Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-12-10548/USCOURTS-ca9-12-10548-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Jose Antonio Liera-Morales
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

JOSE ANTONIO LIERA-MORALES,

AKA Jose Antonio Liera Morales,

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 12-10548

D.C. No.

4:12-cr-00115-

JGZ-CRP-1

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Arizona

Jennifer G. Zipps, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

March 10, 2014—San Francisco, California

Filed July 21, 2014

Before: J. Clifford Wallace, M. Margaret McKeown,

and Ronald M. Gould, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge McKeown

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2 UNITED STATES V. LIERA-MORALES

SUMMARY*

Criminal Law

The panel affirmed convictions stemming from the

defendant’s participation in a scheme to kidnap for ransom

Franklin Aguilar-Avila, in a case in which the defendant was

part of a human-traffickingring that contacted Aguila-Avila’s

mother, Sonia Avila, to demand payment for her son’s

release.

The panel held that the district court’s admission of a

government agent’s testimony recountingAvila’s description

of the telephone call in which she arranged for the safe return

of her son did not violate the Confrontation Clause of the

Sixth Amendment because the call was made primarily to

address an ongoing emergency and the challenged statements

were nontestimonial. 

The panel held that even if the Rule of Completeness

applies, the district court did not abuse its discretion in

admitting a government agent’s testimony about portions of

the defendant’s post-arrest interview but precluding the

defendant from introducing exculpatory statements from that

interview.

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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UNITED STATES V. LIERA-MORALES 3

COUNSEL

Keith J. Hilzendeger (argued), Federal Public Defender’s

Office of Phoenix, Phoenix, Arizona, for DefendantAppellant.

Kyle J. Healey (argued), Assistant United States Attorney;

John S. Leonardo, United States Attorney; Robert L. Miskell,

Assistant United States Attorney, Appellate Chief, Tucson,

Arizona, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

OPINION

McKEOWN, Circuit Judge:

Jose Antonio Liera-Morales appeals from the judgment

following his jury convictions stemming from his

participation in a scheme to kidnap for ransom Franklin

Aguilar-Avila (“Aguilar”). Liera-Morales was part of a

human-trafficking ring that contacted Aguilar’smother, Sonia

Avila, to demand payment for her son’s release. Under

stressful and emotional circumstances, Avila spoke with the

traffickers by telephone to arrange for the safe return of her

son and then recounted that conversation to a government

agent. That agent’s trial testimony about the telephone call

is the focus of this appeal. We hold that the district court’s

admission of the agent’s testimony recounting Avila’s

description of the call did not violate the Confrontation

Clause of the Sixth Amendment because the call was made

primarily to address an ongoing emergency and the

challenged statements were nontestimonial. We therefore

affirm Liera-Morales’s convictions.

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4 UNITED STATES V. LIERA-MORALES

BACKGROUND

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

In 2011, Liera-Morales unlawfully entered the United

States with the assistance of a human-trafficking ring and

later began working for the trafficking ring to pay off his

remaining smuggling fee. As a part of his duties, LieraMorales participated in at least one smuggling operation. In

December 2011, he picked up three undocumented

immigrants in the Arizona desert and helped transport them

to a trailer house in Tucson, Arizona. One of those

individuals was Aguilar, an eighteen-year-old Honduran

citizen who decided to come to the United States hoping to

find work and be with his mother, Sonia Avila, in Houston,

Texas.

After securing Aguilar in the trailer house, Liera-Morales

and other members of the trafficking ring (collectively, the

“captors”) began blackmailing Avila. Avila testified that she

received threatening telephone calls from the captors

demanding ransom money for her son’s return.1 During one

of those telephone calls, on December 14, 2011, the captors

threatened to “eliminate” Aguilar. Fearing for her son’s life,

Avila panicked and then called 911. Her 911 call was

referred to Tucson Immigration and Customs Enforcement

(“ICE”) agents, who used geolocation coordinates to pinpoint

the origin of the telephone call. The Tucson ICE agents

instructed Houston ICE Agent Jose Goyco to meet with Avila

and to arrange a recorded telephone call between Avila and

the captors.

1 At trial, Liera-Morales denied that any of the captors, including

himself, made any ransom demands or threatened to kill Aguilar.

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UNITED STATES V. LIERA-MORALES 5

Agent Goyco arrived at Avila’s residence around 1:00

a.m. on December 15. He asked Avila to call Aguilar’s

captors, to try speaking directly with Aguilar, and to tell the

captors that a man named “Tony” was going to meet them

later that afternoon to pay for Aguilar’s return. According to

Agent Goyco, Avila followed these instructions and was able

to speak with Aguilar during the telephone call. Seeking to

gather information about Aguilar’s location, Agent Goyco

attempted to record the conversation but was unable to obtain

an audible recording because Avila was shaking, crying, and

very nervous.

After the telephone call, Avila was still “shaking” and

“crying . . . like she was lost” because, as she testified, she

had just “received threats about” Aguilar, specifically “that

[her son] was going to be eliminated . . . his life would be

taken.” Agent Goyco testified that Avila told him that her

son “was going to get killed,” and that the captors warned that

“she needed to find a way to get the money and to make sure

that she was going to get the money on time and that they had

until 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon and they would speak to

the other person to see whether can arrange [sic].” Agent

Goyco relayed this information to the Tucson ICE agents.

After Agent Goyco left Avila’s house, she received

another call from the captors around 11:00 a.m. During that

second telephone call, she “was told to say [her] good-byes

to [her]son because [the captors] were going to do away with

him. He was going to be taken to the desert.” Avila also

spoke with Aguilar, who pleaded with her saying “Mommy,

Mommy, give [the captors] the money.” Immediately

afterward, Avila contacted the authorities to report the second

telephone call.

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6 UNITED STATES V. LIERA-MORALES

Later that day, Tucson ICE agents conducted a sting

operation to rescue Aguilar. An undercover ICE agent,

playing the role of “Tony,” contacted the captors and agreed

to meet them at a taco shop to pay the ransom money for

Aguilar. Apparently suspicious of “Tony” and the planned

meeting, the captors did not show up at the taco shop,

prompting the undercover agent to call the captors to set up

another meeting location. Shortly thereafter, a team of agents

intercepted the captors’ vehicle, searched the driver (later

identified as Liera-Morales), and seized his cell phone, which

matched the telephone number of the ransom calls made to

Avila. Agents found Aguilar lying in the back seat of the

truck, and then arrested Liera-Morales.

The agents brought Liera-Morales to the ICE field office

in Tucson, where Agent Mason Nicholls interviewed him. 

Liera-Morales explained that “he and another man went out

to the desert” south of Tucson, “picked [Aguilar] and two

other individuals up,” and “brought [them] to a residence . . .

in Tucson.” During the interview, Liera-Morales also said

that he told Avila she owed “$750 for bringing [Aguilar] out

of the . . . desert,” that Avila had previously made

arrangements to payAguilar’s ransom, and that, on December

15, “they were taking [Aguilar] to meet up with another

individual[] that his mom had arranged to make the

payment.”

II. PROCEDURAL HISTORY

A grand jury returned a five-count indictment against

Liera-Morales, charging him with one count each of hostage

taking, communicating a ransom demand in interstate

commerce, interfering with interstate commerce by threats or

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UNITED STATES V. LIERA-MORALES 7

violence, transporting an alien for profit, and harboring an

alien for profit.

Before trial, the government filed two motions in limine. 

The district court granted the government’s first motion,

which sought to introduce Agent Goyco’s testimony covering

what Avila told him about the first telephone call to the

captors. The district court ruled that Agent Goyco’s

anticipated testimony qualified as present sense impressions

or impromptu excited utterances and rejected Liera-Morales’s

Confrontation Clause challenge because, among other

reasons, the proffered testimony was nontestimonial.

The district court also granted the government’s second

motion with some qualifications, ruling that the government

could introduce several of Liera-Morales’s post-arrest

statements through Agent Nicholls’s testimony. The district

court found that the selected statements were not misleading

or taken out of context and rejected Liera-Morales’s

contention that Federal Rule of Evidence 106 (the “Rule of

Completeness”) permitted him to introduce exculpatory

portions of the interview.

Consistent with these rulings, at trial Agent Goyco

testified as to what Avila told him about her telephone call

with the captors, and Agent Nicholls related certain

statements made by Liera-Morales during the post-arrest

interview.

The jury found Liera-Morales guilty of hostage taking,

interference with commerce by threats or violence,

transportation of an alien for profit, and harboring an alien for

profit, and acquitted him of communicating a ransom demand

in interstate commerce. He was sentenced to concurrent

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8 UNITED STATES V. LIERA-MORALES

prison terms for his convictions, the longest of which was 192

months.

DISCUSSION

I. CONFRONTATION CLAUSE

The central issue in this appeal is whether the admission

of statements made by Avila to Agent Goyco about the

telephone conversation with her son’s captors violated the

Confrontation Clause.2 Liera-Morales argues that “[t]he

unidentified trafficker’s statements to Mrs. Avila were . . .

testimonial” and complains that he had no opportunity to

cross-examine that unidentified interlocutor. On de novo

review, we conclude that admitting the statements did not run

afoul of the Confrontation Clause because they were

nontestimonial in light of the particular emergency

circumstances.3See United States v. Orozco-Acosta,

607 F.3d 1156, 1160–62 (9th Cir. 2010).

The Confrontation Clause provides that “[i]n all criminal

prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be

confronted with the witnesses against him.” U.S. Const.

amend. VI. “This means that testimonial statements are

inadmissible in criminal prosecutions unless the declarant is

2 Liera-Morales does not challenge the district court’s hearsay ruling that

Agent Goyco’s testimony qualified as both present sense impressions and

excited utterances. We therefore do not disturb that uncontested ruling on

appeal.

 

3

 The parties dispute whether Liera-Morales was the captor who spoke

to Avila during the telephone call. We need not resolve this dispute

because, regardless of who spoke to Avila, the challenged statements were

nontestimonial.

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UNITED STATES V. LIERA-MORALES 9

unavailable and the defendant had a prior opportunity to

cross-examine the declarant.” United States v. RojasPedroza, 716 F.3d 1253, 1267 (9th Cir. 2013) (emphasis

added) (citing Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 59

(2004)).

The Supreme Court in Crawford set forth examples of the

“core class” of testimonial statements, and post-Crawford

cases have since “clarified . . . the limits of the testimonial

statement category” by focusing largely on the “primary

purpose” of the interrogation or investigation. See United

States v. Solorio, 669 F.3d 943, 952–53 (9th Cir. 2012); see

also Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813, 826 (2006). For

example, interrogations by law enforcement officers “solely

directed at establishing the facts of a past crime, in order to

identify (or provide evidence to convict) the perpetrator” fall

within the ambit of testimonial hearsay. Davis, 547 U.S. at

826. By contrast, “[s]tatements are nontestimonial when

made in the course of police interrogation under

circumstances objectively indicating that the primarypurpose

of the interrogation is to enable police assistance to meet an

ongoing emergency.” Id. at 822.

In light of the ongoing hostage situation and the risk of

grave harm to Aguilar, the challenged statements fall squarely

in the emergency category of nontestimonial statements

contemplated by Davis and its progeny. Although not

“dispositive of the testimonial inquiry,” “the existence of an

‘ongoing emergency’ at the time of an encounter between an

individual and the police is among the most important

circumstances informing the ‘primary purpose’ of an

interrogation.” Michigan v. Bryant, 131 S. Ct. 1143, 1157,

1160 (2011) (internal quotation marks omitted); see, e.g.,

United States v. Arnold, 486 F.3d 177, 189–90 (6th Cir. 2007)

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10 UNITED STATES V. LIERA-MORALES

(en banc) (holding that witness’s statements during 911 call

shortly after fleeing from gun-wielding assailant were made

during an ongoing emergency and thus were nontestimonial). 

The formality of a statement is also “a relevant factor in

determining whether the statement is testimonial.” E.g.,

Rojas-Pedroza, 716 F.3d at 1268.

Viewed objectively, the circumstances here establish that

the challenged statements were nontestimonial. The reason

for the telephone call was “to enable police assistance to meet

an ongoing emergency,” Bryant, 131 S. Ct. at 1156 (internal

quotation marks omitted), and the challenged statements were

made “in spite of, not because of, the possibility of a later

criminal trial,” Arnold, 486 F.3d at 189. The captors made

numerous demands for payment and, according to Avila,

repeatedlythreatened to “eliminate” Aguilar if those demands

were not met. During the telephone call with the captors,

Avila was very nervous, shaking, and crying in response to

continuous ransom demands and threats to her son’s life. 

Agents thus faced an emergency hostage situation. Cf.

United States v. Mancinas-Flores, 588 F.3d 677, 687 (9th Cir.

2009) (amended opinion) (noting in Fourth Amendment

context that “[m]any courts, including this one, have

recognized that an ongoing hostage situation presents exigent

circumstances”).

The agents’ conduct confirms that the primary purpose of

the telephone call was to respond to these threats and to

ensure Aguilar’s safety. Agent Goyco instructed Avila to call

the captors to determine her son’s location and to coordinate

a meeting between the captors and undercover agent “Tony.” 

Agent Goyco then gave Avila’s information to the Tucson

ICE agents coordinating the rescue mission. Even though

Agent Goyco later memorialized Avila’s statements in a

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UNITED STATES V. LIERA-MORALES 11

written report, the primary purpose of the telephone call itself

was not to establish “the facts of a past crime” or to “provide

evidence to convict” Liera-Morales. Davis, 547 U.S. at

826–27 (“A 911 call, . . . and at least the initial interrogation

conducted in connection with a 911 call, is ordinarily not

designed to ‘establis[h] or prov[e]’ some past fact, but to

describe current circumstances requiring police assistance.”

(alterations in original)); see also Solorio, 669 F.3d at

953–54. Significantly, Liera-Morales acknowledged at oral

argument that the three purposes of the telephone call were to

gauge whether Aguilar was alive, to determine the nature and

extent of the hostage situation, and to save Aguilar’s life.

In addition, the statements of Avila and the captor during

the telephone call lacked any indicia of formality: they

occurred in an informal high-stress “environment that was not

tranquil, or even . . . safe” in light of Aguilar’s captivity. 

Davis, 547 U.S. at 827. Given the objective circumstances,

the record belies Liera-Morales’s suggestion that these were

testimonial statements “made to a government officer with an

eye toward trial.” See Jensen v. Pliler, 439 F.3d 1086, 1089

(9th Cir. 2006) (amended opinion).

Nor did Agent Goyco’s attempt to record the telephone

call render the challenged statements testimonial. He

primarily sought to record the call to obtain information about

Aguilar’s location and to facilitate the plan to rescue Aguilar. 

Far from an attempt to build a case for prosecution, Agent

Goyco’s actions were good police work directed at resolving

a life-threatening hostage situation. Although the recording,

if audible, might have been used in prosecuting LieraMorales, “this potential future use does not automatically

place [the statements] within the ambit of testimonial.” See,

e.g., United States v. Morales, 720 F.3d 1194, 1201 (9th Cir.

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12 UNITED STATES V. LIERA-MORALES

2013) (alterations in original) (internal quotation marks

omitted).

Law enforcement officers, like Agent Goyco, “function as

both first responders and criminal investigators,” and “[t]heir

dual responsibilities may mean that they act with different

motives simultaneously or in quick succession.” See Byrant,

131 S. Ct. at 1161. The record confirms that Agent Goyco’s

principal motive in recording the telephone call was to ensure

Aguilar’s safety and assist his fellow agents in executing a

rescue mission. That Agent Goyco may have also recorded

the call in part to build a criminal case does not alter our

conclusion that the primary purpose of the call was to diffuse

the emergency hostage situation. Consequently, the

challenged statements from the telephone call were

nontestimonial, and their introduction at trial did not violate

Liera-Morales’s Confrontation Clause rights.

II. RULE OF COMPLETENESS

The district court admitted Agent Nicholls’s testimony

about portions of Liera-Morales’s post-arrest interview, but

precluded Liera-Morales from introducing exculpatory

statements from that interview. Liera-Morales argues that the

district court contravened the Rule of Completeness. Fed. R.

Evid. 106. We disagree.

Rule 106 provides that “[i]f a party introduces all or part

of a writing or recorded statement, an adverse party may

require the introduction, at that time, of any other part—or

any other writing or recorded statement—that in fairness

ought to be considered at the same time.” Fed. R. Evid. 106. 

By its terms, Rule 106 “applies only to written and recorded

statements.” United States v. Ortega, 203 F.3d 675, 682 (9th

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UNITED STATES V. LIERA-MORALES 13

Cir. 2000). Consistent with Rule 106’s text, we have recently

observed that “our cases have applied the rule only to written

and recorded statements.” United States v. Hayat, 710 F.3d

875, 896 (9th Cir. 2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

Nevertheless, at least two of our sister circuits have

recognized that the principle underlyingRule 106 also applies

to oral testimony “by virtue of Fed. R. Evid. 611(a), which

obligates the court to make the interrogation and presentation

effective for the ascertainment of the truth.” United States v.

Mussaleen, 35 F.3d 692, 696 (2d Cir. 1994) (internal

quotation marks omitted); accord United States v. Li, 55 F.3d

325, 329 (7th Cir. 1995) (“[T]he rule of completeness applied

to the oral statement.”).

Even if the principle underlying Rule 106 extended to the

statements at issue here, see United States v. Collicott,

92 F.3d 973, 983 & n.12 (9th Cir. 1996), the district court did

not abuse its discretion in refusing to admit portions of the

interview, see United States v. Vallejos, 742 F.3d 902, 905

(9th Cir. 2014) (holding that “if the complete statement

[does] not serve to correct a misleading impression in the

edited statement that is created by taking something out of

context, the Rule of Completeness will not be applied to

admit the full statement” (alteration in original) (internal

quotation marks omitted)).4 The district court carefully and

thoroughlyconsidered the government’s proffered statements

from the post-arrest interview and correctly determined that

those statements were neither misleading nor taken out of

context. See Collicott, 92 F.3d at 982–83. Contrary to Liera4 During oral argument, Liera-Morales candidly acknowledged that our

reasoning in Vallejos controls the outcome of this case, and all but

abandoned the Rule of Completeness claim raised in his briefing.

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14 UNITED STATES V. LIERA-MORALES

Morales’s characterization, the district court’s determination

did not overlook considerations of fairness.

AFFIRMED.

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