Opinion ID: 604939
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Limitations on Hall's Right to Cross-Examination

Text: 18 Hall contends that the district court impermissibly restricted his cross-examination of McDonald in violation of the 6th amendment. 3 At trial, Hall attempted to impeach the testimony of McDonald with prior inconsistent statements that McDonald had made to FBI agents. Hall's attorney, reading directly from the agent's summary, asked if the statement reflected what McDonald had told the agent. 4 In effect, Hall's attorney was introducing extrinsic evidence to the jury of McDonald's prior inconsistent statement via the FBI agent's summary. Extrinsic evidence of a prior inconsistent statement by a witness is not admissible unless the witness is afforded an opportunity to explain or deny the same.... Fed.R.Evid. 613(b). The district court sustained an objection to Hall's use of a summary prepared by an FBI agent without a showing that McDonald had adopted the statements as his own. The district court's determination whether evidence is supported by a proper foundation is reviewable for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Miller, 771 F.2d 1219, 1233 (9th Cir.1985). Under the Jencks Act 5 , non-verbatim summaries of a witness' prior oral statements are excluded from mandatory production because it would be grossly unfair to allow the defense to use statements to impeach a witness which could not fairly be said to be the witness' own rather than the product of the investigator's selections, interpretations, and interpolations. Palermo v. United States, 360 U.S. 343, 350, 79 S.Ct. 1217, 1223-24, 3 L.Ed.2d 1287 (1959). For the same reasons, we conclude that a witness may not be impeached with a third party's characterization or interpretation of a prior oral statement unless the witness has subscribed to or otherwise adopted the statement as his own. Impeachment of McDonald was not prevented by the district court. Rather, the district court merely disapproved of the method employed by defense counsel and held him to the procedural requirements of establishing the proper foundation. Later in the trial, Hall was able to effectively impeach McDonald's testimony by questioning the FBI agent about inconsistencies between McDonald's testimony at trial and prior oral statements he made to the agent, which were contained in the summary. Hall was afforded an opportunity to recall McDonald in order to cross-examine him about these inconsistencies, but for whatever reason, he declined. The district court properly exercised its discretion in requiring the proper foundation be laid with respect to the agent's summary.