Opinion ID: 815314
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Due Process and Voluntariness of K.S.’s

Text: Testimony (Count Fourteen) Mr. Jones also was convicted of knowingly transporting a minor, K.S., in interstate commerce with the intent that she engage in prostitution, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2423(a). Mr. Jones alleges that K.S.’s testimony was coerced and that its admission into evidence violated his Fifth Amendment right to due process. He also claims, in the alternative, that the district court erred by failing to investigate sua sponte allegations of coercion. K.S. was a Government witness. She testified that she met Mr. Jones when she was sixteen and began working for him as a prostitute. In this capacity, she worked for Mr. Jones in Boston and traveled with him on several occasions to work as a prostitute in other cities. In addition to Boston, Mr. Jones prostituted K.S. in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and in Washington, D.C. After ending her relationship with Mr. Jones, -27- K.S. worked as a prostitute for Mr. Tavares. On direct examination, K.S. admitted that she did not want to testify, but was doing so under a subpoena. Mr. Jones’s counsel conducted a full cross-examination of K.S. During that cross-examination, she agreed with defense counsel that she had been threatened by FBI agents and a federal prosecutor with remaining in jail after she was arrested for failing to appear as required by a summons and with losing custody of her daughter if she did not “do what [they] wanted [her] to do.”18 She also agreed she was just going to tell the prosecution what they wanted to hear so she could move on with her life. On redirect, K.S. stated that she had been threatened by the FBI and federal prosecutors when she had been required to appear before the grand jury four years earlier and admitted that she had not told the district court that she had been threatened. Mr. Jones did not object to K.S.’s testimony at trial. Accordingly, we review his challenges to K.S.’s testimony for plain error. United States v. Matos-Quiñones, 456 F.3d 14, 20-21 (1st Cir. 2006). Mr. Jones’s claim is very similar to the one we rejected in United States v. Hall, 434 F.3d 42 (1st Cir. 2006), and that case provides substantial guidance. According to the testimony in that case, agents told one witness that she faced prosecution if 18 R.296 at 32. -28- she did not tell them “what they wanted to hear.” Id. at 57 (internal quotation marks omitted). Another witness testified that an agent told him that if he did not cooperate, the Government would take his home. In light of this testimony, the defendant in Hall contended that the Government had violated his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights by “threatening certain witnesses with severe consequences if they did not testify on the government’s behalf.” Id. In assessing this claim, we noted that a due process violation can occur when witnesses are discouraged from testifying through threats or other coercion. Notably, we distinguished those cases from situations where “the government has to press unwilling witnesses . . . to provide testimony that they are reluctant to give.” Id. at 57-58. Therefore, unlike Government efforts to prevent the testimony of certain witnesses, “[t]here is no blanket rule against inducements by the government to witnesses to produce truthful testimony.” Id. at 58. While making this distinction, we nevertheless recognized the possibility that, “in extreme circumstances, government misconduct[] could occur through improper efforts to shape testimony to the government’s liking.” Id. However, we determined that Hall presented no such circumstances, and, in any event, no constitutional violation had occurred because “there was conflicting testimony as to whether the government actually threatened [the witnesses] and defense counsel was allowed to cross-examine on the issue, leaving it to the jury to evaluate -29- witness credibility in light of the evidence concerning the alleged threats.” Id. Upon examination of the circumstances here, we must reach the same conclusion as the one that we reached in Hall: There is no constitutional violation. To be sure, K.S. did not want to testify against Mr. Jones. Indeed, she threw away a summons to appear before the grand jury and subsequently failed to appear as required.19 She testified at trial only because she had been subpoenaed,20 and she stated several times that she did not want to testify against Mr. Jones.21 What Mr. Jones’s counsel characterized as the Government’s “threats,” are more accurately viewed as lawful coercion of a reluctant witness to testify as required by law. Such “threats” are the legal consequences for failing to appear pursuant to a summons. Additionally, as in Hall, Mr. Jones’s counsel fully cross-examined K.S. on this issue. There was ample testimony in the record to permit the jury to evaluate K.S.’s credibility in light of all these circumstances. Nor can we say, as suggested by Mr. Jones, that the district court committed plain error in not conducting an evidentiary hearing prior to admitting the testimony. Mr. Jones contends that these “threats” trigger the analysis set forth in 19 R.296 at 34. 20 R.295 at 104. 21 See, e.g., R.296 at 23-24, 27. -30- LaFrance v. Bohlinger, 499 F.2d 29, 35 (1st Cir. 1974). In that case, we determined that the circumstances surrounding a witness’s statement were so indicative of its involuntariness as to require a hearing. Specifically, a witness had recanted a prior sworn statement while testifying; he claimed that the prior statement was a police fabrication that he had been forced to sign while under the influence of drugs. Id. at 31. There, we stated that “[i]t is unthinkable that a statement obtained by torture or by other conduct belonging only in a police state should be admitted at the government’s behest in order to bolster its case.” Id. at 34. Because the surrounding circumstances raised a substantial claim that the statement was legally involuntary, see Lego v. Twomey, 404 U.S. 477, 480 (1972); Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 372 (1964), we held that the trial court had an obligation to investigate, through an evidentiary hearing, whether the testimony was voluntary. LaFrance, 499 F.3d at 35. There is a material and qualitative distinction between the prosecutorial misconduct at issue in LaFrance and the situation before us today. LaFrance dealt with police extraction of a statement from a drug-impaired witness, by means which we described as “police threats and other blatant forms of physical and mental duress.” Id. In her testimony, K.S. related on cross-examination instances of lawful pressure. She was apprised of the lawful consequences of her failing to testify, which she was legally -31- required to do. The purpose of informing her of those legal consequences, moreover, was to ensure that she fulfilled her obligation to testify, not to ensure that she give particular testimony. Given the nature of the Government’s pressure and the full picture of the surrounding circumstances rendered by the robust cross-examination to which K.S. was subject, we conclude that the district court had no duty to inquire further into the voluntariness of K.S.’s testimony. There was no error, and certainly no plain error, in the district court’s admission of this testimony.