Opinion ID: 548450
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Lack of Objections

Text: 39 Bosch contends that Palacios' failure to object to the form of the prosecution's questions and to certain substantive testimony constituted ineffective assistance of counsel. Specifically, Bosch claims that Palacios failed to object to 1) the government's examination of three of its witnesses which consisted largely of a single unbroken stream of leading questions; 2) the testimony of Richard Sloan, the former narcotics officer who arrested Santana, and the accompanying slide presentation which was a running narrative punctuated with photographs of documents which posed hearsay, authentication, and best evidence problems; and 3) the testimony of Agent Newbrough which violated Rules 702 and 704 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. Leading Questions 40 Bosch correctly asserts that the examination of Efrain Santana, Emelina Torres, and Luis Gamboa includes a significant amount of leading questions. Bosch, however, does not maintain that any of this testimony would not have been admissible had it been elicited through nonleading questions. Palacios therefore reasonably could have decided to allow the leading questions to avoid emphasizing damaging testimony. Sloan Testimony 41 Bosch is also correct that the portion of Sloan's testimony underlying the slide presentation was essentially a narrative with a few leading questions and that some of the slides apparently were photographs of documents. Palacios did eventually object to the narrative form of Sloan's testimony, and the court ordered the prosecution to resume a question and answer format. More fundamentally, Bosch again does not maintain that Sloan's testimony, had it been given in the proper form, would not have been admissible. It very well may have been trial strategy to allow the narrative and avoid emphasizing damaging information by objecting to the form of otherwise admissible testimony. 42 In addition, the slides containing documents certainly may pose the evidentiary problems Bosch raises, but Bosch has failed to show that any of the documents were not properly admissible. In the absence of such a showing, Palacios' failure to object to the admission of the slides into evidence was not unreasonable or prejudicial to Bosch. See United States v. Vaccaro, 816 F.2d 443, 455 (9th Cir.) (failure to challenge search of defendant's house was not ineffective assistance of counsel where defendant failed to show that the evidence gained thereby would have been suppressed, or that there was a reasonable probability that he would have been acquitted had this evidence been excluded), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 928, 108 S.Ct. 295, 98 L.Ed.2d 255 (1987). Newbrough Testimony 43 As previously discussed, Newbrough's testimony did not contravene Fed.R.Evid. 702 and 704, with the possible exception of Newbrough's statements about the bank's legal responsibility to include on the CTR form the name of the person conducting the transaction. Palacios' failure to object to admissible testimony was not unreasonable, and the admission of Newbrough's CTR testimony did not prejudice Bosch in view of our decision reversing the count involving this transaction.