Opinion ID: 201314
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Cellular Phone.

Text: Pacheco complains that the government never proved that he was in possession of the cellular phone used to converse with James on July 29. His plaint focuses on the lack of foundation for references to the phone that were made at trial by Brian Geraghty, a DEA agent. We set the stage. 1 Ramírez's and James's suitcases contained, respectively, 18.9 and 19.88 kilograms of 80% pure cocaine. -13- The record reflects that a cellular phone was taken from Pacheco in New York. Geraghty, however, was in San Juan at the time. He later participated in the receipt and processing of a cellular phone at the DEA's San Juan office. He was told that the phone was Pacheco's and he inventoried it as such. However, he had no personal knowledge of that fact. The agent who seized the phone did not testify, and there was no first-hand evidence as to how the phone traversed the miles from New York to San Juan. During Geraghty's trial testimony, he alluded to a telephone that was taken from Mr. Pacheco. This reference occurred despite the absence of any foundational evidence, to that point, that a phone had been seized when Pacheco was detained. The allusion inspired a vaguely phrased objection, to which the district court responded that Pacheco's counsel need[ed] to bring that up outside of the hearing of the jury. Pacheco's counsel never followed through on this suggestion. Geraghty essayed several other references to the cellular phone. On one of these occasions, Pacheco's counsel began to state an objection. The district court cut her off in mid-sentence.2 2 The colloquy between the lawyer and the judge was as follows: MS. APONTE: The objection was that the witness [Geraghty] was with Mr. Pacheco when the telephone was occupied. So if he is testifying as to something he was outside of the presence — THE COURT: Overruled. The jury heard the circumstance in which the telephone was seized. They heard it today, -14- Pacheco now asks us to review the admissibility of the agent's statement that the phone was seized from his person. There is a serious question as to the applicable standard of review. Two difficulties are apparent. First, the court invited defense counsel to take the matter up outside the jury's earshot, and the record does not reflect that counsel ever did so.3 Cf. Cottrill v. Sparrow, Johnson & Ursillo, Inc., 100 F.3d 220, 224 n.2 (1st Cir. 1996) (stating that an appellant who declines the court's invitation to seek modification of an order waives the issue for purposes of appeal). This likely was a waiver. The as a matter of fact — MS. APONTE: Your Honor. THE COURT: — so the jury can deal with that. You can argue your case at an appropriate time in front of the jury. This is not closing argument. We are just receiving evidence. In his brief, Pacheco indicates that the phrase the witness was with Mr. Pacheco should read the witness was not with Mr. Pacheco (emphasis supplied). It is unclear whether the absence of the word not was caused by misspeaking or by mistranscription. In all events, Pacheco is bound by the transcript as it stands, as he never requested the district court to correct the phrasing. See Fed. R. App. P. 10(e)(1) (explaining that disputes arising over the accuracy of the trial record ordinarily must be submitted to and settled by the district court). 3 In his briefing, Pacheco claims that the trial judge spontaneously withdrew the invitation and overruled the objection before a sidebar conference could take place. The record, however, is silent in this regard — and it is a party's affirmative responsibility to furnish the court of appeals with so much of the record of the proceedings below as is necessary to enable informed appellate review. Faigin v. Kelly, 184 F.3d 67, 87 (1st Cir. 1999). -15- second obstacle is that a party objecting to particular evidence is obliged to make a timely objection or motion to strike . . . stating the specific ground of objection, at least where that ground was not apparent from the context. Fed. R. Evid. 103(a)(1). The purpose behind this rule is to ensure that a litigant will call his specific objection to the attention of the trial judge, so as to alert the judge to the proper course of action. United States v. Holmquist, 36 F.3d 154, 168 (1st Cir. 1994) (citation, internal quotation marks, and brackets omitted). Should either of these obstacles prove insuperable, review would be limited to plain error. Here, however, there are some mitigating factors. Chief among them is the trial judge's interruption of the lawyer as she was apparently attempting to state the grounds for her objection. That might suffice to excuse the procedural default. Cf. United States v. Toribio-Lugo, 376 F.3d 33, 41 (1st Cir. 2004) (A lawyer ought not to be required to persist stubbornly when the judge has made it perfectly clear that he does not wish to hear what the lawyer has to say.). In the final analysis, we need not probe too deeply into whether Pacheco preserved the point. Here, all roads lead to Rome: whatever the standard of review, the error was harmless. The error itself is manifest. Geraghty's only knowledge of the phone's provenance was second-hand. The agent who seized it -16- did not testify, and the government never established a chain of custody tracing the phone from Pacheco's carryall to Geraghty's hands. See United States v. Ladd, 885 F.2d 954, 956-57 (1st Cir. 1989) (describing chain of custody requirements). We conclude, therefore, that there was no sound basis for admitting the references linking Pacheco to the cellular phone. Notwithstanding the fact that the government used the phone and the call logs emanating from it to show communication between Pacheco and James on the day of the arrest, this error was harmless. Where, as here, an error is not of constitutional magnitude, reversal is not obligatory unless the bevue 'affect[s] substantial rights.' Id. at 957 (quoting Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(a)). In determining whether an error affects substantial rights, we ask whether we can say, with fair assurance, after pondering all that happened without stripping the erroneous action from the whole, that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error. Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 765 (1946). The Kotteakos fair assurance standard requires a substantial degree of probability, but it does not require that the error be shown to be harmless beyond any reasonable doubt. See Ladd, 885 F.2d at 957. In applying the Kotteakos test, a reviewing court must engage in a panoramic, case-specific inquiry considering, among other things, the centrality of the tainted material, its -17- uniqueness, its prejudicial impact, the uses to which it was put during the trial, the relative strengths of the parties' cases, and any telltales that furnish clues to the likelihood that the error affected the factfinder's resolution of a material issue. Sepulveda, 15 F.3d at 1182. The error of which Pacheco complains is analogous to the one that we found harmless in Ladd. First, the point that the government sought to prove by introducing the cell phone evidence — that Pacheco was in communication with the men carrying the drugs — had been established by other evidence before Geraghty took the stand. And there was more. The jury heard from Ramírez that Pacheco had facilitated the group's air travel to and from Puerto Rico and had explained the financial terms of the drug deal to the recruits. Then, too, the supervisor of the DEA surveillance team testified that Pacheco was in the terminal at the time of the incident, acting in a manner that suggested countersurveillance. Last — but far from least — the consecutively numbered airline tickets paid for by Pacheco and issued in his and his cohorts' names were a powerful indicium of his pivotal role in the plot. Because the proof of Pacheco's culpability was abundant and the probative value of the cell phone testimony, in itself, was modest, we think it highly unlikely that the exclusion of that testimony would have influenced the jury's verdict. See United States v. Piper, 298 -18- F.3d 47, 58 (1st Cir. 2002) (explaining that evidence deemed cumulative is generally thought to be harmless). The second point of similarity with the Ladd analysis is the effect of the challenged testimony on the defendant's trial strategy. See Ladd, 885 F.2d at 958. Pacheco's defense at trial consisted of an alibi: the testimony of two nieces who claimed that he had remained in Puerto Rico between July 23 and July 29. That testimony, if believed, would have contradicted Ramírez's testimony that Pacheco repaired to New York during that interval, made the necessary arrangements for the pickup, and returned to Puerto Rico on July 28 with his mules. The impermissible references to the use of the cell phone in Puerto Rico on July 29, however, are not in any way inconsistent with Pacheco's alibi defense and therefore could have no bearing on it. This lack of centrality supports a finding of harmlessness. For these reasons, we conclude that, whatever the standard of review, the lower court's admission of the cell phone testimony constituted harmless error.