Opinion ID: 785392
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Admissibility and Competency of Evidence

Text: 30 Barapind contends that the district court, sitting as an extradition court, improperly found that the Government of India had satisfied its burden of establishing probable cause of Barapind's guilt of the underlying offenses. He attacks India's evidence as generally incompetent, unreliable, recanted, unpersuasive, and, in many instances, the product of untrustworthy police behavior. The evidence presented by India in order to establish probable cause consisted entirely of eyewitness statements identifying Barapind as the perpetrator of the alleged crimes. These statements were summarized by Satish Kumar Sharma, and accompanied by a sworn affidavit attesting to the veracity of the English translations. Although this body of evidence is rife with hearsay, unsworn statements of absent witnesses may be acted upon by the committing magistrate, although they could not have been received by him under the law of the State on a preliminary examination. Collins v. Loisel, 259 U.S. 309, 317, 42 S.Ct. 469, 66 L.Ed. 956 (1922). We have explicitly held that an extradition request may be based entirely on an investigator's affidavit summarizing other witnesses' hearsay statements and information. Emami v. U.S. Dist. Ct., 834 F.2d 1444, 1451 (9th Cir.1987). 31 Under general United States extradition law, the only requirement for competency and admissibility is that the evidence be properly authenticated. Id. at 1451; Oen Yin-Choy v. Robinson, 858 F.2d 1400, 1405 (9th Cir.1988) (finding ten translated and unsworn witness statements to be reliable and competent on the basis of the authentication). 18 U.S.C. § 3190, which governs the admissibility of evidence in extradition cases, specifies that the certificate of the principal diplomatic or consular officer of the United States resident in such foreign country shall be proof that [the documents submitted into evidence] are authenticated in the manner required. 18 U.S.C. § 3190. The Extradition Treaty specifies nothing more than that the extradition be carried out in conformity with the laws regulating extradition.... Extradition Treaty, art. 8, T.S. No. 849. Therefore, in this case the certification signed by Matthew P. Daley, Charge d'Affaires ad interim of the United States at New Delhi, on November 22, 1994, and the certification attached to the supplemental affidavit, signed by Consul General Wayne S. Leininger on June 12, 1998, were sufficient to satisfy the competency and admissibility requirement of 18 U.S.C. § 3190. 32 In an effort to undermine the weight of the eyewitness statements, with respect to FIRs 89, 34 and 100, Barapind offered his own compelling witness statements, in which all of the eyewitnesses upon which India relies either recant their earlier identification, or deny having made an identification in the first place. There is some confusion, however, as to whether this type of evidence is admissible in this context. The general rule is that evidence that explains away or completely obliterates probable cause is admissible, while evidence that merely controverts the existence of probable cause is not. Mainero v. Gregg, 164 F.3d 1199, 1207 n. 7 (9th Cir.1999). Courts, however, have struggled with the admissibility of recantation evidence under this rule. See, e.g., In re Extradition of Singh, 170 F.Supp.2d at 994 (recognizing that the standard is extremely difficult to apply); compare Eain v. Wilkes, 641 F.2d 504, 511-512 (7th Cir.1981) (rejecting recanting statements as merely contradictory) with In re Extradition of Contreras, 800 F.Supp. 1462, 1469 (S.D.Tex.1992) (determining that confessions were sufficiently recanted to negate probable cause). Although we have never directly confirmed the admissibility of recantation evidence, it is not necessary that we resolve this issue today because the extradition judge considered and weighed Barapind's proffered recantation evidence in conformity with the rule expressed in Mainero, 164 F.3d at 1207 n. 7. 33