Opinion ID: 770587
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Grading the Investigation

Text: 40 Sager argues that the court improperly limited his examination of postal investigator Morris and improperly instructed the jury to refrain from grading Morris's investigation of the theft and use of Post's credit card.A federal judge has broad discretion in supervising trials, and his or her behavior during trial justifies reversal only if[he or she] abuses that discretion. United States v. Laurins, 857 F.2d 529, 537 (9th Cir. 1988). A district court has discretion to comment on the evidence, as long as it makes clear that the jury must ultimately decide all questions of fact. See United States v. Sanchez-Lopez, 879 F.2d 541, 553 (9th Cir. 1989). Because Sager did not object to the district court's statements at issue here, review is under the highly deferential standard of plain error. See Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 465-67 (1997). Thus, Sager must demonstrate that the district court committed error that was plain, clear, or obvious, and that affected substantial rights. See id. at 467. Even if Sager can satisfy this heavy burden, we may, in our discretion, notice the error only if the error  `seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.'  Id. (quoting United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725 (1993)) (alteration in original). 41 We agree with Sager that the district court committed plain error and abused its discretion by instructing the jury not to grade the investigation. In one breath, the court made clear that the jury was to decide questions of fact, but in the other, the court muddled the issue by informing the jury that it could not consider possible defects in Morris's investigation. To tell the jury that it may assess the product of an investigation, but that it may not analyze the quality of the investigation that produced the product, illogically removes from the jury potentially relevant information. As the Supreme Court noted in Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419 (1995) [w]hen . . . the probative force of evidence depends on the circumstances in which it was obtained and those circumstances raise a possibility of fraud, indications of conscientious police work will enhance probative force and slovenly work will diminish it. Id. at 446 n.15; see also id. at 442 n.13 (discussing the utility of attacking police investigations as shoddy); id. at 445-49; cf. Carriger v. Stewart, 132 F.3d 463, 481 (9th Cir. 1997); United States v. Hanna , 55 F.3d 1456, 1460 (9th Cir. 1995). 42 Details of the investigatory process potentially affected Inspector Morris's credibility and, perhaps more importantly, the weight to be given to evidence produced by his investigation. Defense counsel may have been fishing for flaws, but it is obvious that he cast his bait in a promising pond. The district court limited Sager's attorney from proceeding with an inquiry into the quantitative investigation at the point where the attorney had uncovered a highly damaging flaw in Inspector Morris's several accounts of Kim's statement. On the heels of this small victory, the district court erred (1) in curtailing as irrelevant further examination into the investigatory details, and (2) in informing the jury that it may not consider whether or not the investigation was flawed. In circumstances different from these, a court may properly decide that such a line of investigation is to be limited for some independent evidentiary reason, such as that the evidence would be cumulative. See, e.g., United States v. Miller , 874 F.2d 1255, 1266 (9th Cir. 1989) (rejecting attempted inquiry on cross-examination into technical violation of FBI's interrogation procedures manual where defendant had already extensively explored the quality of the investigation and the possible bias that it may indicate, and further inquiry would have been of marginal probative value, outweighed by potential for confusing jury and wasting time). But here, the court's intervention was not proper. 43 However, Sager's inquiry into Inspector Morris's investigation related primarily, if not exclusively, to Inspector Morris's investigation into Sager's alleged use of the Post credit card, the subject of Count Four of the indictment. The jury acquitted Sager on this Count. The other three counts covered the actual theft of mail and the possession of stolen mail, allegations sufficiently supported by the freestanding testimony of Brown and Arce, even assuming a thorough besmirching of Inspector Morris's own testimony and investigation. Although we conclude that the district court committed plain error, any attack aimed at discrediting Inspector Morris or his investigation would not have affected the outcome of the proceedings. Thus, the error did not affect Sager's substantial rights. See United States v. Baron, 94 F.3d 1312, 1318 (9th Cir. 1996). Moreover, the error did not seriously affect the fairness, integrity, and public reputation of the proceedings. Id. at 1319. Consequently, we reject Sager's appeal on this issue.