Opinion ID: 196165
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: National Origin Evidence.

Text: 73 Appellant contends that the prosecution made unfair use of impermissibly suggestive innuendo and stereotypes about Colombians, thereby inviting reversal. Appellant's argument focuses on evidence adduced, or remarks made, at four different points during his trial. First, appellant accuses the government of eliciting testimony concerning the birthplaces of Escobar and Garcia (both of whom were born in Colombia), while not inquiring about any other individual's place of birth. Second, the court permitted Sharir to testify that appellant told him to be careful because he was dealing with Colombians, who would go after his family if they were crossed. Third, when Donald Semesky, an IRS agent, offered expert testimony as to the modus operandi of Colombian drug cartels, he mentioned, among other things, that two Colombian cartels control the illegal importation of cocaine into the United States, and that their narcotics trafficking generates much cash, necessitating money laundering. Fourth, the government's summation hammered these same points. 74 Due to the singular importance of keeping our criminal justice system on an even keel, respecting the rights of all persons, courts must not tolerate prosecutors' efforts gratuitously to inject issues like race and ethnicity into criminal trials. See McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, 309 & n. 30, 107 S.Ct. 1756, 1777 & n. 30, 95 L.Ed.2d 262 (1987); United States v. Doe, 903 F.2d 16, 21 (D.C.Cir.1990). Emphasizing a person's national origin not only may raise concerns of relevancy, undue prejudice, and prosecutorial misconduct, but also may pose issues of constitutional dimension. See, e.g., United States v. Vue, 13 F.3d 1206, 1213 (8th Cir.1994); United States v. Rodriguez Cortes, 949 F.2d 532, 541 (1st Cir.1991). 75 This does not mean, however, that all evidence touching upon race or national origin automatically must be excluded. A trial involves a search for the truth, and, as such, it cannot be entirely antiseptic. The trick is to separate impermissible uses of highly charged evidence from those uses that are proper and permissible. See United States v. Alzanki, 54 F.3d 994, 1007-08 (1st Cir.1995); Doe, 903 F.2d at 25. Thus, while it has proven acceptable on occasion for a prosecutor to introduce evidence of oppressive Kuwaiti customs to buttress the reasonableness of the victim's professed belief, see Alzanki, 54 F.3d at 1008, or to make an unembellished reference to evidence of race simply as a factor bolstering an eyewitness identification of the culprit, Doe, 903 F.2d at 25 (dictum), or to remark that an Iranian defendant likely assumed that his American wife would not be searched at customs, United States v. Tajeddini, 996 F.2d 1278, 1285 (1st Cir.1993), 14 or to describe drugs as coming from Colombia to give the jury a complete view of the conspiracy's endeavors to import cocaine, see United States v. Ovalle-Marquez, 36 F.3d 212, 220 (1st Cir.1994), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 1322, 131 L.Ed.2d 202 (1995), aggressive prosecutors sometimes go too far. When that occurs, courts must act. We have, for instance, reversed convictions when, as in Rodriguez Cortes, the government's strategem blatantly invited the jury to find the defendant guilty by reason of his national origin. See Rodriguez Cortes, 949 F.2d at 541 (finding abuse of discretion in admission of defendant's Colombian identification card); see also Vue, 13 F.3d at 1212-13 (reversing conviction because district court admitted testimony tying defendant's ethnic group, the Hmong, to 95% of the local opium trade); Doe, 903 F.2d at 23-27 (reversing conviction due to admission of testimony on modus operandi of Jamaican drug gangs and prosecutor's inflammatory comments thereon). 76 In determining the propriety of evidence implicating ethnicity or national origin, context is critical. In the case at bar, all the evidence about Colombia, viewed in context, was properly admitted and used. By like token, the prosecutor's comments were not beyond the pale. 77 Appellant's first contention is factually incorrect. The prosecutor asked several witnesses other than Escobar and Garcia (e.g., Sharir and Slomovits) where they were born. Seen in this light, the casual questioning about place of birth, not objected to at trial, cannot conceivably plunge to the plane of plain error. 78 Similarly, Sharir's testimony that Saccoccia told him to be wary because he was dealing with Colombians is highly probative on the issue of appellant's knowledge that the laundered funds were derived from illegal activities. Moreover, common sense suggests that drug traffickers are more likely than, say, Avon ladies, to harm the families of business associates if a deal sours. It is, therefore, a gross exaggeration to declare that the evidence had no purpose other than to suggest that Colombians are prone to violence. 79 Similarly, Agent Semesky's testimony was relevant and appropriate in several respects. First, it went a long way toward explaining the nature of money laundering and the basis for appellant's activities. This is a perfectly legitimate use of evidence. See Doe, 903 F.2d at 19 & n. 21 (citing cases). Even the testimony about the cartels' control over the American drug trade was relevant on the issue of whether the cash that appellant scrubbed clean was in fact derived from illegal activities. The evidence could support a jury's plausible, though circumstantial, inference of an illicit source of funds based on appellant's repeated wire transfers of millions of dollars in laundered money to a country that functions as the nerve center of the world's traffic in cocaine. 80 The only remotely problematic references to Colombia are those contained in the summation. For example, a prosecutor stated: 81 [Agent Semesky] told you as an expert, something you probably already knew, that cocaine comes from Colombia. That it's run by cartels in Colombia. That they ship the money up here and it gets out into the streets. That's the reason for all these ten and twenty dollar bills. These are grams of coke.... 82 Later on, after reminding the jurors that the case involved roughly $100,000,000 generated on the streets of New York that is sent back to Colombia, a prosecutor posed a series of rhetorical questions: 83 If we're not talking about cocaine, what are we talking about? Is this from coffee vendors? Is this money coming from people out in the streets selling Colombian coffee? Oh, I have had a good day today. Five hundred thousand dollars, unfortunately, it's all in twenty dollar bills. Think of the change they had to give. This is a case about Roberto Juri and Tulio Alzate and Fernando Duenas and Stephen Saccoccia, not Juan Valdez, ladies and gentlemen. The evidence in this case and the only reasonable inference you can draw is drug money. 84 Appellant did not interject a contemporaneous objection to any of these comments. 15 85 It strains credulity to suggest, as Saccoccia does, that the prosecution was arguing that only drugs and coffee come from Colombia. The remark about coffee vendors was obviously intended to show the unlikelihood that any legitimate business would generate the volume of cash that flowed through appellant's operation. The quip about Juan Valdez, 16 while an unnecessary aside, cannot be said to emphasize emotion over facts. See Doe, 903 F.2d at 25. Viewed as a whole, the prosecution's evidence and comments about Colombia provide no basis for disturbing the jury's verdict. 86 Before ending our elaboration we note, as an adscript, that appellant himself is not Colombian, but is of Italian ancestry. This mitigates one of the most serious dangers of evidence about a person's national origin: that the jury will believe the defendant is guilty because of stereotyping. Appellant has not cited any case in which a court has reversed a conviction due to evidence touching upon a national origin not shared by the defendant. This is not to say that injustice and unfair prejudice may never result from a conviction based on improper use of evidence about the national origin of a defendant's friends or business associates. But, the ricochet effect of such evidence is likely to do less harm, on average, than the direct impact of evidence about the defendant's country of origin. 87