Opinion ID: 2995312
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exclusion of Ramos’s Prior Silence

Text: The district court ruled that Harris would not be allowed to present evidence of Ramos’s invocation of the Fifth Amendment to the jury despite the well- settled principle that the Fifth Amendment does not forbid adverse inferences against parties to civil actions when they refuse to testify in response to probative evidence offered against them. Baxter v. Palmigiano, 425 U.S. 308, 318, 96 S.Ct. 1551, 47 L.Ed.2d 810 (1976); see also LaSalle Bank Lake View v. Seguban, 54 F.3d 387, 389-91 (7th Cir. 1995) (The rule that adverse inferences may be drawn from Fifth Amendment silence in civil proceedings has been widely recognized by the circuit courts of appeals, including our own.). The reason for the district judge’s ruling is not clear from the transcript or from the order denying a new trial,/2 but the parties agree that the district judge most likely excluded the evidence because she determined that the prejudicial effect of Ramos’s prior silence substantially outweighed its probative value. See Fed. R. Evid. 403. Whether this evidence was properly excluded under Rule 403 depends on the timing of Ramos’s abandonment of the Fifth Amendment privilege with respect to the events leading up to Harris’s arrest. If--as defendants contend--Ramos waived his privilege well before trial and agreed to testify to matters concerning Harris’s arrest, then Harris had sufficient opportunity to obtain discovery from Ramos on all issues related to the trial. Thus, the probative value of Ramos’s prior silence was extremely low and the district court was justified in excluding it pursuant to Rule 403. See Fed. R. Evid. 403. On the other hand, if--as Harris claims--Ramos refused to answer any questions about his encounter with the plaintiff until just prior to trial, it was error for the district court to exclude Ramos’s prior silence because the effect of such a ruling would be tantamount to allowing Ramos to avoid discovery altogether. See McGahee v. Massey, 667 F.2d 1357, 1362 (11th Cir. 1982) (A defendant cannot have it both ways. . . . [He may not] testify in attack . . . and at the same time seek refuge behind the shield of the Fifth Amendment.). In that situation, the district court should have either prevented Ramos from testifying to matters about which he had previously refused to testify or allowed Harris to impeach him with his prior silence on those matters. As indicated above, defendants argue that the district court’s ruling was proper because Ramos waived his Fifth Amendment privilege well before trial./3 They assert that Ramos was ready and willing to testify about the events surrounding his encounter with Harris at his September 28, 1998 deposition. According to the defendants, Ramos did not testify about these events at his deposition because Harris failed to phrase his questions narrowly enough to avoid an invocation of the Fifth Amendment. We cannot agree. First of all, defendants’ contention that Ramos was willing to speak freely at the September 28, 1998 deposition is belied by the fact that, at that deposition, Ramos invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to several general questions which could not possibly have incriminated him./4 Defendants also gloss over the fact that Ramos never amended or supplemented any of his interrogatory responses, nor did he ever produce a single document during discovery. Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that: a party is under a duty seasonably to amend a prior response to an interrogatory, request for production, or request for admission if the party learns that the response is in some material respect incomplete or incorrect. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(e)(2). Thus, Harris was entitled to assume that Ramos’s interrogatory responses had not changed, and rely on those answers in preparing for deposition. Absent an effort by Ramos to clarify where he asserted the privilege and where he did not, it was not unreasonable for Harris to assume that Ramos’s position with respect to the privilege remained unchanged. Contrary to defendants’ suggestion, Harris was not required to continue asking questions until he hit an issue that Ramos was willing to testify about. Therefore, we agree with Harris that Ramos did not abandon his Fifth Amendment privilege with respect to the events at issue in this case until just prior to trial. Consequently, we find that the district court’s ruling that Harris was precluded from presenting to the jury evidence of Ramos’s prior silence was an abuse of discretion./5