Opinion ID: 47769
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Denial of Compulsory Process Claim

Text: Lee next contends that the exclusion as a witness of Carol Holmes, a supervisor at the District Clerk’s office, deprived him of his Sixth Amendment right to compulsory process. Holmes’s testimony was intended to be probative of whether Lee received the decree by mail because, unlike Carlos, Holmes was employed at the Clerk’s Office at the same time when documentation of Lee’s divorce proceeding was processed. A criminal defendant must demonstrate that the excluded testimony was “both material and favorable to his defense.” “[M]ore than the mere absence of testimony is necessary to establish a violation” of the right to compulsory process. United States v. Valenzuela-Bernal, 458 U.S. 858, 867, 102 S. Ct. 3440, 3446 (1982); Janecka v. Cockrell, 301 F.3d 316, 326 (5th Cir. 2002). Here, the salient points of Holmes’s testimony had previously been put before the jury by Carlos. Any further testimony by Holmes that the Clerk’s Office did not comply with Rule 119a in 1998 would have been duplicative and immaterial to Lee’s defense. The court did not err.