual defendant.” 

Celis, 608 F.3d at 844 (internal quotation marks omitted).

Sealey argues that he suffered prejudice from the joint trial 

because he “participated in a kidnapping” but “had no part in” 

the victim’s death, creating a risk that the evidence against 

Sealey’s codefendants would “rub off” on him. Def. Br. 122–

23. In addition, both Sealey and Straker contend that they 

were prejudiced by the introduction of evidence of past hostage 

takings, discussed supra Section III, in which they did not 

participate. The district court addressed and rejected 

defendants’ “spillover prejudice” arguments, concluding that 

the substantial and independent evidence against Sealey and 

Straker enabled the jury to reasonably compartmentalize the 

evidence of guilt against each of them from the rest of the 

evidence at trial. Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d at 26.

Defendants assert that the district court misapplied the law 

governing severance. We see no legal error. The district

court not only measured the strength of the evidence against 

Sealey and Straker, but also the degree to which it was 

independent of the evidence against their codefendants. Both 

assessments were critical to determining whether the evidence 

against them was sufficiently “substantial” and “independent.” 

See, e.g., Celis, 608 F.3d at 844–45.

The evidence the government introduced of Sealey and 

Straker’s guilt was both substantial and independent. A 

reasonable jury could have found that the government’s 

evidence established their culpability and role in the 

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conspiracy. As the district court determined, Sealey’s 

detailed confession to the Trinidadian police, a separate 

confession to the FBI, and trial testimony from two 

co-conspirators overwhelmingly supported the jury’s 

conclusion that he was one of the conspirators who abducted 

Maharaj at the Samaan Tree Bar. Sealey, with his 

codefendants, participated in the getaway as well, transporting 

Maharaj to the cocoa fields where he was initially held. While 

the evidence did not show him to have participated in every 

stage, it sufficed to support the jury’s finding that Sealey 

played a significant role in the hostage taking. 

Straker, too, confessed to his role in the hostage taking, 

and his confession was supplemented by his own trial 

testimony and the trial testimony of three co-conspirators. 

Indeed, one of Straker’s co-conspirators testified that the 

kidnapping was Straker’s idea. The evidence of Straker’s 

guilt, like that of Sealey’s, was substantial and independent 

from the evidence introduced against their codefendants, such 

that the jury could readily compartmentalize the evidence 

against each of them from the rest of the evidence at trial.

The presentation of other-crimes evidence also did not 

prejudice Sealey and Straker. That evidence did not concern 

them, and, as we have already discussed, the district court gave 

adequate limiting jury instructions in connection with the 

presentation of that evidence. Sealey and Straker fail to 

identify any defect in the manner in which the other-crimes 

evidence was presented that might have led the jury 

erroneously to apply it against them. 

Straker’s reliance on our decision in United States v. 

Sampol, 636 F.2d 621 (D.C. Cir. 1980) (per curiam), is not 

persuasive. In that case, Ignacio Novo was charged alongside 

members of an underlying conspiracy to assassinate the 

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Chilean Ambassador to the United States. The charges 

against Novo, however, were limited to making false 

statements to a grand jury and misprision of a felony. We held 

that the joint trial prejudiced Novo because the “grossly 

disparate” charges and intermingled presentation of evidence 

at trial created a situation in which “[t]here was never [a] clear 

distinction between the different defendants and the evidence 

against each of them.”20 Id. at 645, 647. Disparate charges 

also led the Sixth Circuit to require severance in United States 

v. Davidson, 936 F.2d 856, 861 (6th Cir. 1991). There were 

no such defects here. Sealey and Straker were instrumental 

participants in the conspiracy to take Maharaj hostage, they 

were charged with the same offenses as their codefendants, and 

the evidence presented at trial was not intermingled so as to 

create the false impression that Sealey or Straker were 

involved in any of the uncharged conduct.

If there were any such prejudice, moreover, it would have 

been cured by the district court’s carefully selected and crafted 

jury instructions. The judge gave well-timed cautions to 

jurors at key points: on the first day of trial; before the 

introduction of the other-crimes evidence; a final “Other 

Crimes Evidence” instruction at the close of trial; and a final 

instruction reiterating that “each defendant is entitled to have 

the issue of his guilt as to each of the crimes for which he is on 

trial determined from his own conduct and from the evidence 

that applies to him as if he were being tried alone.” J.A. 1929 

 20 A further distinguishing feature between this case and Sampol is 

that our holding there expressly rested on “a cumulation of 

circumstances” that prejudiced defendant Novo: confusion of 

charges, grossly disparate charges, and Novo’s inability to present a 

full defense and cross-examine witnesses whose testimony implied 

that he participated in additional crimes for which he was not 

charged. Sampol, 636 F.3d at 651.

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(emphasis omitted); see also J.A. 1931 (Instruction 2.55); J.A. 

3026–27, 3205–07.

It is in the nature of a conspiracy prosecution that the 

evidence against each member will differ, and that the 

members of the conspiracy will have different roles. That 

some co-conspirators will be more central than others does not 

render joint trial inappropriate as long as the jury can 

reasonably compartmentalize the substantial and independent 

evidence against each defendant. See, e.g., Celis, 608 F.3d at 

844–45; United States v. Mejia, 448 F.3d 436, 446–47 (D.C. 

Cir. 2006). We find no abuse of discretion here, where the 

government presented substantial and independent evidence 

against Sealey and Straker establishing their significant roles in 

the conspiracy, and the district court sought to cure any 

potential prejudice with careful instructions to the jury.

IX.

Closing Argument

Defendants Sealey and Nixon object to the government’s 

rebuttal closing argument, claiming that the prosecution 

advanced an alternative factual theory of guilt for Sealey and 

Nixon that was inconsistent with the evidence at trial and the 

government’s initial closing argument. 21 We review 

 21 Defendants De Four and Straker purport to adopt by reference 

Sealey and Nixon’s objection to the government’s rebuttal closing.

Def. Br. 130 n.57. As discussed supra note 5, not every argument is 

an appropriate candidate for adoption by reference. Sealey and 

Nixon make a fact-specific objection to the government’s purported 

shift in theory of their guilt during closing argument. De Four and 

Straker do not explain how that objection could apply to them as 

well, and we refrain from guessing.

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allegedly improper prosecutorial argument for “substantial 

prejudice,” and the district court’s denial of defendants’ 

motions for new trials based on that objection for abuse of 

discretion. Moore, 651 F.3d at 50. 

Sealey and Nixon contend that the government’s evidence 

and initial closing argument were aimed at proving that Sealey 

entered the Samaan Tree Bar, grabbed Maharaj, and dragged 

him outside to the waiting Nixon. They characterize the 

government’s rebuttal closing argument as advancing the 

contrasting theory that it was Nixon who entered the bar, not 

Sealey. After comprehensively reviewing the evidence at trial 

and the government’s two closing arguments, the district court 

found defendants’ characterization of the proceedings “wholly 

lacking in merit” and “simply not borne out by the record.” 

Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d at 91, 94. We do as well. 

The evidence at trial included testimony that two men 

entered the bar and “grabbed” Maharaj, J.A. 2895–96, and that 

Nixon exited first, followed by Sealey, who was “pulling 

[Maharaj] out of the bar,” J.A. 3061. Sealey’s statement to the 

Trinidadian police also indicated that he and another man both 

“went inside the bar,” and that both he and another man 

“end[ed] up sticking the man up.” J.A. 4395. Consistent 

with that evidence, the prosecutor argued in closing that both 

Sealey and Nixon entered the bar. J.A. 4966. Nothing in the 

government’s evidence at trial, or in its initial closing, 

suggested that Sealey alone entered the Samaan Tree Bar.

In his closing argument, it was Sealey who argued that he 

was not the man who “went in and grabbed Mr. Maharaj” 

because some eyewitnesses described a muscular gunman 

wearing a “rasta hat,” and Sealey was neither muscular nor was 

there any evidence that he wore such a hat. J.A. 5094–97. 

Sealey’s argument implied that only one abductor entered the 

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bar, and that it was not him. In response, the prosecutor 

argued that the eyewitness testimony was not inconsistent with 

the government’s theory that both Sealey and Nixon entered 

the bar, and that it was Nixon who was muscular and wearing a 

“rasta hat.” J.A. 5194–95. 

We see no necessary inconsistency between the 

prosecutor’s rebuttal and the initial closing arguments, nor 

with the evidence at trial. The government argued throughout 

that Sealey and Nixon entered the Samaan Tree Bar and 

abducted Maharaj. The evidence supported that theory. 

Granted, two eyewitnesses testified that only one gunman 

entered, which presented Sealey and Nixon each with an 

opportunity to claim he was not involved. See Clarke, 767 F. 

Supp. 2d at 92. But, as the district court concluded, the fact 

that eyewitnesses may “have inconsistent recollections on 

some points is no surprise.” Id. The jury could reasonably 

have credited testimony describing Nixon’s actions without 

also crediting the witnesses’ recollection that Nixon entered 

the bar alone. As the government consistently argued, other 

evidence supported the conclusion that both Sealey and Nixon 

abducted Maharaj.

Defendants have failed to show the “substantial prejudice” 

from a prosecutorial argument that is required to warrant a new 

trial. Moore, 651 F.3d at 50. As just noted, the 

government’s evidence and closing arguments were consistent. 

We find no error—much less an abuse of discretion—in the 

district court’s denial of Sealey and Nixon’s motions for new 

trials based on the prosecutor’s rebuttal closing argument.

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X.

Due Process Claim

Straker argues that he was deprived of his Fifth 

Amendment right to due process because he was unable to 

obtain “Blue Files” from Trinidadian authorities, which he 

contends are law enforcement records documenting charges, 

arrests, or convictions of persons in Trinidad, including the 

cooperating witnesses. Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d at 70–71. 

Straker argues that the information might have assisted his 

impeachment of witnesses who testified against him. Id. at 

70–71.22 

The district court denied Straker’s motion for a new trial, 

finding no due process violation. We agree completely with 

the district court’s analysis and affirm. We review the denial 

of a motion for a new trial for an abuse of discretion, see 

United States v. Becton, 601 F.3d 588, 594 (D.C. Cir. 2010), 

though we review de novo the constitutional question whether 

any limitation on Straker’s defense violated his Fifth 

Amendment right to due process, see United States v. Lathern, 

488 F.3d 1043, 1045–46 (D.C. Cir. 2007). 

The “right to present a defense is a fundamental element of 

due process of law, and the preclusion of all inquiry by the 

defense on a particular aspect of the case violates that right.” 

United States v. Stewart, 104 F.3d 1377, 1384 (D.C. Cir. 1997) 

(citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Straker, 

however, has failed to demonstrate any material impairment of 

his defense. 

 22 Clarke, De Four, and Sealey adopt this claim. Def. Br. 141 n.61. 

Our analysis applies equally to those defendants. 

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First, Straker has not demonstrated that the “Blue Files” he 

sought even exist, and the government’s inquiries to 

Trinidadian officials suggest that they do not. Nor does 

Straker explain what information the Blue Files would have 

contained that he did not already receive in the arrest and 

conviction records provided to him by the prosecution. There 

thus is no evidence that the district court or prosecution 

impeded any viable avenue of inquiry.

Second, Straker enjoyed a robust opportunity to 

cross-examine the cooperating witnesses and to attack their 

credibility based on the arrest and conviction records that the 

U.S. government disclosed. Straker makes no proffer that the 

Blue Files would have allowed him to pursue any line of 

impeachment that he did not already cover. On top of that, 

Straker had ample opportunity, even without the arrest records, 

to impeach the cooperating witnesses with their plea 

agreements and quests for leniency at sentencing. See Clarke, 

767 F. Supp. 2d at 67–71 (chronicling defense counsel’s 

“extensive” impeachment efforts). That alone answers 

Straker’s claim that he was precluded from “all inquiry” into 

the witnesses’ credibility. See Stewart, 104 F.3d at 1384 

(court did not “preclude all defense inquiry” into issue by 

“rul[ing] out repetitive questioning and further questioning of 

the expert witness”). 

Third, the Due Process Clause governs the conduct of the 

court and the prosecution, not of foreign governments’ 

responses to letters rogatory. Straker, however, identifies 

nothing that either the court or prosecution did wrong. Quite 

the opposite, Straker acknowledges that the district court “was 

completely accommodating” in granting to defense counsel 

whatever investigative resources were needed, authorizing the 

issuance of letters rogatory seeking documents from Trinidad 

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through diplomatic channels, and permitting defense counsel 

to travel to Trinidad several times. Def. Br. 141 n.62. In 

addition, the U.S. government repeatedly inquired about the 

so-called “Blue Files” with “knowledgeable individuals in the 

Trinidadian government, and was informed” that such files did 

not exist. Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d at 71. 

In sum, because Straker did not establish that the Blue 

Files even exist, that they contain any impeachment 

information materially different from what he already had and 

used, or that the district court or prosecution did anything at all 

to impair his presentation of a defense, no due process 

violation occurred, and the district court’s denial of the motion 

for a new trial was well within its discretion. 

XI.

Admissibility of Expert Fingerprint Testimony

Straker’s challenge to the admission of expert fingerprint 

testimony fares no better.23 

To demonstrate Straker’s consciousness of guilt, the 

government introduced as evidence a note with an 

accompanying news article that Straker sent Percival in which 

Straker asked Percival not to testify. Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d 

at 23. The news article suggested “that the U.S. Attorney’s 

Office did not have the power to ensure that a court would 

grant [Percival] leniency for his cooperation.” Id. The note 

 23 De Four purports to join Straker’s argument. Def. Br. 145 n.65. 

De Four did not join Straker’s motion below, so we would review his 

claim for plain error only. Because we find no error at all, De 

Four’s claim necessarily fails.

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was linked to Straker through the testimony of FBI fingerprint 

examiner Dawn Schilens. Id.

At the outset, Schilens testified “on her qualifications as 

an expert in the field of fingerprint identification and analysis, 

which included employment as a physical scientist/forensic 

examiner in the latent print operation unit of the FBI, her 

certification following an 18-month training program, and her 

experience in having conducted over 140,000 fingerprint 

comparisons.” Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d at 73. When the 

government offered Schilens as an expert in the field of 

fingerprint identification, Straker did not object. Id. After 

she testified, however, Straker moved to strike her testimony 

under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 

579 (1993), arguing that Schilens failed “to articulate an error 

rate” in the fingerprint methodology she used. Clarke, 767 F.

Supp. 2d at 73.

The district court denied the motion to strike and the 

subsequent motion for a new trial, finding that “Schilens did 

present testimony on the error rate.” Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d 

at 73. Finding no abuse of discretion, see United States v. 

Day, 524 F.3d 1361, 1369 (D.C. Cir. 2008), we affirm.

The admission of expert testimony is governed by Federal 

Rule of Evidence 702. In Daubert, the Supreme Court held 

that Rule 702 requires a district court, before admitting expert 

testimony, to determine whether the “reasoning or 

methodology underlying the testimony is scientifically valid 

and . . . whether that reasoning or methodology properly can be 

applied to the facts in issue,” 509 U.S. at 592–93. Among the 

factors Daubert instructed courts to consider in determining 

the reliability “of a particular scientific technique” is the 

“known or potential rate of error.” 509 U.S. at 594. 

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Here, Schilens “testified that there are two different types 

of error—the error rate in the methodology and human error.” 

Clarke, 767 F. Supp. 2d at 73 (citations omitted). She further 

testified that her “‘methodology, ACE–V, does not have an 

inherent rate of error’—that is, ‘[t]here is a zero rate of error in 

the methodology.’” Id. (citations omitted) (alteration in 

original). But Schilens did not articulate the rate of human 

error, though she acknowledged the potential for such error. 

See id.

Straker contends that Schilens’s failure to articulate the 

rate of human error in the ACE-V methodology rendered her 

testimony based on that methodology inadmissible. That is 

wrong. The factors listed in Daubert “do not constitute a 

definitive checklist or test,” but rather “may or may not be 

pertinent in assessing reliability, depending on the nature of the 

issue, the expert’s particular expertise, and the subject of [the] 

testimony.” Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137, 

150 (1999) (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). 

No specific inquiry is demanded of the trial court. See id. at 

152.

The reliability of Schilens’s fingerprint methodology was 

“properly taken for granted.” Kumho Tire, 526 U.S. at 152. 

“Numerous courts have found expert testimony on fingerprint 

identification based on the ACE-V method to be sufficiently 

reliable under Daubert,” and “against such a backdrop, it is 

difficult to discern,” without more, “any abuse of discretion 

when the district court decides to admit expert testimony that 

relies on the ACE-V method.” United States v. Peña, 586 

F.3d 105, 110–11 (1st Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks 

omitted) (collecting cases). 

Beyond that, Straker has identified no harm resulting from 

the admission of Schilens’s testimony. Evidence at trial 

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showed that Straker played a pivotal role in the conspiracy 

from its inception, and the testimony of the cooperating 

witnesses established that he played a central role in plotting 

the crime’s execution. That testimony, coupled with Straker’s 

confession, constituted “devastating evidence” of Straker’s 

guilt. United States v. Smith, 640 F.3d 358, 368 (D.C. Cir. 

2011). There is no reasonable possibility that the admission 

of Schilens’s testimony with its omitted human error rate had 

any “discernible effect on the jury’s verdict.” Id.

XII.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm defendants’ 

convictions and the judgment of the district court. 

So ordered.

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