Opinion ID: 770705
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exclusion of Evidence Regarding the Bomb Threat and the Harassment of Perrault

Text: 37 The government also renews its argument that the evidence of the anonymous bomb threat Gilbert phoned in to Perrault at the VAMC, as well as the evidence of her more directly retaliatory conduct towards Perrault, is admissible to prove her intent and consciousness of guilt. 7 The district court determined that, although the evidence might plausibly be regarded as having some relevance on these issues, see supra note 3, its probative value would be exceedingly limited because 38 [the] jury would have to conclude that Gilbert, fearing the [criminal] investigation, harassed Perrault in revenge for his cooperation with law enforcement (and not because he had ended their affair), and phoned in a bomb threat thinking that, somehow, the resulting alarm would throw off the inquiry or intimidate potential witnesses, even though she went to great lengths to conceal the fact that she was the caller. This is an awful lot of squeezing for precious little juice. 39 The court then went on to exclude the evidence under Rule 403 because (1) it feared that the jury would conclude that one capable of phoning in a bomb threat requiring the evacuation of an intensive care unit would be capable of committing the crimes charged; and (2) Gilbert would be forced to introduce inflammatory and highly prejudicial evidence of her tumultuous and unsavory relationship with Perrault in order to prove that her conduct was motivated by anger towards him for betraying her and not by a desire to intimidate him into silence. 40 The government contends on appeal that the district court should have permitted the jury to hear the evidence and decide for itself whether pure anger, or the desire of a guilty person to obstruct an investigation, or some combination of the two, motivated the bomb threat and harassment. The government further asserts that both its evidence and Gilbert's likely responsive evidence is not so inflammatory as the court suggested, especially when viewed against the backdrop of the pending charges and the fact that the court has since issued an order acknowledging that some evidence as to Gilbert's affair with Perrault will be coming in anyway. Finally, the government argues that the court erred in weighing the evidence as an undifferentiated mass rather than analyzing it piece-by-piece. 41 Although we regard this issue as closer than the evidence of the alleged attempt on Glenn Gilbert's life, we think that the district court's ruling is, for the most part, well within its broad discretion. See DiSanto, 86 F.3d at 1250. We are aware that the court already has heard much of the harassment and retaliation evidence during the bomb threat trial, and we thus are particularly inclined to defer to its conclusion that, in the main, the evidence is far more likely attributable to anger at the disloyal Perrault and disloyal co-workers than to a quixotic effort to head off the criminal investigation. Cf. Anderson, 470 U.S. at 574-75 (emphasizing the trial judge's competence at fact determination). So too, and for the same reasons, are we prepared to defer to the court's characterization of the bomb threat, threats against Perrault's person, and vandalism against Perrault's property, as inflammatory and highly susceptible of misleading the jury. 42 But the district court's exclusion of the evidence pertaining to Gilbert's blocking in of Perrault's car, and her contemporaneous pleas to Perrault that he not cooperate with criminal investigators, strikes us as being on different footing. For one thing, this evidence seems more readily explainable as the product of an obstructive intent, and thus far more probative of a guilty conscience, than the other evidence in this bloc. For another, the evidence is far less inflammatory. Unlike the bomb threat and vandalism evidence, this conduct is criminal only insofar as it constitutes an attempt to obstruct justice, and thus seems far less likely to be misused as pure propensity evidence by the jury. The court's explanations for its ruling excluding the entire bloc of evidence thus fail to explain the exclusion of this particular evidence. The court's apparent failure to separate out and analyze the admissibility of this evidence on its own merits is precisely the type of error in judgment against which the abuse of discretion standard protects. See Roberts, 978 F.2d at 21. 43 We thus affirm the provisional exclusion of the bomb threat evidence. So too do we affirm the provisional exclusion of evidence of direct threats and retaliation against Perrault, with the single exception just noted. As before, our rulings do not foreclose a second look at these matters in light of events at trial. See Lachman, 48 F.3d at 590, 594. 44 C. Exclusion of Evidence Regarding the Number of Emergencies on Ward C between Fall 1995 and February 1996 45 Finally, the government renews its argument that testimony from members of Ward C's staff as to a noticeable increase in the number of codes beginning in the fall of 1995 through mid-February 1996 should be admitted to prove the truth of the matter asserted and, by inference, causation. The district court excluded this evidence under Rule 403 as impressionistic, lacking an objective basis, and thus posing a substantial risk of unfair prejudice. Yet in doing so, the court also acknowledged that, although the evidence will not come in to establish the truth of the matter asserted, it may well prove admissible to explain certain actions on the part of the witnesses, such as why the witness began investigating the absence of ampules of epinephrine from the hospital storeroom. 46 The government argues on appeal that the district court failed to comprehend that this evidence, in combination with an unexplained loss of epinephrine during the same period of time, is critical to an adequate understanding of the case against Gilbert. The government further asserts that the court failed to appreciate that the evidence is probative of causation. Finally, and to our surprise in light of the acknowledgment of possible future admissibility, the government argues that the evidence is necessary both to help explain certain testimony Gilbert's co-workers will be giving and to help cast light on certain statements Gilbert made to investigators. 47 Again, we think that the district court's ruling was well within its discretion. As direct evidence of causation, this inherently speculative evidence is at best cumulative of the government's toxicological evidence and Gilbert's two admissions to Perrault. Moreover, and more to the point, the court has acknowledged that the evidence, although not admissible to prove the truth of the matter asserted, may well come in for purposes of explanation. We fail to see why this exception would not apply to the extent of adding helpful context to the testimony of Gilbert's co-workers and to the statements Gilbert gave to investigators. 48 We thus affirm the exclusion of this evidence with the same caveat as to the provisional nature of in limine rulings set forth at the conclusion of the preceding two subsections. See Lachman, 48 F.3d at 590, 594.