Opinion ID: 197023
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Impeachment of Cardiges

Text: 55 Josleyn contends that though the prosecutor was responsible for deliberately suborning false testimony from Cardiges, the district court unduly impeded Josleyn's efforts to impeach Cardiges on cross-examination. These claims are meritless. See generally United States v. Osorio, 929 F.2d 753, 759-60 (1st Cir.1991) (approving reasonable restrictions by trial court on repetitive, harassing, unduly prejudicial, irrelevant, or otherwise improper cross-examination); cf. United States v. Tavares, 93 F.3d 10, 14-15 (1st Cir.1996) (rejecting baseless perjury allegation). 56 On cross-examination, defense counsel asked Cardiges to explain two newspaper articles in which his lawyer reportedly stated that the government had evidence that the top Japanese managers at Honda knew about the alleged criminal activities in its sales division. Cardiges testified that he neither authorized the press statements, nor knew their basis. On redirect, the prosecutor elicited testimony that though Cardiges and his attorney had been afforded open access to the government's file, Cardiges had seen no documents that either indicated or show[ed] that the Japanese knew anything about kickbacks or gifts or anything like that. In response, Josleyn's counsel sought to confront Cardiges with several FBI interview reports--obtained from the government's file--which contained statements by Honda employees to the effect that the Japanese knew about the bribes and kickbacks. 57 The district court permitted defense counsel to use the FBI reports for impeachment purposes, i.e., to show that Cardiges either did not tell the truth, or had not reviewed the entire contents of the government file. But the court ruled that the FBI interview reports were inadmissible hearsay if offered for their truth. See Innamorati, 996 F.2d at 480-81; Fed.R.Evid. 801(c) (defining hearsay). On appeal, Josleyn argues that the district court impermissibly restricted recross-examination by refusing to allow the jury to consider all hearsay statements in the FBI interview reports. 58 Our review of the trial transcripts satisfies us that the district court accorded Josleyn ample leeway to explore the FBI interview reports in sufficient detail to enable the jury fairly to weigh Cardiges' testimony relating to the government's file. For example, Cardiges admitted on recross that he had never seen the FBI interview reports, and was quite sure that he was not able to get through the thousands and thousands of documents during the four-hour period he spent reviewing the government file. The district court did sustain several hearsay objections when defense counsel attempted to delve more deeply into the contents of the FBI interview reports. It did so properly, however, since Josleyn proffered no relevant non-hearsay purpose for probing further. Cf. United States v. Hudson, 970 F.2d 948, 956-57 (1st Cir.1992) (defense counsel responded to hearsay objection with impeachment proffer). Nor does Josleyn now challenge these hearsay rulings. Accordingly, we find no error. See Fed.R.Evid. 103(a)(2). 59