IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

No. 11-41127

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Plaintiff - Appellee

v.

SIPRIANO GALAZ-PEREZ; REYNALDO ENRIQUE VASQUEZFERNANDEZ; 

Defendants - Appellants

Appeals from the United States District Court 

for the Eastern District of Texas

USDC No. 4:10-CR-242-3

Before GARZA, SOUTHWICK, and HAYNES, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:*

Defendants-Appellants Sipriano Galaz-Perez and Reynaldo Enrique

Vasquez-Fernandez (collectively, the “Defendants”) appeal their convictions for

conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than five hundred grams of

a substance containing methamphetamine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1)

and 846. We AFFIRM.

I. BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit

F I L E D

April 30, 2013

Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk

* Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not

be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5TH CIR.

R. 47.5.4.

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Juan Rios was arrested for possessing methamphetamine and eventually

pleaded guilty to conspiring to possess with intent to distribute the substance. 

As part of his cooperation with law enforcement, Rios convinced Pedro SanchezRios to transport five pounds of methamphetamine from Oklahoma City to a

purchaser in Texas. During the transport, law enforcement officers detained the

vehicle carrying the methamphetamine, but Rios and Sanchez-Rios—who were

traveling in separate vehicles—drove away and were not arrested. 

Having lost the drugs, Sanchez-Rios asked Rios if his Texas buyer would

purchase more methamphetamine. Sanchez-Rios then asked VasquezFernandez—who had supplied Sanchez-Rios with narcotics about ten times

previously—to loan him more methamphetamine for the transaction. SanchezRios promised Vasquez-Fernandez that he could keep the proceeds of the sale. 

Sanchez-Rios later metwith Vasquez-Fernandez and Galaz-Perez, and the

group discussed selling five pounds of methamphetamine to Rios’s purchaser. 

The next day, the three met with Rios at a restaurant in Gainesville, Texas. 

During this meeting, Sanchez-Rios explained to Rios that Vasquez-Fernandez

and Galaz-Perez owned the drugs and that he owed them around $300,000. Rios

requested to see the methamphetamine, but Vasquez-Fernandez refused until

he saw the money and met the buyer. In response, Rios backed out of the deal

and told the Defendants that they could meet the buyer at a restaurant in

Sanger, Texas. Later that day, a police officer pulled over a vehicle driven by

Sanchez-Rios. No drugs were found, but the Defendants were arrested. 

At trial, Rios and Sanchez-Rios testified along with six other Government

witnesses. A jury convicted the Defendants of conspiracy to possess with intent

to distribute methamphetamine, and the district court sentenced each defendant

to 235 months imprisonment and five years of supervised release. The

Defendants timely appealed.

II. DISCUSSION

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The Defendants appeal their convictions based on: (1) the district court’s

limitation of Rios’s cross-examination, which they claim violated their Sixth

Amendment confrontation rights, and (2) the alleged insufficiency of evidence

supporting their convictions. We reject both challenges.

A. Rios’s Cross-ExaminationSatisfied the Confrontation Clause

During Rios’s cross-examination, the Defendants sought to introduce

details related to his convictions for the unauthorized use of a credit card, the

obtaining of money by false pretenses, and a theft over $1,500. The district court

limited the scope of questioning concerning these convictions, however, to only

the fact of the convictions and name of the offenses. Because the Defendants

objected under Federal Rule of Evidence 405(b), rather than the Confrontation

Clause, we review for plain error. See United States v. Acosta, 475 F.3d 677, 680

(5th Cir. 2007); United States v. Green, 324 F.3d 375, 381 (5th Cir. 2003). 

Our consideration of the district court’s decision begins and ends with the

first element of plain error review because we conclude that the district court did

not err in limiting the scope of Rios’s cross-examination. See Puckett v. United

States, 556 U.S. 129, 135 (2009) (explaining that the first element of plain error

review requires that “there must be an error or defect”). A defendant’s right to

cross-examination is not unlimited. United States v. Bernegger, 661 F.3d 232,

238 (5th Cir. 2011). The Sixth Amendment confrontation right is satisfied in

this regard so long as “the jury had sufficient information to appraise the bias

and motives of the witness” and to draw inferences about the witness’s

reliability. Id. (citation and quotation marks omitted); United States v.

McCullough, 631 F.3d 783, 790 (5th Cir. 2011) (“A defendant’s Confrontation

Clause rights are satisfied when defense counsel is permitted to expose to the

jury the facts from which the jurors . . . could appropriately draw inferences

relating to the reliability of the witness.” (citation and internal quotation marks

omitted)). 

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To this end, we have previously held that a defendant’s Sixth Amendment

confrontation right is satisfied even when the district court limits crossexamination to basic information concerning a witness’s prior convictions.1 See,

e.g., McCullough, 631 F.3d at 791 (holding no confrontation right violation where

the district court limited cross-examination to “basic information about [the

witness’s] convictions” and prohibited, inter alia, descriptions of the witness’s

conduct during the incidents leading to his convictions (emphasis added));

United States v. Restivo, 8 F.3d 274, 278 (5th Cir. 1993) (holding that the district

court satisfied the Confrontation Clause by permitting the defendant to present

facts concerning the adverse witness’s plea agreement and incentives to

cooperate). In sum, establishing a Confrontation Clause violation requires a

defendant to show “that a reasonable jury might have had a significantly

different impression of the witness’s credibility if defense counsel had been

allowed to pursue the questioning.” United States v. Davis, 393 F.3d 540, 548

(5th Cir. 2004). 

The Defendants fail to make such a showing. As in McCullough and

Restivo, the jury here had ample evidence to evaluate Rios’s potential bias. The

district court permitted the Defendants to question Rios concerning the fact of

his convictions and the name of the offenses, thereby allowing inquiry into the

“basic information” related to Rios’s convictions. Rios himself testified that he

had pleaded guilty to obtaining money by false pretenses and unauthorized use

of a credit card. Further, he told the jury that he pleaded guilty to another “theft

1 The Defendants rely on United States v. Estrada despite the fact that the Estrada

court rejected an analogous Confrontation Clause challenge. 430 F.3d 606, 621 (2d Cir. 2005).

The Estrada court held that limiting the scope of questioning concerning the adverse

witnesses’ prior convictions to the fact and date oftheir felonies, while excluding the statutory

names of those felonies, satisfied the Sixth Amendment. Id. Estrada therefore suggests that

the district court here—which permitted the Defendants to introduce the names of Rios’s

convictions—did not have to allow questioning into the details of Rios’s convictions.

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charge” and for possessing a firearm as a felon. Rios also discussed his

cooperation with law enforcement and suggested that his sentence could be

reduced based on his testimony. 

Galaz-Perez’s attorney’s opening and closing statements also revealed

Rios’s potential bias. In his opening statement, counsel pointed out that Rios

had been “arrested and jailed many times,” that he “knows how to work the

system,” and that his “testimony [was] bought” by the Government. During his

closing argument, Galaz-Perez’s attorney reminded the jury that Rios “was

convicted of theft over $1,500, was convicted of the unauthorized use of a credit

card, was convicted of obtaining money by false pretenses, and . . . was convicted

of [being] a felon [in possession] of a firearm.” Finally, the district court’s jury

charge reminded the jurors of Rios’s convictions and informed them that such

convictions could be used in weighing his credibility. Accordingly, based on the

extent of the evidence and argument presented to the jury concerning Rios’s

credibility, we conclude that no Confrontation Clause violation occurred and the

district court remained “well within [its] discretion” in limiting the scope of

cross-examination. McCullough, 631 F.3d at 791; see also United States v.

Skelton, 514 F.3d 433, 438 (5th Cir. 2008) (“If there is no constitutional violation,

then we review a district court’s limitations on cross-examination for an abuse

of discretion, which requires a showing that the limitations were clearly

prejudicial.”).

B. The Defendants’ Convictions Rest on Sufficient Evidence

We also reject the Defendants’ sufficiency-of-the-evidence claims, which

focus primarily on attacking the credibility of Rios and Sanchez-Rios. “We

review properly preserved claims that a defendant was convicted on insufficient

evidence with substantial deference to the jury verdict, asking only whether a

rational jury could have found each essential element of the offense beyond a

reasonable doubt.” United States v. Delgado, 672 F.3d 320, 330 (5th Cir.)(en

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banc)(internal citation and quotation marks omitted), cert. denied, 133 S. Ct. 525

(2012). Importantly, “[t]he scope of our review of the sufficiency of the evidence

after conviction by a jury is narrow,” United States v. Bermea, 30 F.3d 1539,

1551 (5th Cir. 1994), because determining “[t]he weight and credibility of the

evidence are the sole province of the jury,” United States v. Parker, 505 F.3d 323,

331 (5th Cir. 2007). Consequently, we assess the credibility of the testimony of

Rios and Sanchez-Rios only to the extent that it may be incredible as a matter

of law. “Testimony is incredible as a matter of law only if it relates to facts that

the witness could not possibly have observed or to events which could not have

occurred under the laws of nature.” Bermea, 30 F.3d at 1552. 

The Defendants have failed to establish that Rios or Sanchez-Rios’s

testimony was “incredible as a matter of law.” Instead, Vasquez-Fernandez

asserts that these co-conspirators lacked credibility because they “had every

reason to lie” because they agreed to testify against the Defendants with the

expectation that it would benefit them in the adjudication of their own criminal

charges. Similarly, Galaz-Perez merely suggests that Rios lacks credibility as

a witness because he is “a career criminal with ample incentive to introduce

untruthful testimony against” the Defendants. Accordingly, the Defendants

advance credibility arguments over which reasonable minds can differ and that

fall within the province of the jury. Their sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenges

thus must fail.

III. CONCLUSION

The limitation of Rios’s cross-examination in this case does not run afoul

of the Confrontation Clause and lies within the district court’s discretion. The

Defendants’ sufficiency-of-the-evidence claims ask us to revisit the jury’s

credibility determinations,which we cannot do absent circumstances not present

here. Accordingly, we AFFIRM the Defendants’ convictions. 

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