Opinion ID: 714850
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Denial of Extensive Impeachment

Text: 53 Garrett's final contention is that his counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to appeal the district court's refusal to allow impeachment of Rodriguez's credibility through Agent Hicks. At trial, however, defense counsel did ask Agent Hicks if the government and Rodriguez had entered into a plea agreement, and that Agent Hicks did concede that they had entered into such an agreement approximately one week prior to trial. Trial Tr. at 52-53. Garrett contends that further questioning of Agent Hicks should have been permitted, so that the jury could have learned that Rodriguez was not called because the government believed her to be an unbelievable witness. 54 Counsel's failure to appeal the impeachment issue is intimately connected to his failure to raise the hearsay issue, as demonstrated by the language of Federal Rule of Evidence 806: When a hearsay statement ... has been admitted in evidence, the credibility of the declarant may be attacked, and if attacked may be supported, by evidence which would be admissible for those purposes if the declarant had testified as a witness (emphasis added). Counsel, when deciding which issues to appeal, was faced with a clear and direct ruling by the district court that the testimony did not constitute hearsay at all, as well as a substantial amount of precedent supporting such a view under certain circumstances. If the testimony of Agent Hicks did not contain hearsay, impeachment of the declarant under Rule 806 would be impossible. Since we have determined that counsel's failure to appeal the hearsay ruling did not fall below a standard of objective reasonableness, his failure to appeal the limitation of his attempts at impeachment similarly does not indicate constitutionally deficient performance. See infra Section II.C.1.