Opinion ID: 203873
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Agent Toro's Testimony

Text: Agent Toro was on the witness stand for an entire day of trial. Some of Agent Toro's testimony suffered from the infirmities that have led us to condemn overview testimony in the past. Some of his testimony was acceptable. In the discussion below, we distinguish between the permissible portions of his testimony and those portions that were inappropriate under Casas and its progeny.
After taking the stand, Agent Toro first explained that his division, the Special Investigations Unit, was responsible for investigating organized crime and governmental corruption in Puerto Rico. Agent Toro testified that he had worked for the Unit for eleven years and three months. During that time period, he had been assigned to a federal agency (the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agency) for eight and a half years. Agent Toro's primary job responsibility was conducting investigations related to drug trafficking and weapons, which often involved surveillance, interviewing informers, executing search warrants, seizing contraband, and making arrests. He testified that he had, in the past, worked undercover at various drug points, including in public housing projects. Over the course of his career, he had been involved with more than seventy-five undercover transactions (though he did not himself conduct any undercover drug purchases at Covadonga) and had, in the past, been qualified as an expert for two trials involving another public housing project in Puerto Rico. The government tendered Agent Toro as an expert in sales and distribution of illegal narcotics controlled substances. Although this phrase is ambiguous, the prosecutor apparently intended that Toro would testify as an expert on the structure and typical operation of drug distribution conspiracies at Puerto Rico housing projects. During the course of voir dire by defense counsel, Agent Toro testified that he had received formal training after being sworn in as an agent through his participation in the Special Investigations Unit Academy, the Puerto Rico Police Academy, several trainings with the DEA, and five trainings at the Institute of Police and Management in Florida. However, he had received no specific training as to drug quantities or the amount of drugs ... sold in Puerto Rico or the movement and amounts of drugs specifically as to the public housing project known as Nuestra Señora de Covadonga. Instead, he presented himself as an expert based on [his] daily work for the last eleven years and a half. At sidebar, the defense attorneys expressed reservations about Toro's qualifications as an expert. They protested that Toro should not testify as to the specific drug quantities for which each defendant was responsible, stating that he had no factual basis to be able to form an opinion as to how much drugs were being sold at a point in Covadonga, much less the amounts attributable to each defendant. Defense counsel argued that Toro had only learned about the case by interviewing informants and therefore his testimony was based on hearsay rather than personal knowledge. The government, for its part, maintained that Agent Toro's experience made him an expert as to the sale and distribution of controlled substances at drug points in general, and also that in other aspects of his testimony (presumably as a fact witness,) he would be testifying about Covadonga and the drug conspiracy [of] which he ha[d] direct knowledge. The government also repeatedly assured defense counsel and the court that Agent Toro would not attribute specific drug quantities to each defendant, and that he would instead provide expert testimony as to drug distribution methods and so forth, of people involved in this type of operation ... and how the drug point was run, the different roles within the drug point and the quantities sold in Covadonga. The court accepted Agent Toro as an expert over the vigorous objections of all defendants.
Drawing on his expertise and testifying as an expert witness, [5] Agent Toro explained the basic concept of a drug point, noting that drug points in public housing projects are strategically chosen so that the drug dealers may avoid arrest. Next, on the basis of personal knowledge and testifying as a fact witness, he described the layout of Covadonga itself, including the entrances and location of a police precinct at the main entrance. He explained that his office's involvement in the investigation into Covadonga began when he met with the police commander responsible for the area. After that meeting, and based on documents they received from the Puerto Rico police, his Unit decided to embark on an undercover investigation of the drug point, which was located in a common area between buildings 10, 11, and 13 of the housing project. Using an aerial photograph, Agent Toro again described the layout of the project and pointed out the location of the drug point, the vehicle entrance, an additional pedestrian exit, and the police precinct. None of this testimony was problematic.
Agent Toro then recounted the reasons for the NIE's installation of a confidential informant  Oscar Espada  at the housing project in October 2002. Espada was a professional photographer who was introduced into the public housing project to become known by and make friendship with the persons involved in the drug point and to collect evidence and information. The government installed him in a second-floor apartment in building 13, which overlooked the suspected drug point. From that location, Espada was able to conduct surveillance of illicit activity in the area. Over the course of seven months in 2002 and 2003, he recorded approximately 70 videotapes documenting the activities at the drug point. Espada also took still photographs of various drug and firearm transactions at Covadonga. Agent Toro appropriately testified that he had watched Espada's tapes, characterizing them as videos of people selling and buying drugs. There will be people with firearms at the drug points, people collecting money. People counting money. People delivering drugs. He also permissibly stated, on the basis of his personal involvement in the investigation, that the agency had decided to send in Espada to befriend the individuals involved in the drug trafficking because it was the only way to obtain evidence about the internal operations of the conspiracy. However, when the prosecutor asked Toro a question about how Espada was able to make friends with the conspirators and gain their confidence, defense counsel objected. In response, the court told the jury that [t]he information is based on the information [Espada] gave [Toro], and admitted the information conditionally, pending confirmation of Toro's testimony by Espada. The judge's instruction to the jury missed the point. Toro's testimony was unquestionably hearsay. It unnecessarily anticipated testimony that Espada would give himself. It had the imprimatur problems we have described. The fact that Espada later testified as Toro said he would did not redeem these deficiencies in Toro's testimony.
The government asked Agent Toro why Espada's videotaping stopped in 2003. Despite defendants' protestations, the court allowed Toro to testify that, following the murder of Luis Osorio, a/k/a/ Trompi, one of the leaders of the drug conspiracy, there was a wave of violence against those who had been associated with him. Toro explained that Espada had been linked to Trompi and, as a result, the new owners of the drug point had tried to shoot him and then set fire to his apartment. Although the source of Toro's knowledge on these points is unclear, the testimony was not being offered for the truth of the matter asserted, but rather as an explanation for the end of the surveillance. Accordingly, it was not hearsay. Nevertheless, at the defendants' urging, the district court gave three limiting instructions because of Rule 403 concerns. [6]
The most troubling part of Agent Toro's testimony involved his conclusions about the roles of the defendants in the conspiracy. He essentially testified that each of the defendants was guilty of the conspiracy charged. Casas, 356 F.3d at 119. Over defendants' objection, and upon receiving the AUSA's assurance that subsequent witnesses would also testify as to the respective roles of the co-conspirators, the court allowed Toro to identify by name and role in the drug conspiracy twenty-five individuals (including appellants) who, during the course of the video surveillance, had been involved in drug distribution activities in Covadonga. Toro then circled the three defendants' pictures on a chart that contained the names and photographs of these twenty-five alleged co-conspirators (the photographs were apparently screen captures from the videos), stating that Flores-de-Jesús and Sabino Morales were both sellers and runners, and that Feliciano was a seller. The government concedes that this testimony  identifying the names and roles of the conspiracy members with the use of the accompanying chart  was precisely the type of testimony we condemned in Casas. This concession was unavoidable. Toro stated that he had been able to identify the names and roles of the individuals on the chart using the surveillance videotapes, information from the company that managed the housing project, reports from the Puerto Rico police, and information obtained from CI Espada. This testimony was not based on Agent Toro's personal knowledge. [7] Most of it was based on inadmissible hearsay. For example, Toro stated that some of his testimony was based on information gleaned from interviews with CI Espada. It is true that defense counsel later had a chance to cross-examine Espada. [8] The fact that Espada confirmed much of Toro's testimony with respect to the roles of the various defendants is certainly relevant to the harmless error analysis. Moreover, this confrontation ensures that there is no Crawford problem with this aspect of Agent Toro's testimony. Nevertheless, even if corroborated, the portion of Toro's role testimony that was based on Espada's statements was still hearsay and squarely raises the imprimatur issue discussed above. Moreover, neither Espada nor any other witness corroborated all of Toro's testimony about each co-conspirator and his role. Finally, to the extent that Toro's role testimony was based on police reports and information from the manager of the housing project that were never admitted into evidence, it was improper yet again on hearsay grounds. [9]
Agent Toro then appropriately testified as a fact witness that on July 1, 2003, he seized heroin, marijuana, and crack from a vacant apartment on the first floor of building 32 of the housing project. He later permissibly provided a detailed description of the kinds (and quantities) of drugs and drug paraphenalia that were recovered in the specific seizure in which he had participated; he also identified some of these items, which were introduced by the prosecution as physical evidence, along with several photographs of other materials confiscated during the seizure.
Stepping back from the specific raid at Covadonga, Toro properly explained to the jury, based on [his] training and experience as a law enforcement officer, (i.e., in his expert capacity), that large quantities of drugs intended for sale at a drug point are often stored in a remote location so that if the police arrived at the location where the drugs were sold, they would only be able to seize a small quantity of the product. However, Toro then added that there were other stash houses in Covadonga where drugs were kept (besides the location from which he had seized the drugs). Upon defendants' objection, the government inquired as to the basis for his knowledge of the stash houses. Although Toro responded that he had obtained this information from [r]eports from the Puerto Rico Police and information from the informant, thereby exposing the impropriety of his testimony on this topic, the court did not strike the testimony from the record. This ruling was erroneous.
The prosecutor asked Agent Toro this question: Based on the investigation and based on all of your training and experience as a law enforcement officer, approximately how much cocaine was being sold in Covadonga between the years 2002 until [the end of the investigation in 2003]? Toro responded with estimates of the amounts of cocaine, crack, heroin, and marijuana sold monthly during that time period, stating that his estimates had been arrived at using the videos and interview of witnesses and reports. The government concedes that this drug quantity testimony was impermissible under Casas. In Casas, part of the overview testimony we found inappropriate was testimony that the organization handled specific massive quantities of cocaine and heroin. 356 F.3d at 118. That statement may account for the government's concession that Agent Toro's drug quantity estimates were inappropriate. Agent Stoothoff was not testifying as an expert in Casas, and, based on Agent Toro's testimony that he had arrived at his drug quantity estimation based on, inter alia, witness interviews and other reports, it appears that Agent Toro's testimony as to drug quantity may not have been offered in his expert capacity but rather as a fact witness. In any event, in light of the government's concession, this is not an issue that we need decide here. Moreover, while we accept the government's concession that Toro's drug quantity testimony was improper under these circumstances, we do not imply that a properly qualified expert may never offer valid drug quantity testimony where that testimony comports with the other requirements for expert testimony under the Federal Rules. Additionally, we note that because Agent Toro's drug quantity testimony appears to have been based at least in part on interviews with individuals who did not testify at trial, such testimony also has the potential to raise Crawford problems.