Opinion ID: 604665
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Cross-examination of Richard Thibault.

Text: 25 Margo and Lemke both claim that the district court judge improperly limited cross-examination of Richard Thibault, and further erred by refusing to admit into evidence a Garden Grove, California police department report. These mistakes, they maintain, violated their Sixth Amendment rights. As previously noted, we review limitation of cross-examination for abuse of discretion, United States v. Bonanno, 852 F.2d at 439, while we review the confrontation clause aspects of that question de novo. United States v. Vargas, 933 F.2d at 704. The trial court's refusal to admit evidence pursuant to Federal Rules of Evidence 402 and 403 is reviewed for abuse of discretion. United States v. Schaff, 948 F.2d 501, 505-06 (9th Cir.1991) (Rule 402); United States v. Kessi, 868 F.2d 1097, 1107 (9th Cir.1989) (Rule 403). 26 Garden Grove police investigator Pamela French was assigned in December 1987 to check out a reported burglary at Richard Thibault's office. Indeed, French called Margo during the course of that investigation, prompting Margo to stall David Jan Lamb and postpone another murder attempt. A second burglary at Thibault's office was reported on January 4, 1988. The investigator assigned to the second incident spoke with French some months later. In his report on the second break-in, he wrote that [French] believes that Mr. Thibault ... is possibly embezzling money from the company. Appellants contend that this evidence was admissible, and that French's belief was a proper subject for cross-examination. 27 The district court judge correctly observed that the evidence submitted by the appellants regarding any wrongdoing by Richard was simply a suspicion of this investigator. Such suspicions, without more, do not meet the requisite evidentiary threshold that would show that the defendant's allegations of witness misconduct have some grounding in reality. Ray, 731 F.2d at 1364. Significantly, despite French's suspicions, Richard has not been charged with embezzlement. 28 Beyond the unsubstantiated nature of the embezzlement theory, the relevance of this line of inquiry is highly questionable. Appellants argue that Richard's alleged embezzlement is relevant to an understanding of Richard and Margo's marital relationship, but that connection is strained at best. The government rightly notes that appellants utterly fail to explain how the allegation that Richard was embezzling from his business partner shows any bias toward [Margo] or any motive to testify falsely against her. Finally, the jury did hear evidence about Richard and Margo's stormy divorce proceedings, and Margo testified on direct examination that Richard was embezzling money from his business partner. 29 Thus, we find no error in the district court judge's decision to exclude evidence of, and cross-examination regarding, the suspicions of a police investigator that Richard Thibault was embezzling money. That evidence was irrelevant, or, at best, its relevance was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury. 30