Opinion ID: 751138
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Wilson's Individual Claims

Text: 43 At trial, the Government presented evidence that placed Wilson in El Paso, Texas, on June 27 and 28, 1994. As the prosecution indicated in its closing argument to the jury, it was a bad thing for a defendant in the case to be tied to El Paso: The Engineer was in El Paso, Garcia said, Luna was from El Paso. The conspirators talked about the cocaine coming from El Paso. El Paso is across the river from Juarez, where Arroyo and Garcia were. Wilson asserts that he could have presented surrebuttal evidence that would have mitigated the Government's evidence placing him in El Paso, and he argues that the district court's refusal to allow the surrebuttal testimony denied him a fair trial. 44 The Government introduced in its case-in-chief a business record from the Traveler's Inn in El Paso. This record listed Bernard Wilson from Rockford, Illinois, as a guest at the hotel the night of June 27. The record did not include the license plate of Wilson's car or his driver's license number. When Wilson testified in his own defense, he claimed that he had never been to El Paso. In rebuttal the Government presented the testimony of an employee from the Traveler's Inn who identified a registration card indicating that Bernard Wilson stayed at the Inn on June 27. Unlike the business record introduced in the Government's case-in-chief, the registration card included Wilson's driver's license and license plate numbers. The employee testified that a desk clerk would not write down a driver's license number on a registration card or allow a guest to write it down himself without verifying it against an actual license. 45 Wilson wanted to introduce evidence on surrebuttal establishing that he did not possess a driver's license at the time in question. He argues that this evidence would have discredited the employee's testimony that Wilson's driver's license number could have been written on the registration card only if Wilson had presented the license to the desk clerk. Wilson believes that the fact that he did not possess a driver's license at the time he was alleged to have been in El Paso makes it more likely that the Bernard Wilson who stayed at the Traveler's Inn was an imposter. 46 We review a district court's decision to bar surrebuttal testimony for an abuse of discretion. See United States v. Mitan, 966 F.2d 1165, 1176 (7th Cir.1992), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 1059, 113 S.Ct. 994, 122 L.Ed.2d 145 (1993). Federal Rule of Evidence 611(a) confers authority upon district courts to exercise control over the mode and order of the presentation of evidence in the interests of ascertaining the truth and avoiding needless consumption of time. Given this authority, great deference is accorded to the discretion and judgment of the trial court when granting and/or denying a party's motion for rebuttal or surrebuttal testimony. United States v. Gaertner, 705 F.2d 210, 217 (7th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 1071, 104 S.Ct. 979, 79 L.Ed.2d 216 (1984). 47 The Government argues that the proffered surrebuttal testimony would have been irrelevant. We cannot agree with this point. In its case-in-chief the Government did not present any evidence regarding Wilson's driver's license. It was only in its rebuttal testimony that the Government raised the new issue of the license and allowed the jury to infer that the picture on the license would have been verified against the registrant. Accordingly, Wilson's surrebuttal testimony that he did not possess his license would have answered the Government's rebuttal evidence and would not have been cumulative. See Gaertner, 705 F.2d at 217. Under these circumstances, we believe that surrebuttal was appropriate and that the district court abused its discretion in this regard. See United States v. Moody, 903 F.2d 321, 331 (5th Cir.1990) (finding surrebuttal merited when the rebuttal testimony raised a new issue that broadened the scope of the Government's case, and the surrebuttal could have discredited the essence of the rebuttal testimony). 48 Nonetheless, this error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. 5 See Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 681, 106 S.Ct. 1431, 1436, 89 L.Ed.2d 674 (1986); Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 828, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). As the Supreme Court asserted in Van Arsdall, the Constitution entitles a criminal defendant to a fair trial, not a perfect one. 475 U.S. at 681, 106 S.Ct. at 1436. Accordingly, when reviewing errors implicating the Confrontation Clause, the harmless error doctrine recognizes the principle that the central purpose of a criminal trial is to decide the factual question of the defendant's guilt or innocence, and promotes public respect for the criminal process by focusing on the underlying fairness of the trial rather than on the virtually inevitable presence of immaterial error. Id. (citation omitted). 49 First, we note that Wilson's surrebuttal would not necessarily have established the proposition that he asserts, even if the jury believed that he did not have his driver's license on June 27. While the jury could have inferred that an imposter had a picture license in the name of Bernard Wilson, a jury also could have inferred that--despite the hotel employee's testimony--someone, quite possibly Wilson, had been allowed to write a driver's license number on a registration card without presenting a driver's license for verification. It is equally likely, if not more so, that the jury would have drawn this second inference from the proffered testimony. Because the surrebuttal would not have resolved conclusively the question of whether Wilson was in El Paso, much less the question of his guilt, the testimony was not important in the context of the Government's entire case against Wilson. See Ortega v. O'Leary, 843 F.2d 258, 262 (7th Cir.) (recognizing that the importance of the testimony to the case is a factor to consider in harmless error analysis under Chapman), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 841, 109 S.Ct. 110, 102 L.Ed.2d 85(1988). 50 More significantly, the Government presented an overwhelming amount of evidence against Wilson at trial. See Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. at 684, 106 S.Ct. at 1438 (recognizing that, of course, an important factor to consider is the overall strength of the prosecution's case). Wilson drove a car in the July 18th cocaine delivery to Southgate Plaza. After his arrest, Wilson confessed his complicity in the conspiracy. He told the agents that he had loaded the cocaine into the van, and he led the agents to two locations where he knew that more cocaine was hidden. Three agents testified at trial regarding Wilson's post-arrest statements. Thus, even if Wilson never had been to El Paso, an inference that the surrebuttal would not have established conclusively in any event, we believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the trial court's error was harmless. 51
52 When Wilson testified at trial, he stated that he was not aware that the bags in the van were filled with cocaine. He made this assertion in spite of the fact that he also testified that he had loaded the approximately 700 pounds of trash bags into the van and then, at Olivares's instruction, drove the van to a nearby street, parked it, left the keys inside, and watched someone drive it away. Wilson also testified that he was aware that Olivares had previously been convicted of distributing narcotics, and he stated that he was at Olivares's garage in November 1993 when federal agents executed a search warrant for the garage to look for cocaine. Given Wilson's asserted lack of knowledge that the bags in the van contained drugs, Judge Norgle determined that there were sufficient facts to support an inference that Wilson acted with deliberate ignorance. The court stated that [a]mong other aspects of his testimony, Wilson testified that he did not know what was in certain bags and did not look into them or ask about them before locating them into a certain van. Accordingly, the district court chose to give the jury an instruction regarding conscious avoidance of knowledge, known colloquially as the ostrich instruction. This instruction informed the jury that Wilson could not avoid the statutory element of acting knowingly by ignoring his suspicions and consciously avoiding the truth about the events that were transpiring. 53 We review the district court's decision to give the ostrich instruction for an abuse of discretion, considering the evidence in the light most favorable to the Government. See, e.g., United States v. Walker, 25 F.3d 540, 546 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 953, 115 S.Ct. 371, 130 L.Ed.2d 323 (1994). The instruction should be given only when it addresses an issue reasonably raised by the evidence. United States v. Stone, 987 F.2d 469, 471 (7th Cir.1993). Thus, we have held that the instruction is appropriately given when the defendant claims a lack of guilty knowledge and there is evidence that supports an inference of deliberate ignorance or wilful blindness. United States v. Farouil, 124 F.3d 838, 843 (7th Cir.1997). Wilson argues that the instruction was inappropriate in his case because all of the evidence against him--including driving a car in the July 18th cocaine delivery, acknowledging in his post-arrest statements that he knew the trash bags contained cocaine, and leading the agents to two locations where he knew additional bags of cocaine were hidden--pointed to his actual knowledge of the cocaine and his conscious participation in the conspiracy. He asserts that there was no evidence of his conscious avoidance of the truth; thus the evidence before the jury presented it with a binary choice--either Wilson actually knew of the conspiracy or he did not. If there was no evidence of his conscious avoidance of the truth, Wilson argues, the instruction was inappropriate because it allowed the jury to convict him for what he should have known and not for what he actually knew, thereby impermissibly introducing negligence principles into crimes that require proof of intentional action. See United States v. Giovannetti, 919 F.2d 1223, 1226-29 (7th Cir.1990). 54 We recognized recently that [t]he government need not choose between presenting an actual knowledge case versus a conscious avoidance case to the jury. It may present both when the evidence so warrants. Farouil, 124 F.3d at 844. In this case, the evidence was sufficient to justify presenting both theories to the jury. Wilson's testimony that he was aware of Olivares's history of dealing in narcotics, combined with his actions on July 18-loading trash bags weighing approximately 700 pounds into a van, and then leaving the van parked on the street with the keys inside--is more than sufficient to support an inference of Wilson's conscious avoidance. On many previous occasions we have upheld the use of an ostrich instruction when a defendant transported under suspicious circumstances packages containing drugs and then claimed ignorance of the packages' contents. See, e.g., id.; United States v. Vega, 72 F.3d 507, 517 (7th Cir.1995), cert. denied sub nom. Early v. United States, 518 U.S. 1007, 116 S.Ct. 2529, 135 L.Ed.2d 1053 (1996); United States v. Smith, 995 F.2d 662, 674 (7th Cir.1993), cert. denied sub nom. Marren v. United States, 510 U.S. 1056, 114 S.Ct. 718, 126 L.Ed.2d 683 (1994); United States v. Rodriguez, 929 F.2d 1224, 1227-28 (7th Cir.1991). Given Wilson's knowledge of Olivares's prior shady dealings and the suspicious nature of his July 18th activities, the jury reasonably could have concluded that, if Wilson did not actually know that the trash bags contained cocaine, he was consciously avoiding confirming the truth about the conspiracy in which he was involved. Thus, Judge Norgle's ostrich instruction to the jury was appropriate.
55 Because the amount of cocaine relevant to Wilson's crimes exceeded 150 kilograms, his base offense level was set at 38 under the Sentencing Guidelines. See USSG § 2D1.1(c)(1). Judge Norgle increased Wilson's offense level by two levels for obstruction of justice under § 3C1.1, and applied a four-level reduction under § 3B1.2(a) due to Wilson's status as a minimal participant in the conspiracy. Accordingly, Wilson's final offense level was set by the court at 36 which, in light of Wilson's criminal history, yielded a sentencing range of 188 to 235 months imprisonment. Judge Norgle sentenced Wilson to a term of 200 months. 56 On appeal, Wilson now argues that the district court erred by not considering Application Note 14 to § 2D1.1 of the Guidelines. This Note provides that, in the absence of certain disqualifying factors, the court may consider a downward departure in a defendant's sentence only if it first finds the following: (a) the amount of controlled substance for which the defendant is accountable results in a base offense level greater than 36; (b) the offense level overrepresents the defendant's culpability; and (c) the defendant qualifies for a mitigating role adjustment under § 3B1.2. 7 Under these circumstances, the court can depart downward to a sentence from the guideline range that would have resulted if the defendant's base offense level had been 36 instead of 38. Had the court chosen to apply this Note to Wilson, for example, his final offense level would have been 34, with a sentence range of 151 to 188 months. 57 Wilson faces two insurmountable hurdles in making this argument. The first is that the district court chose to sentence Wilson to 200 months imprisonment, which the court found appropriately reflected the seriousness of Wilson's crime, when it could have sentenced him to 188 months. Therefore, we have no reason to believe that Judge Norgle thought that Wilson deserved a sentence of less than 188 months. 58 The second hurdle is that Wilson did not request that Judge Norgle consider Note 14 and exercise his discretion in this regard. We review waived sentencing arguments for plain error. See, e.g., United States v. Monem, 104 F.3d 905, 907 (7th Cir.1997). Nonetheless, Wilson contends that his failure to raise the argument in the district court cuts in his favor: He argues that since no mention of the Note was made in the district court, Judge Norgle was not aware of his authority under this provision to depart from the sentence mandated by the Guidelines, and that this asserted error therefore is reviewable on appeal. See United States v. Poff, 926 F.2d 588, 590-91 (7th Cir.) (en banc) (holding that a decision not to depart from the Guidelines is reviewable on appeal when it is the result of an erroneous legal conclusion about the court's authority to depart), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 827, 112 S.Ct. 96, 116 L.Ed.2d 67 (1991). Wilson's argument, however, rests on the faulty presumption that the district court is unaware of discretion-vesting provisions that are not raised. We presume that the opposite is true: [A] claim that a seasoned judge ... didn't understand his discretion will rarely, if ever, be successful when built merely on inference. Article III judges are presumed to know the law.... United States v. Kezerle, 99 F.3d 867, 870 (7th Cir.1996). Because this Court is precluded by statute from reviewing discretionary refusals to downwardly depart, see 18 U.S.C. § 3742; United States v. Shlater, 85 F.3d 1251, 1257-58 (7th Cir.1996), and because Wilson has presented no evidence to overcome our presumption that Judge Norgle exercised his discretion in this regard, we reject Wilson's argument concerning his sentence.