Opinion ID: 1249059
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Preclusion of Expert Witnesses

Text: The district court's December 2005 and February 2006 orders limiting the government's case-in-chief to those witnesses disclosed as of December 5, 2005 appear to preclude the addition of expert as well as nonexpert witnesses (other than as rebuttal witnesses). Rule 16(d)(2) expressly authorizes as one sanction for noncompliance the exclusion of undisclosed evidence. Fed.R.Crim.P. 16(d)(2)(C). [9] Nonetheless, as with the exclusion of nonexpert witnesses, completely precluding use of an expert witness is an extreme sanction. See Finley, 301 F.3d at 1018 (addressing the exclusion of an expert witness' testimony as a sanction for the defendant's alleged failure to give proper notice under Rule 16(b)(1)(C)). As we held in Finley, assuming there was an omission of some sort [with respect to the mandated disclosures regarding expert witnesses], it was not willfully done to gain a tactical advantage and thus the severe sanction of total exclusion of the testimony was disproportionate to the alleged harm. Id. Here, in discussing the government's compliance with the court's discovery orders, the district court observed that the government had failed to comply fully with certain discovery deadlines and that it was the court's impression that the delay is due largely to the government's practice of adopting aggressive legal positions in defense of non-disclosure and waiting for an order of this Court to sort out the dispute. As a remedy, it imposed a monitoring requirement on the government's compliance. Turning to alleged shortcomings in the government's expert disclosures, it required the government to supplement those disclosures with specific information about the bases for the experts' testimony. The court did not, however, clearly find that the government willfully defied any of its expert disclosure obligations in order to gain a tactical advantage. The district court thus has not yet articulated a basis on which it could impose the severe sanction of preemptively excluding any additional expert witnesses as part of the government's case-in-chief. On the other hand, the government has not identified any expert witness it believes is foreclosed by the court's December 2005 and February 2006 orders that it wishes to add at this late date. Should the government seek leave to add such a witness, we leave it to the district court to address the request in accordance with the principles we have set forth above.