Opinion ID: 4470914
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: santos’s post-miranda statement

Text: Santos argues that the district court abused its discretion and misapplied the rule of completeness when it permitted the government to elicit testimony from Special Agent Laboy about the inculpatory portion of Santos’s post-Miranda statement to her but prohibited Santos from eliciting further testimony about the exculpatory portion of his statement. Under the common law rule of completeness, an opponent against whom a part of an utterance is admitted may complement it by submitting the remainder, in order to give the jury a complete understanding of the “total tenor and effect of the utterance.” Beech Aircraft Corp. v. Rainey, 488 U.S. 153, 171-72, 109 S. Ct. 439, 451 (1988) (quotation marks omitted). As partially codified in Federal Rule of Evidence 106, the rule states: “If a party introduces all or part of a writing or recorded statement, an adverse party may require the introduction, at that time, of any other part—or any other writing or recorded statement—that in fairness ought to be considered at the same time.” Fed. R. Evid. 106. Rule 106 “does not automatically make the entire document admissible” once one portion has been introduced. United States v. Pendas-Martinez, 845 F.2d 938, 944 (11th Cir. 1988). Rather, Rule 106 “permits introduction only of additional material that is relevant and is necessary to qualify, explain, or place into context the portion already introduced.” United States v. Simms, 385 F.3d 1347, 1359 (11th Cir. 2004) 33 Case: 18-14529 Date Filed: 01/09/2020 Page: 34 of 45 (quotation marks omitted). Although Rule 106 on its face applies only to written or recorded statements, this Court has extended the rule to the exculpatory portions of a criminal defendant’s post-arrest oral statements. See United States v. Range, 94 F.3d 614, 620-21 (11th Cir. 1996). Here, we conclude that the later exculpatory part of Santos’s statement does not explain or clarify the earlier inculpatory part. In the first part, Santos admitted to Special Agent Laboy in 2015 that he was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for manslaughter in the Dominican Republic in the 1980s. This admission proved the fact of Santos’s prior conviction. That is a separate and different topic from why Santos failed to mention his criminal history both on his Form N-400 Application in 2007 and during his naturalization interview in 2009. We recognize that the government did not necessarily need this admission to prove Santos’s criminal history given that the government introduced Santos’s actual criminal records from the Dominican Republic.11 That, however, underscores why the rest of the statement was about a separate topic and was not necessary to explain or clarify the earlier inculpatory part. We thus cannot say that the district court abused its discretion in admitting the first part of Santos’s statement and excluding the rest. 11 The only additional information in the admission is that Santos was charged with “murder” but ultimately convicted of only “manslaughter.” The criminal records do not use this terminology. 34 Case: 18-14529 Date Filed: 01/09/2020 Page: 35 of 45