Opinion ID: 788340
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Failure to strike witness testimony against Sanchez

Text: 202 Sanchez argues that the district court erred in failing to strike testimony offered by prosecution witness Torvisco in violation of the court's protective order. We review for an abuse of discretion both the district court's denial of a motion to strike evidence, United States v. Little, 753 F.2d 1420, 1445 (9th Cir.1984), and its determination regarding the violation of the court's order. See United States v. Hobbs, 31 F.3d 918, 921 (9th Cir.1994). 203 Before the trial, Judge Tevrizian issued a written order limiting the government in its presentation of evidence of bad acts by the appellants to those referenced in the First Superseding Indictment. Sanchez claims that the testimony by witness Torvisco violated that order because it introduced evidence of Sanchez's participation in ten conspiracies to commit murder or assault, even though he was not charged with such conduct in the indictment. 39 The government points out that eight of these conspiracies were alleged in the indictment, but concedes that Sanchez was not alleged to have participated in them. The district court ruled that the conspiracies raised by Torvisco were within the genre of the indictment. It also found that the government had not intended to hide anything from the defense and that any damage from Torvisco's testimony was minimal. 204 Even if the district court abused its discretion in refusing to strike Torvisco's testimony regarding the uncharged conspiracies, any error was harmless. We analyze Sanchez's arguments under the harmless error standard used to review non-constitutional evidentiary rulings: we must reverse a conviction based on an erroneous evidentiary ruling, unless it is more probable than not that the error did not materially affect the verdict. United States v. Morales, 108 F.3d 1031, 1040 (9th Cir.1997) (en banc) (citation omitted). We conclude that under the Morales standard, it is more probable than not that any error by the district court did not materially affect the jury's verdict against Sanchez. 205 Torvisco's testimony about the uncharged conspiracies was relevant to two counts, since the conspiracies he described could be seen by the jury as either predicate acts for the substantive RICO violation alleged in count one, or overt acts to support the conspiracy charged in count two. The jury specifically found, however, that Sanchez participated in two other conspiracies —the conspiracy to murder Turscak, and a conspiracy to distribute narcotics —which independently constituted both predicate acts for the substantive count and overt acts for the conspiracy count. Therefore, even if the district court had struck Torvisco's testimony about the uncharged conspiracies, it is certain that the jury would still have convicted Sanchez on the relevant counts. Moreover, to the extent that Torvisco's testimony may have had an impact on the jury's consideration of the other counts with which Sanchez was charged, we conclude that any error in the admission of the testimony was harmless.