Source: http://openjurist.org/107/f3d/1147/united-states-v-jones
Timestamp: 2016-05-04 10:40:15
Document Index: 1177685

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 21', '§ 4', '§ 4', '§ 4', '§ 4', '§ 4', '§ 4', '§ 3585', '§ 1']

107 F3d 1147 United States v. Jones | OpenJurist
107 F. 3d 1147 - United States v. Jones HomeFederal Reporter, Third Series107 F.3d
107 F3d 1147 United States v. Jones 107 F.3d 1147
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,v.Kathleen Kremser JONES, Defendant-Appellant.
Argued May 24, 1996.Decided March 3, 1997.
Appellant contends that the district court erred in admitting the card because Cronin, a lay witness, was not familiar with her signature. She also asserts that Sperry's expert testimony was inadmissible under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993), because it was not sufficiently reliable. In addition to appealing her convictions on the various charges, appellant contends that the district court miscalculated her criminal history score under the United States Sentencing Guidelines by counting as a prior "sentence of imprisonment" a sentence she served in home detention pursuant to Tennessee's Community Alternatives to Prison Program ("CAPP"). We first address the district court's evidentiary rulings.
Appellant asserts that the district court erred by allowing into evidence the card allegedly written by Jones to Cronin because it had not been properly authenticated. According to her, because Cronin was a non-expert who was unfamiliar with Jones's handwriting, he could not testify regarding the genuineness of the card. Whether a document has been properly authenticated is a preliminary determination to be made by the district court. See United States v. Carriger, 592 F.2d 312, 316 (6th Cir.1979); Fed.R.Evid. 901(a) advisory committee's note. In reviewing a ruling by the district court regarding the authenticity of a document, we will affirm that ruling unless the district court abused its discretion. United States v. Maldonado-Rivera, 922 F.2d 934, 957 (2d Cir.1990), cert. denied, 501 U.S. 1211, 111 S.Ct. 2811, 115 L.Ed.2d 984 (1991), and cert. denied, 501 U.S. 1233, 111 S.Ct. 2858, 115 L.Ed.2d 1025, 1026 (1991).
In accordance with Rule 901(b)(4), "the contents of a writing may be used to aid in determining the identity of the declarant," United States v. Wilson, 532 F.2d 641, 644 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 846, 97 S.Ct. 128, 50 L.Ed.2d 117 (1976), if, for example, the writing "deal[s] with a matter sufficiently obscure or particularly within the knowledge of the persons corresponding so that the contents of the [writing] were not a matter of common knowledge[.]" 5 J. Weinstein & M. Berger, Weinstein's Evidence, p 901(b)(4), at 901-49 (1990).
This circuit has traditionally reviewed a district court's ruling regarding the admissibility of expert testimony under Rule 702 for abuse of discretion. See, e.g., American & Foreign Ins. Co. v. General Elec. Co., 45 F.3d 135, 137, 139 (6th Cir.1995); United States v. Bonds, 12 F.3d 540, 554 (6th Cir.1993); United States v. Montgomery, 980 F.2d 388, 391 (6th Cir.1992); United States v. Pearce, 912 F.2d 159, 163 (6th Cir.1990), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 1093, 111 S.Ct. 978, 112 L.Ed.2d 1063 (1991); McGowan v. Cooper Indus., Inc., 863 F.2d 1266, 1271 (6th Cir.1988); Hanson v. Parkside Surgery Ctr., 872 F.2d 745, 750 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 944, 110 S.Ct. 349, 107 L.Ed.2d 337 (1989); Mannino v. International Mfg. Co., 650 F.2d 846, 849 (6th Cir.1981); see also Salem v. United States Lines Co., 370 U.S. 31, 35, 82 S.Ct. 1119, 1122, 8 L.Ed.2d 313 (1962) ("[T]he trial judge has broad discretion in the matter of the admission or exclusion of expert evidence, and his action is to be sustained unless manifestly erroneous."). Both parties in this case assumed that the abuse-of-discretion standard applied.
Appellate review of trial court rulings on the admissibility of expert opinion testimony under Fed.R.Evid. 702, depending on the assignment of error, may involve as many as three separate standards of review. The trial court's preliminary factfinding under Rule 104(a) is reviewed for clear error. These facts include, but are not limited to, whether the witness's "knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education," Fed.R.Evid. 702, are such as to qualify him or her to testify as an expert at all, and it may include a determination of the tests or experiments that the proffered expert conducted, if any. The court's determination whether the opinion the expert wishes to offer is properly the subject of "scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge" is a question of law we review de novo. An example of that sort of legal determination by the trial court is detailed in the Supreme Court's opinion in Daubert, 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469, in which the Court explained that part of a trial court's "gatekeeping" function under rule 702 when, for example, scientific opinion testimony is offered, is the determination whether "the reasoning or methodology underlying the testimony is scientifically valid." Id. at 592-93, 113 S.Ct. at 2796. A comparable duty is imposed upon the trial court when the subject of the proposed opinion testimony is not "scientific" knowledge, but "technical, or other specialized knowledge." Finally, the trial court's determination whether the proffered expert opinion "will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue," Fed.R.Evid. 702, is a relevancy determination and therefore one we review for abuse of discretion.
The de novo standard articulated in Cook is also questionable in light of American & Foreign Ins. Co. v. General Elec. Co., 45 F.3d 135 (6th Cir.1995), and United States v. Bonds, 12 F.3d 540 (6th Cir.1993). In American & Foreign Ins. Co., decided two years after Daubert and just three months before Cook, the court, similar to the Cook court, analyzed Daubert 's impact on the reliability of expert testimony under Rule 702. Unlike Cook, however, the court in American & Foreign Ins. Co. articulated the standard of review of a district court's decision to admit or exclude expert testimony under Rule 702 as follows: "A trial court 'has broad discretion in the matter of the admission or exclusion of expert evidence, and [the court's] action is to be sustained unless manifestly erroneous.' " Id. at 137 (quoting Salem v. United States Lines Co., 370 U.S. 31, 35, 82 S.Ct. 1119, 1122, 8 L.Ed.2d 313 (1962)) (alteration in American & Foreign Ins. Co.). In Bonds, a case involving the reliability of DNA evidence under Rule 702, the defendant-appellant asked the court of appeals to consider a report by the National Research Committee of the National Academy of Sciences that questioned the FBI's method of declaring DNA matches. The report was issued almost two years after the admissibility hearing before the magistrate judge and was not considered at the trial level. The court refused to consider the report for purposes of the appeal:
To the extent the court in Cook was concerned that application of the abuse-of-discretion standard is "often incorrect" because it renders it more difficult for an appellate court to review legal determinations made by district courts during the course of evidentiary hearings, this concern is unwarranted. If a district court incorrectly decides a legal issue during the course of a hearing on the admissibility of expert testimony, then that court has abused its discretion. See Koon v. United States, --- U.S. ----, ----, 116 S.Ct. 2035, 2047, 135 L.Ed.2d 392 (1996) ("A district court by definition abuses its discretion when it makes an error of law."); Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 384, 402, 110 S.Ct. 2447, 2459, 110 L.Ed.2d 359 (1990) ("An appellate court would be justified in concluding that, in making [legal] errors, the district court abused its discretion." ).6
In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993), the Supreme Court clarified the admissibility requirements for expert scientific testimony by holding that Rule 702 supersedes Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013, 1014 (D.C.Cir.1923), which required that expert scientific testimony had to be "generally accepted" to be admissible. According to the Court, "a rigid 'general acceptance' requirement would be at odds with the 'liberal thrust' of the Federal Rules and their 'general approach of relaxing the traditional barriers to 'opinion' testimony.' " 509 U.S. at 588, 113 S.Ct. at 2794 (citation omitted). Even with the relaxed standard in Rule 702 governing expert scientific testimony, however, the Court stated that the trial judge would still serve an important gatekeeping role: "[U]nder the Rules the trial judge must ensure that any and all scientific testimony or evidence admitted is not only relevant, but reliable." Id. at 589, 113 S.Ct. at 2794. The Court then suggested a "flexible" list of factors for a district court to consider when presented with scientific testimony to determine whether the reliability component has been met: (1) "whether a theory or technique ... can be (and has been) tested"; (2) "whether the theory or technique has been subjected to peer review and publication"; (3) "the known or potential rate of error"; and (4) "general acceptance." Id. at 593-94, 113 S.Ct. at 2796-97. While the Court stated that its discussion was "limited to the scientific context," as opposed to "technical, or other specialized knowledge," id. at 590 n. 8, 113 S.Ct. at 2795 n. 8, the dissent suggested that the Court left open this question. Id. at 600, 113 S.Ct. at 2800 (Rehnquist, C.J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
In analyzing Daubert, we have stated that "although 'Daubert dealt with scientific experts, its language relative to the 'gatekeeper' function of federal judges is applicable to all expert testimony offered under Rule 702.' " United States v. Thomas, 74 F.3d 676, 681 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 116 S.Ct. 1558, 134 L.Ed.2d 659 (1996) (quoting Berry v. City of Detroit, 25 F.3d 1342, 1350 (6th Cir.1994), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 1111, 115 S.Ct. 902, 130 L.Ed.2d 786 (1995)). It is thus clear that a district court has the duty to decide not only whether evidence is relevant but also whether it is reliable. See id. But this conclusion does not come from the Daubert opinion itself; rather, it comes from the Federal Rules of Evidence:
In Daubert, the court stated: "The adjective 'scientific' implies a grounding in the methods and procedures of science.... '[Science] represents a process for proposing and refining theoretical explanations about the world that are subject to further testing and refinement.' " 509 U.S. at 590, 113 S.Ct. at 2795 (citation omitted) (emphasis in original). The court continued: " 'Scientific methodology today is based on generating hypotheses and testing them to see if they can be falsified; indeed, this methodology is what distinguishes science from other fields of human inquiry.' ... '[T]he statements constituting a scientific explanation must be capable of empirical test.' " Id. at 593, 113 S.Ct. at 2796 (citations omitted). We are quite convinced that handwriting examiners do not concentrate on "proposing and refining theoretical explanations about the world," Daubert, 509 U.S. at 590, 113 S.Ct. at 2795, but instead use their knowledge and experience to answer the extremely practical question of whether a signature is genuine or forged. See United States v. Starzecpyzel, 880 F.Supp. 1027, 1041 (S.D.N.Y.1995) ("[W]hile scientific principles may relate to aspects of handwriting analysis, they have little or nothing to do with the day-to-day tasks performed by [forensic document examiners].") (emphasis in original).
25 F.3d 1342, 1349-50 (6th Cir.1994), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 1111, 115 S.Ct. 902, 130 L.Ed.2d 786 (1995) (emphasis in original).
Appellant's first--and principal--argument is that expert handwriting analysis is not a field of expertise under Rule 702. She is, therefore, asking us to do what no other court that we have found has done--hold that expert handwriting analysis is inadmissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence. The district court overruled appellant's motion in limine on this issue. J.A. at 79-80. While few courts have directly confronted the issue whether expert handwriting analysis is inadmissible under the Rules (perhaps because there have been few frontal assaults to this type of testimony as a whole), the courts that have considered the issue have recognized handwriting analysis as a field of expertise. See United States v. Velasquez, 64 F.3d 844, 851 (3d Cir.1995) ("We agree with the district court that [the] proposed testimony [with respect to handwriting analysis] concerned 'scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge' and was sufficiently reliable to be admissible."); United States v. Starzecpyzel, 880 F.Supp. 1027, 1047 (S.D.N.Y.1995) ("The Court therefore finds sufficient indicia of reliability to sustain the admissibility of [forensic document examiner] expertise as nonscientific expert testimony."); Greenberg Gallery, Inc. v. Bauman, 817 F.Supp. 167, 172 n. 5 (D.D.C.1993) ("It can be judicially noted that handwriting, like fingerprints, are subject to established objective tests, expert opinions about which are admissible."), aff'd, No. 93-7068, 1994 WL 525814 (D.C.Cir. Sept.21, 1994); cf. 2 PAUL C. GIANNELLI & EDWARD J. IMWINKELRIED, SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE §§ 21-2(B), at 150 (2d ed. 1993) ("A single handwriting specimen may contain between 500 and 1,000 details, and most of the details are inconspicuous to the untrained eye.") (footnote omitted).
Jones argues that the district court erred by enhancing her sentence based on a prior sentence that she served in the Community Alternatives to Prison Program ("CAPP"), a program under Tennessee law that allowed Jones to receive home detention in lieu of prison time. The district court assigned three criminal history points for this sentence pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 4A1.1(a), because, in the district court's view, her time spent in home detention constituted a sentence of imprisonment. J.A. at 172-73. Because Jones received a total of thirteen criminal history points, her criminal history category was VI. J.A. at 54. This criminal history category coupled with her offense level of nine produced a guidelines range of twenty-one to twenty-seven months of imprisonment. See U.S.S.G. Ch. 5, Pt. A. The district court in this case sentenced Jones to the maximum twenty-seven months. J.A. at 39. If the three criminal history points for Jones's previous sentence of home detention were assigned in error, Jones would have received only one point for the CAPP term under § 4A1.1(c), which directs the court to add one point for "each prior sentence not counted in [§ 4A1.1(a) and (b) ]." If only one point had been assigned for her CAPP term, her criminal history points would have totaled eleven, which would have placed her in criminal history category V, which in turn would have produced a sentencing range of eighteen to twenty-four months of imprisonment. We review a district court's interpretation of a provision of the Guidelines de novo. United States v. Barton, 100 F.3d 43, 44 (6th Cir.1996); United States v. Sanders, 95 F.3d 449, 454 (6th Cir.1996); United States v. Rasco, 963 F.2d 132, 134 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 883, 113 S.Ct. 238, 121 L.Ed.2d 173 (1992).13
To extend Rasco to stand for the proposition that we turn to state law to define terms in the Sentencing Guidelines would be a clear misapplication of the law. See Dickerson v. New Banner Inst., Inc., 460 U.S. 103, 119, 103 S.Ct. 986, 995, 74 L.Ed.2d 845 (1983) (" "[I]n the absence of a plain indication to the contrary, ... it is to be assumed when Congress enacts a statute that it does not intend to make its application dependent on state law." ") (quoting NLRB v. Natural Gas Util. Dist., 402 U.S. 600, 603, 91 S.Ct. 1746, 1748, 29 L.Ed.2d 206 (1971), in turn quoting NLRB v. Randolph Elec. Membership Corp., 343 F.2d 60, 62-63 (4th Cir.1965)). Indeed, we have explicitly applied the Supreme Court's pronouncements in Dickerson to federal sentencing issues. See United States v. Kirby, 893 F.2d 867, 868 (6th Cir.1990) ("Federal law, not Kentucky law, controls sentencing disposition in the event of convictions for federal offenses.") (citing Dickerson, 460 U.S. at 111-12, 103 S.Ct. at 991-92; Flippins v. United States, 808 F.2d 16, 19 (6th Cir.1987)).
However, the panel majority's conclusion that Jones's January 1994 Tennessee court sentence to four years' incarceration for forgery1 did not constitute a "prior sentence of imprisonment" under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.1(a) because state authorities permitted Jones to serve that sentence in residential confinement under the Tennessee Community Alternatives to Prison Program (CAPP), was legally erroneous under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.1 and United States v. Rasco, 963 F.2d 132 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 883, 113 S.Ct. 238, 121 L.Ed.2d 173 (1992). Accordingly, because I would affirm the lower court's sentence imposed against Jones, I DISSENT from part IV of the majority opinion.
Under U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2, "criminal history points are based on the sentence pronounced, not the length of time actually served," id., commentary note 2 (emphasis added), as long as some of that time is actually served. Beyond contradiction, Jones was sentenced to serve four years of "incarceration" or "imprisonment" in January 1994, and had served part of that sentence (in home detention) by the time of her August 1995 sentencing in the case sub judice. The irrelevance of the place of that physical detention was established beyond dispute by this circuit's controlling decision in United States v. Rasco, 963 F.2d 132 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 883, 113 S.Ct. 238, 121 L.Ed.2d 173 (1992), which ruled that detention in a halfway house or a community treatment center upon revocation of parole constituted the equivalent of "incarceration" or "imprisonment" under the criminal history provisions (Chapter Four) of the Guidelines:
The author of this opinion must confess that, without noting the conflicting precedent, she cited the Cook standard of review in a recent case. See United States v. Thomas, 74 F.3d 676, 681-82 (6th Cir.) (Moore, J.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 116 S.Ct. 1558, 134 L.Ed.2d 659 (1996). That case, however, only dealt with whether the expert testimony at issue assisted the trier of fact, a determination involving the traditional abuse-of-discretion standard, even under Cook 's test. Id. at 682. We have also found two other published opinions citing the Cook standard. See Smelser v. Norfolk S. Ry., 105 F.3d 299, 302 (6th Cir.1997); CMI-Trading, Inc. v. Quantum Air, Inc., 98 F.3d 887, 890 (6th Cir.1996)
The Ninth Circuit's statements in Lust are particularly interesting in light of the fact that it employed a de novo standard in its initial opinion in Daubert on the issue whether "a scientific technique '... is generally accepted as a reliable technique among the scientific community.' " Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc., 951 F.2d 1128, 1129 (9th Cir.1991) (citation omitted), rev'd, 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993)
In Dunagin v. City of Oxford, 718 F.2d 738, 748 n. 8 (5th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1259, 104 S.Ct. 3553, 3554, 82 L.Ed.2d 855 (1984), the Fifth Circuit appeared to endorse a more searching standard of review with respect to the "truths" espoused by social scientists
Of course, under Koon v. United States, --- U.S. ----, ----, 116 S.Ct. 2035, 2048, 135 L.Ed.2d 392 (1996), we review a district court's decision to depart from the sentencing ranges in the Guidelines for abuse of discretion, and any legal errors made by the district court are by definition an abuse of discretion. See supra Part III.A
Were we to look outside the Sentencing Guidelines to determine whether a sentence of home detention is a term of imprisonment, we would be guided by the Supreme Court's recent decision in Reno v. Koray, 515 U.S. 50, ----, 115 S.Ct. 2021, 2029, 132 L.Ed.2d 46 (1995), which held that "the time respondent spent at the Volunteers of America community treatment center while 'released' on bail pursuant to the Bail Reform Act of 1984 was not 'official detention' within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b)." We decline appellant's request to rely on Koray, however, not only because of the language difference between "official detention" and "sentence of imprisonment," but also because the two terms emanate from two different statutes. See United States v. Phipps, 68 F.3d 159, 161-62 (7th Cir.1995). With the Guidelines' cautionary instructions regarding different definitions in different sections of the Guidelines in mind, see U.S.S.G. § 1B1.1 commentary, applic. note 2, we prefer to confine our inquiry to the Guidelines themselves and not to venture out on a sojourn throughout the United States Code