Opinion ID: 488020
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Rulings In Limine: Ripeness

Text: 23 The remaining issue derives from certain rulings made by the district court in connection with the examination of a prosecution witness, one Allan Mineart. Some background is helpful. Prior to appellant's trial, Mineart had been convicted of participation in the Naples conspiracy and had turned state's evidence. In the Homeric phrase, however, there is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. Despite his pledge of cooperation, Mineart balked. Though he spilled some of the beans, he withheld relevant information from the investigators for over a year. The undisclosed data apparently included knowledge anent Griffin's role in the enterprise. Mineart at long last decided to make a clean breast of things. After he did so, the United States attributed his earlier reticence to a threat originating with Gillis. 24 Mineart was called as a government witness at the appellant's trial. At an appropriate stage during direct examination, the AUSA requested a bench conference. At sidebar, the prosecutor explained that he intended to forestall a predictable attack on Mineart's credibility by eliciting from him the reason for his delay in telling the whole truth. That explanation would, according to the AUSA, involve acquainting the jurors with the supposed threat (which, the government conceded, was not engineered by Griffin). Defense counsel objected vigorously to any revelation of Gillis's warning, reasoning that such evidence would introduce an element of violence into the case. Citing Fed.R.Evid. 403, see supra n. 2, he urged that the prejudicial impact of such information would, as to Griffin, far overbalance any legitimate probative value which the evidence might possess. 25 Faced with these competing concerns, the district court sustained the objection, concluding that Mineart should be foreclosed from mentioning any such supposed threat in the government's examination in chief. The court went on to rule that, if defense counsel attempted to impeach Mineart's credibility because of his earlier failure to cooperate fully, then the AUSA would be permitted to question the witness on redirect as to the threat. No voir dire was held; the ostensible threat was never described with particularity; and Mineart never acknowledged that he had in fact been braced. Griffin was thus presented with a workable choice: he could attack Mineart based upon his original (incomplete) version of the events (and risk that the government would demonstrate the reason for the lapse), or he could refrain from savaging Mineart on this basis (thereby keeping the lid firmly shut on any possible showing that Gillis had attempted to intimidate the witness). Mineart's direct examination ended without further incident and, in cross-questioning Mineart, Griffin's trial counsel shied away from any reference to the witness's tardiness in telling the whole story. 26 We hold that the appellant's unease concerning the district judge's proposed handling of Gillis's saber rattling never ripened into an appealable matter. To be sure, the judge made a conditional ruling in limine--but, because Griffin's trial counsel elected not to cross-examine Mineart about why he procrastinated in implicating the defendant, the actual issue which the appellant seeks to have us decide never arose. On the record as it stands, the district court merely sustained Griffin's Rule 403 objection and excluded evidence of the threat--if any existed--from the government's case in chief. Although the court telegraphed what its ruling was likely to be if defense counsel opened the door, the latter never knocked. And, we will not venture to pass upon issues such as this in a vacuum. 27 The parallel between this case and Luce v. United States, 469 U.S. 38, 105 S.Ct. 460, 83 L.Ed.2d 443 (1984) is, we think, compelling. In Luce, the district court, on advance motion, refused to preclude the government from using a criminal defendant's prior conviction as impeachment material. The defendant did not take the stand and was convicted. He assigned as error the district court's unwillingness to bar the prosecution from using his criminal record in cross-examination. The Court decided that any possible harm flowing from the trial court's in limine ruling was wholly speculative. Id. at 41, 105 S.Ct. at 463. Speaking of the weighing of probative value against prejudicial effect which Fed.R.Evid. 609(a)(1) demands, 4 Chief Justice Burger noted:To perform this balancing, the court must know the precise nature of the defendant's testimony, which is unknowable when ... the defendant does not testify. 28 Luce, 469 U.S. at 41, 105 S.Ct. at 463 (footnote omitted). 29 So here. Fed.R.Evid. 403, see supra n. 2, necessitates much the same genre of comparative analysis as Rule 609(a)(1). The Rule 403 calculus, like that of Rule 609(a)(1), is subject to change when the case unfolds.... Luce, 469 U.S. at 41, 105 S.Ct. at 463. When, as here, the predicate examination has not been essayed, the trial court cannot be held to its tentative forecast. As in the Luce context, it is too great a handicap to bind a trial judge to a ruling on a subtle evidentiary question, requiring the most delicate balancing, outside a precise factual context. 30 Moreover, because the cross-examiner did not broach the subject of Mineart's delay, we have no way of knowing whether Gillis really uttered a threat, and if so, whether the government would actually have tried to show it. That situation, too, has its parallel in the Rule 609 context--for when the defendant does not testify, the court never knows precisely what he would have said, or if the prosecutor would have followed through on his professed intention of using the conviction to impeach. Exactly that sort of uncertainty led the Court to characterize the point at issue in Luce as a matter of conjecture. Id. at 42, 105 S.Ct. at 463. The same is true here. 31 The speculative nature of this situation is highlighted dramatically by the proceedings below concerning another witness, Richard Robinson. According to the prosecution, Robinson, like Mineart, had been menaced by Gillis. As a result, Robinson, like Mineart, was less than candid at first. Later, he implicated Griffin. The defendant was given much the same option regarding cross-examination of Robinson as he had been offered vis-a-vis Mineart. In Robinson's case, the appellant's counsel chose to cross-question him about the omissions. Nevertheless, when the time came for redirect, the government decided to forgo any exploration of any threat and to rehabilitate Robinson in other ways. The same possibility existed, of course, as to Mineart; without a definite ruling in the vibrant context of live testimony, there is no reliable way of telling whether the government would have sought to rehabilitate Mineart by bringing out Gillis's supposed warning--or whether, if the prosecution opted to do so, Mineart would have risen to the bait. Nor can we tell whether, if both these contingencies had come to pass, the district court would have allowed the evidence. 5 32 It is no answer to say that everyone had placed their cards on the table, face up, when the district judge made his advance ruling. As the Court noted in Luce, 469 U.S. at 41 n. 5, 105 S.Ct. at 463 n. 5, proffers can differ from actual testimony in material ways. Here, the threat itself was never spelled out. And, even if nothing unexpected happens at trial, the district judge is free, in the exercise of sound judicial discretion, to alter a previous in limine ruling. Id. at 41-42, 105 S.Ct. at 463. 33 Lastly, we note that permitting a defendant to raise on appeal a conditional Rule 403 forecast which results from an advance ruling in limine creates much the same danger of encouraging a defendant, as a trial tactic, to plant reversible error that is present in the precincts patrolled by Rule 609(a)(1). This concern was important to the Court in Luce, id. at 42, 105 S.Ct. at 464, and it is important to us. The defendant is not entitled to the windfall of automatic reversal.... Id. 34 There is no principled way to distinguish Griffin's point from that confronted in Luce, supra. We hold that to raise and preserve for review the claim of improperly constructing the Rule 403 balance, a party must obtain the order admitting or excluding the controversial evidence in the actual setting of the trial. This does not mean, of course, that the evidence must always be revealed to the jury; as we have said in a different context, [t]he cure should not itself become the carrier of the disease. Curran v. Department of Justice, 813 F.2d 473, 475 (1st Cir.1987). Counsel should cooperate with the district court in exercising restraint and in employing the prophylaxis of the sidebar, where appropriate. See Fed.R.Evid. 103(c). In more complex situations, counsel may request that the jurors retire, or in exceptional cases, that the actual testimony be screened voir dire in the jury's absence. What matters is that the district judge have an opportunity to make his rulings in an actual context (or, at least, a verisimilitudinous enactment of an actual context), and that both the trial court and the appellate court have ... a complete record detailing the nature of [the] testimony, the scope of the cross-examination, and the possible impact of the [evidence] on the jury's verdict. Luce, 469 U.S. at 41, 105 S.Ct. at 463. Only in that way can the trial judge meaningfully perform the required balancing in the concrete context of actual question and answer.... United States v. Mazza, 792 F.2d 1210, 1223 (1st Cir.1986), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 107 S.Ct. 1290, 94 L.Ed.2d 147 (1987). 6 35 We are not alone in concluding that the reasoning of Luce is not narrowly to be confined to situations under Rule 609. In United States v. Weichert, 783 F.2d 23, 25 (2d Cir.1986) (per curiam), the court applied Luce to an in limine ruling involving Fed.R.Evid. 608(b), 7 reasoning that [i]f impeaching questions are permitted under Rule 608(b), the trial court still is required to balance probative value against prejudice under Fed.R.Evid. 403, and this balancing is as dependent on the specific factual context as it is in Rule 609 cases. Id. See also United States v. Dimatteo, 759 F.2d 831, 832-33 (11th Cir.1985) (per curiam) (similar). In United States v. Johnson, 767 F.2d 1259, 1270 (8th Cir.1985), the Eighth Circuit applied Luce to in limine rulings under Fed.R.Evid. 404(b), a rule dealing with the admissibility of evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts. Although Luce was decided under Fed.R.Evid. 609(a)(1), its logic applies with equal force to motions under Rule 404. Johnson, 767 F.2d at 1270 (footnote omitted). Luce held sway, according to the Johnson court, because both Rule 609(a)(1) and Rule 404(b) require the court to determine whether the danger of undue prejudice outweighs the probative value of the evidence. Id. at 1270 n. 9. See Fed.R.Evid. 404(b) advisory committee note (explaining requisite balancing test by reference to factors appropriate under Rule 403). See also United States v. Studnicka, 777 F.2d 652, 660 (11th Cir.1985) (objection to in limine ruling waived when concrete context did not materialize; unclear whether contested evidence to be offered substantively or for impeachment); cf. Coursen v. A.H. Robins Co., 764 F.2d 1329, 1342 (9th Cir.1985) (in limine rulings concerning the use of sexual history evidence unreviewable). But cf. Adams v. Fuqua Indus., Inc., 806 F.2d 770, 773-74 (8th Cir.1986) (in civil case, granting of motion in limine preserved exclusion of evidence for review where later objection would have been a mere formality). 36 Under the applicable standard, Griffin did not properly preserve the error of which he now complains for appellate scrutiny. Accordingly, we need not consider the fashion in which the district judge constructed the Rule 403 equation for purposes of his ruling in limine. 8