Opinion ID: 3025124
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Permissibility of a Guilt-Assuming

Text: Hypothetical Kellogg argues that the District Court violated his right to due process and erred under Federal Rule of Evidence 405(a) by permitting the government to pose a question that assumed Kellogg is guilty of the charged offense. The District Court relied primarily on United States v. Curtis, 644 F.2d 263 (3d Cir. 1981), in overruling Kellogg’s objection to the question posed to Pennington. There we recognized that Rule 405(a) “provides that proof of character may be made by testimony as to reputation or by testimony in the form of an opinion” and emphasized the necessity “for keeping separate the two different types of character evidence” permitted under the Rule – those being reputation character evidence and opinion character evidence. Id. at 267, 268 (internal quotation marks omitted). In sum, reputation character evidence is “that of the [defendant’s] reputation in the community for the character trait at issue,” id. at 267, while opinion character evidence is elicited when a -15- defendant’s character witness provides his or her own personal opinion of “any facet of the [defendant’s] character,” id. at 265. The District Court also considered United States v. Mason, 933 F.2d 406 (4th Cir. 1993), in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that a guilt-assuming hypothetical is improper regardless of whether the government is cross-examining a reputation or an opinion character witness. However, the District Court declined to follow Mason because it found the Fourth Circuit’s approach contrary to Federal Rule of Evidence 405(a) and our decision in Curtis. As noted in the District Court’s limiting instruction, there is a distinction between reputation character evidence and opinion character evidence. See Curtis, 644 F.2d at 269 (“...Rule 405(a) has not effected a merger between reputation and opinion evidence.”). However, that distinction has not been significant to a majority of the Courts of Appeals that have addressed the propriety of guilt-assuming hypotheticals. -16- Without necessarily distinguishing whether the issue involved cross-examining an opinion witness or a reputation witness, those courts have broadly held such questions are improper. See United States v. Shwayder, 312 F.3d 1109, 1121 (9th Cir. 2002) (“The prosecution’s use of guilt-assuming hypothetical questions on cross-examination of Shwayder’s character witnesses...constituted error.”); United States v. Guzman, 167 F.3d 1350, 1352 (11th Cir. 1999) (“The government may not...pose hypothetical questions that assume the guilt of the accused in the very case at bar.”); United States v. Mason, 993 F.2d 406, 408 (4th Cir. 1993) (guilt-assuming hypotheticals are “not proper and should not have been allowed”); United States v. Oshatz, 912 F.2d 534, 539 (2d Cir. 1990) (“...[A] hypothetical question based on the assumption of guilt should not be asked.”) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); United States v. Williams, 738 F.2d 172, 177 (7th Cir. 1984) (“We hold that permitting this line of crossexamination [guilt-assuming hypotheticals] over objection -17- was error, and we see no reason to treat reputation and opinion witnesses differently in this regard.”) (citation omitted); United States v. McGuire, 744 F.2d 1197, 1204 (6th Cir. 1984) (“It would be error to allow the prosecution to ask the character witness to assume defendant’s guilt of the offenses for which he is then on trial.”); but see United States v. White, 887 F.2d 267, 275-6 (D.C. Cir. 1989) (using guiltassuming hypotheticals during cross-examination of character witnesses “who...give their own opinion of the defendant’s character is not error”). Generally, the reason given for these holdings is that a guilt-assuming hypothetical impairs the presumption of innocence and thus violates the defendant’s due process rights. Guzman, 167 F.3d at 1352; Mason, 993 F.2d at 409; Oshatz, 912 F.2d at 539; Shwayder, 312 F.3d at 1121; Williams, 738 F.2d at 177. A few Courts have also noted that an alternative basis for holding guilt-assuming hypotheticals are improper is that they are unfairly prejudicial to the defendant, Oshatz, 912 -18- F.2d at 539, Williams, 738 F.2d at 177, which would indeed seem to follow necessarily from a conclusion that there had been a due process violation. The Second Circuit has acknowledged that a guilt-assuming hypothetical may elicit evidence of some probative value, particularly when posed to an opinion character witness, since “[s]teadfast adherence to a favorable opinion by a witness asked to assume the defendant’s guilt might provide some basis for concluding that the witness is simply supporting the defendant, rather than providing credible testimony about his character.” Oshatz, 912 F.2d at 539. However, the Court concluded that any probative value was outweighed by the risk that “after a jury has repeatedly heard a prosecutor assure a trial judge that he has a good faith basis for asking permitted hypothetical questions, the jury might infer from the judge’s permission to ask a guilt-based hypothetical question that the prosecutor has evidence of guilt beyond the evidence in the record.” Id. The Seventh Circuit also commented on the potentially prejudicial -19- impact of a guilt-assuming hypothetical, suggesting that such questions allow “the prosecution to foist its theory of the case repeatedly on the jury.” Williams, 738 F.2d at 177. Several other Courts of Appeals have had the opportunity to consider guilt-assuming hypotheticals, but only in the context of reputation testimony, where such questions are uniformly held to be impermissible. See United States v. Barta, 888 F.2d 1220, 1224-5 (8th Cir. 1989); United States v. Polsinelli, 649 F.2d 793, 796-7 (10th Cir. 1981); United States v. Calendaria-Gonzalez, 647 F.2d 291, 294 (5th Cir. 1977). These Courts too have reasoned that allowing the prosecution to ask a question that assumes the defendant’s guilt would infringe upon the presumption of innocence. Barta, 888 F.2d at 1224; Calendaria-Gonzalez, 547 F.2d at 294. The Fifth Circuit has provided the further persuasive explanation that a guilt-assuming hypothetical cannot sensibly be asked of a reputation witness because reputation testimony is based on what the witness heard in the community about -20- the defendant, and “[o]bviously the character witness ... had heard nothing in the community about [the defendant’s] post conviction reputation when he had been convicted of nothing whatsoever.” Calendaria-Gonzalez, 546 F.2d at 294.