Opinion ID: 802339
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The First Severance

Text: In a September 21, 2011 opinion (the “First Severance Opinion”) citing those proffers, the District Court decided that severance was necessary and ordered that the Kemo Murder Counts be tried first. The Court did say, however, that it would “likely allow certain … Rule 404(b) evidence into the separate trial on the [Kemo Murder] Counts.” (Joint App. at 58.) In particular, it 10 indicated that evidence of the Pozo Plot would be admissible because that plot occurred “before or around the same time as the [Kemo] murder conspiracy.” (Id. at 59.) Evidence of the Esteves Plot, by contrast, troubled the Court. The Esteves Plot was unlike the “other-crime evidence most typically admitted under Rule 404(b),” the Court said, because it pertained to acts that “happened more than four years after the [Kemo] murder conspiracy” and was therefore evidence of a “subsequent criminal act.” (Id.) Although the Court acknowledged that there was no categorical “bar to subsequent act evidence,” it observed that “evidence of a subsequent act” is not necessarily “permissible or relevant in the same way that evidence of a prior bad act may be.” (Id.) Nevertheless, the Court seemed to take for granted that the government would be permitted to use Bergrin’s own admissions to Esteves in proving the Kemo Murder Counts. (See id. at 62 (suggesting that certain evidence pertaining to the Esteves Plot would “likely be admissible to provide the requisite background information to support” the testimony of the witnesses, including Esteves, who would testify to Bergrin’s admissions).) Aside from that, however, the Court made it clear that most of the proffered evidence pertaining to the Esteves Plot would be inadmissible in a trial on the Kemo Murder Counts. The Court was particularly concerned about the tape recording of Bergrin’s conversation with Cordova, evidently believing that the tape’s probative value was likely to be substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice: The Government proffers that it will introduce evidence, including audio recordings, showing that in 2008 Bergrin had conversations with a 11 confidential informant – dubbed by the Government as “the Hitman” – during which Bergrin explicitly discussed killing [a witness] and instructed the Hitman to make the murder look like a home invasion robbery. By contrast, the Government’s proffered evidence regarding the [Kemo] murder is much more circumstantial. The Government intends to prove that Bergrin said the words “no Kemo, no case” to certain other persons and that by uttering these words Bergrin specifically intended to cause those individuals to murder [Kemo] to keep him from testifying. And although the Government has a variety of evidence specifically probative of the [Kemo Murder] Counts it intends to introduce, the evidence will likely be nowhere near as overwhelming as the evidence relating to the [Esteves Plot]. …. [I]n considering Bergrin’s guilt for the [Kemo Murder] Counts, any limiting instructions would likely be insufficient. It would be perhaps unavoidable – and merely human – for the jury to use the direct, explicit evidence from the [Esteves Plot] murder conspiracy case to infer Bergrin’s guilt of the [Kemo Murder] Counts regardless of any limiting instruction. 12 (Id. at 56.) Because Bergrin faced a life sentence on the Kemo Murder Counts, the Court found that risk to be particularly unacceptable. (See id. at 57 (“[A]lthough he is charged with a variety of crimes, the stakes on the [Kemo Murder] Counts are especially high for Bergrin: if a jury finds him guilty on those counts, he faces a mandatory life sentence.”).) Thus, based in part on its view that evidence of the other witness-murder plots would not, despite the government’s argument, necessarily be admissible in a trial on the Kemo Murder Counts, the Court severed those counts from the Indictment and ordered them to be tried first.