Opinion ID: 179282
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Government Interference with Pablo's Witnesses

Text: Pablo next asserts that the prosecution and district court impermissibly interfered with his right to present a defense by dissuading from testifying two defense witnessesZachary Gordo and Alzado Gordo. He argues that the prosecution raised the specter of self-incrimination to coerce the witnesses not to testify favorably for Pablo, and the district court erred by refusing to require the witnesses to testify after each witness consulted with independent counsel and subsequently invoked their privilege against self-incrimination. We disagree.
We review de novo a defendant's claim that the prosecution and district court deprived him of his constitutional right to present a defense by using undue influence to dissuade witnesses from testifying. See United States v. Solomon, 399 F.3d 1231, 1239 (10th Cir.2005); see also United States v. Serrano, 406 F.3d 1208, 1214 (10th Cir.2005).
An essential ingredient to a fair trial is the defendant's right to present a defense. Serrano, 406 F.3d at 1214. The Due Process Clause and the Compulsory Process Clause work together to ensure a defendant has the right to present a defense by compelling the attendance, and presenting the testimony, of his own witnesses[.] Id. at 1215. The right to due process include[s] a right to be heard and to offer testimony. Id. (quotations omitted). And the right to compulsory process guarantees the defendant the right to the government's assistance in compelling the attendance of favorable witnesses at trial and the right to put before a jury evidence that might influence the determination of guilt. Id. (quotations omitted). A criminal defendant's right to present a defense, however, is not unfettered. Id. This right may, in appropriate cases, bow to accommodate other legitimate interests in the criminal trial process. Id. (quotation omitted). In this case, Pablo's right to present a defense ran up against the right of two witnesses to invoke their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. And we have explained that a defendant's right to present a defense does not include the right to compel a witness to waive his Fifth Amendment privilege against self incrimination. Id. Although a witness may freely invoke his privilege against self incrimination even at the expense of the defendant's right to present a defense, the government cannot substantially interfere with a defense witness's decision to testify. Id. This restriction on government action applies to both prosecutors and the district court. Id. at 1215-16. To determine if the government impermissibly interfered with a witness's decision to testify, we ask whether the government's interference was substantial. Id. at 1216 (quotations omitted). Interference is substantial when the government actor actively discourages a witness from testifying through threats of prosecution, intimidation, or coercive badgering. Id. (emphasis added). But [t]he potential for unconstitutional coercion by a government actor significantly diminishes ... if a defendant's witness elects not to testify after consulting an independent attorney. Id. By way of example, in Serrano, we found no substantial interference where the prosecution merely raised to the district court a legitimate concern about witnesses incriminating themselves if they testified and the district court simply expressed this concern to the witnesses and appointed independent counsel to advise them on that issue. Id. This case is on all fours with Serrano. Here, the prosecution did not actively discourage[] Pablo's two witnesses from testifying through threats of prosecution. See id. Instead, the prosecutor merely raised his concern to the district court that the testimony of these two witnesses could lead to their prosecution. The prosecutor felt that the likely presence of these two witnesses before, during, and after the rape gave rise to a risk of self-incrimination that required him to notify the district court. And the prosecutor did not misrepresent or otherwise overstate his concern but explained that he could not promise the Court that, depending on what they said, the United States would not prosecute them. (R. vol. 3 pt. 1 at 328:10-12.) Nothing in the prosecutor's colloquy with the district court indicates active discouragement through the threat of prosecution. To the extent Pablo is arguing that the prosecutor acted in bad faith by raising the self-incrimination issue, we find no support in the record for that argument. See Serrano, 406 F.3d at 1212 n. 1 (citing United States v. Crawford, 707 F.2d 447, 450 (10th Cir.1983), for the proposition that an assistant United States attorney ha[s] an obligation to disclose the fact that several of the defense witnesses were targets of other investigations and further citing United States v. Jackson, 935 F.2d 832, 847 (7th Cir.1991), for the proposition that `ethical duties require prosecutors to warn unrepresented witnesses of the risk that the testimony they are about to give may be used against them'). L.R.H. testified that at around the time she was raped, a car matching the description of Isaac's gray Ford Focus we also present. Under the circumstancesnamely, that Dave Keetso had been left behind incapacitated and Dave's cousin had likely left in his own carwe can infer that the car that appeared before the rape may have been Isaac's Ford Focus driven by Zachary and Alzado Gordo. And since Pablo and Gordo left L.R.H. in the truck after the rape, we can further infer a possibility that they left the scene of the crime in the Ford Focus with Zachary and Alzado. Thus, these circumstances present a real risk that Zachary and Alzado may have incriminated themselves if they testified, and we cannot find the prosecutor raised that concern in bad faith. The district court also responded appropriately to the self-incrimination concern raised by the prosecution. The district court engaged in a colloquy with each prospective witness. The district court did not go beyond informing the prospective witnesses of the privilege against self-incrimination, inquiring about whether they had conferred with counsel, and appointing independent counsel for each witness once it learned that neither had conferred with independent counsel regarding the implications of testifying. Nothing in the district court's colloquy with the prospective witnesses reflects any active discouragement of testimony by the district court. In addition to the fact that the record reveals no signs of undue coercion by either the prosecutor or the district court, the fact that each prospective witness received the advice of independent counsel before invoking the privilege against self-incrimination significantly diminishes the risk that either the prosecutor or district court unconstitutionally coerced the prospective witnesses not to testify. See Serrano, 406 F.3d at 1216. The district court questioned the attorneys to ensure each believed his client's testimony could lead to self-incrimination, and both attorneys agreed that it could. Only then did the district court conclude that Pablo could not compel Zachary and Alzado Gordo to testify because they had properly invoked their privilege against self-incrimination. For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that neither the prosecutor nor the district court deprived Pablo of his constitutional right to present a defense because neither substantially interfered with Zachary and Alzado Gordo's decision to testify or not to testify; rather, as in Serrano, both prospective witnesses freely invoked the privilege against self-incrimination after conferring with independent counsel. [11]