Opinion ID: 782607
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Exclusion of Brown's Plea Allocution Statements

Text: 32 On appeal, Jackson contends that the district court improperly excluded Brown's plea allocution at trial. Specifically, Jackson challenges the exclusion of Brown's statement that Brown never supervised Jackson. He argues that Brown's plea allocution should have been admitted under one of the following exceptions to the hearsay rule: (1) former testimony; (2) statements against penal interest; or (3) the residual hearsay exception. None of these contentions has merit.
33 It is not without significance that Brown's plea allocution was internally inconsistent as to the relationship between Brown and Jackson during the conspiracy. Brown's signed plea agreement expressly stated that Brown managed and supervised various couriers, including Jackson. At his oral plea allocution, the district court asked Brown whether this statement from his plea agreement was true; Brown responded that it was indeed true. The district court then specifically asked Brown whether he had any arrangements with Jackson to bring drugs into the country. Again, Brown said yes. 34 To be sure, later in his plea allocution, Brown claimed that he never supervised Jackson or requested that Jackson go to Jamaica. When asked to clarify his relationship with Jackson in light of his previous admission — both minutes earlier and in his written plea agreement — that he had indeed supervised Jackson during the conspiracy, Brown waffled once again. Brown now claimed that Jackson smuggled cocaine only for Guthrie. Brown later conceded, however, that Guthrie was the overall director of the smuggling operation and that he worked together with Guthrie and others.
35 We review the district court's evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion. See, e.g., United States v. Yousef, 327 F.3d 56, 156 (2d Cir.2003) ( per curiam ). The district court has broad discretion regarding the admission of evidence, and the court's evidentiary determinations will be reversed only if they are manifestly erroneous. United States v. SKW Metals & Alloys, Inc., 195 F.3d 83, 87 (2d Cir.1999). Generally, we will not overturn a district court's evidentiary rulings unless the court acted arbitrarily or irrationally. Id. at 88 (quoting United States v. Blanco, 861 F.2d 773, 781 (2d Cir.1988)).
36 Under Rule 804(b)(1), an unavailable witness's testimony from a prior hearing or proceeding is not barred by the hearsay rule if the party against whom the testimony is now offered ... had an opportunity and similar motive to develop the testimony by direct, cross, or redirect examination. 37 Fed.R.Evid. 804(b)(1). This requirement operates to screen out those statements, which although made under oath, were not subject to the scrutiny of a party interested in thoroughly testing [their] validity. United States v. Pizarro, 717 F.2d 336, 349 (7th Cir.1983). 38 Here, both sides concede that Brown was unavailable at Jackson's trial because he had properly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. See, e.g., United States v. Dolah, 245 F.3d 98, 102 (2d Cir.2001) (It is settled in this Circuit that a witness who invokes the privilege against self-incrimination is `unavailable' within the meaning of Rule 804(b) ....). 1 Therefore, the core issue we must address is whether the Government had an opportunity and similar motive to examine Brown at his plea allocution. Although we have not had occasion to address this issue, two of our sister circuits have found that the Government has neither the opportunity nor a similar motive to examine a defendant at a plea allocution as it has at trial. See United States v. Powell, 894 F.2d 895, 901 (7th Cir.1990); United States v. Lowell, 649 F.2d 950, 965 (3d Cir.1981). 39 Although Jackson concedes in his reply brief that [o]pportunity and motive to examine the declarant [at a plea allocution] may not technically be the same as at a trial, he nevertheless contends that the Government did have the requisite opportunity and motive here. Jackson attributes great weight to the fact that the Government was permitted to ask Brown one follow-up question during Brown's plea allocution regarding Brown's supervisory role over Jackson. Jackson's attempt to equate the Government's function and motives during a plea allocution with those at trial reflects a misguided view of the nature and purpose of plea proceedings.
40 Under Fed.R.Crim.P. 11, the purpose of a plea proceeding is to ensure that the defendant's plea is knowing, voluntary, and grounded on a proper factual basis. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(b); Mitchell v. United States, 526 U.S. 314, 322-24, 119 S.Ct. 1307, 143 L.Ed.2d 424 (1999). Under the Rule, a plea proceeding is conducted solely by the district court judge who is primarily responsible for ensuring that the requirements of Rule 11 are satisfied. On the rare occasion where the prosecutor is permitted to address the defendant, the questions posed are usually formulaic and perfunctory. The Government's role at a plea proceeding is quite limited, and certainly does not include the opportunity to engage in the type of examination contemplated by Rule 804(b)(1). See 5 Jack B. Weinstein & Margaret A. Berger, Weinstein's Federal Evidence § 804.04[3][a], at 804-33 (Joseph M. McLaughlin ed., 2d ed. 2003) (If the opportunity to cross-examine [is] lacking, the prior testimony must be excluded.). As Judge Larimer wisely noted, if the rule were otherwise, plea colloquies would consume pages of examination exploring the minutiae of the defendant's conduct.
41 Nor does the Government have a similar motive to examine a defendant at a plea allocution as it has at trial. We have held that the proper inquiry in assessing similarity of motive under Rule 804(b)(1) is to determine whether the party resisting the offered testimony at a pending proceeding had at a prior proceeding an interest of substantially similar intensity to prove (or disprove) the same side of a substantially similar issue. United States v. DiNapoli, 8 F.3d 909, 914-15 (2d Cir.1993) ( en banc ). Moreover, [i]f a fact is critical to a cause of action at a second proceeding but the same fact was only peripherally related to a different cause of action at a first proceeding, no one would claim that the questioner had a similar motive at both proceedings to show that the fact had been established (or disproved). Id. at 912. 42 We agree with the Third and Seventh Circuits that the Government does not have the same motive to examine the defendant at a plea hearing as it does at other proceedings. See United States v. Lowell, 649 F.2d 950, 965 (3d Cir.1981); United States v. Powell, 894 F.2d 895, 901 (7th Cir.1990). Here, the Government had no reason to cross-examine Brown at his plea allocution about his supervision over Jackson. That Brown's plea colloquy may have included misstatements or inaccuracies did not preclude it from providing an adequate factual basis for the plea. See Lowell, 649 F.2d at 965 (co-defendant's denial of receipt of payment from [defendant], even if it were untrue, did not deprive his plea of guilty on the conspiracy charge of a `factual basis'). The district court, therefore, did not abuse its discretion in excluding Brown's plea allocution under Rule 804(b)(1).
43 Jackson's contention that Brown's plea allocution might be admissible under Rule 804(b)(3) is a stronger argument, but it too is ultimately without merit. 44 Rule 804(b)(3) allows the admission of a hearsay statement by an unavailable witness if that statement 45 at the time of its making ... so far tended to subject the declarant to civil or criminal liability ... that a reasonable person in the declarant's position would not have made the statement unless believing it to be true. 46 Fed.R.Evid. 804(b)(3). This exception rests on the notion that reasonable people, even reasonable people who are not especially honest, tend not to make self-inculpatory statements unless they believe them to be true. Williamson v. United States, 512 U.S. 594, 599, 114 S.Ct. 2431, 129 L.Ed.2d 476 (1994). 47 Rule 804(b)(3) further requires that, if the statement exposes the declarant ( i.e. Brown) to criminal liability and is offered to exculpate the accused ( i.e. Jackson), the proponent of the statements must identify corroborating circumstances [that] clearly indicate the trustworthiness of the statement. Id. at 605, 114 S.Ct. 2431. The purpose of this corroboration requirement is to circumvent[] fabrication by the declarant. See Fed.R.Evid. 804(b)(3) Advisory Committee Notes. To effectuate this purpose, we require corroboration of both the declarant's trustworthiness as well as the statement's trustworthiness. United States v. Bahadar, 954 F.2d 821, 829 (2d Cir.1992) (emphasis in original). 48 Although we have recognized that statements from a guilty plea allocution can be admitted under Rule 804(b)(3), see, e.g., United States v. Gallego, 191 F.3d 156, 166-68 (2d Cir.1999) (portions of co-conspirator's plea properly admitted solely to establish a conspiracy), their admission is strictly circumscribed by the Supreme Court's holding in Williamson v. United States, supra. In Williamson, the Supreme Court found that Rule 804(b)(3) does not allow admission of non-self-inculpatory statements, even if they are made within a broader narrative that is generally self-inculpatory. 512 U.S. at 600-01, 114 S.Ct. 2431. In Williamson's wake, we have repeatedly emphasized that each particular hearsay statement offered under Rule 804(b)(3) must be separately parsed and must, itself, be self-inculpatory. See, e.g., United States v. Tropeano, 252 F.3d 653, 658 (2d Cir.2001); United States v. Sasso, 59 F.3d 341, 349 (2d Cir.1995). 49 Here, Jackson cannot satisfy Rule 804(b)(3). Most significantly, the statements by Brown that Jackson sought to introduce at trial were not themselves self-inculpatory as to Brown. They did not, therefore, satisfy Williamson. Brown's statements that he never supervised Jackson and never asked Jackson to go to Jamaica to smuggle drugs did not in any way inculpate Brown or expose him to criminal liability. Accordingly, the separate guarantee of trustworthiness required by Rule 804(b)(3) is non-existent as to these statements. If anything, these statements were probably exculpatory as to Brown as they minimized the number of people that he supervised during the conspiracy. 50 Moreover, even if Brown's statements could be construed as self-inculpatory, Jackson has failed to satisfy the corroboration requirement of Rule 804(b)(3). There is no question that during his plea allocution Brown made conflicting assertions about Jackson's role in the conspiracy. For example, Brown first asserted that Jackson was a person with whom he had arrangements to smuggle drugs into the country. At another point, however, Brown claimed that Jackson smuggled cocaine into the country only for Guthrie. These inconsistencies would properly make any district judge suspicious of the statement[s'] reliability. Bahadar, 954 F.2d at 829. 51 Finally, as Judge Larimer observed, Brown's own motives for making the statements exculpating Jackson were highly suspect. Because Brown was aware at the time of his plea that there was a possibility that he could be called upon to testify at Jackson's trial (he was on the Government's witness list), the district court sagely noted that Brown's apparent attempt to exculpate Jackson may well have been an effort to avoid testifying against one of his co-conspirators. 52 Accordingly, the district court did not abuse its discretion in failing to admit Brown's plea allocution statements under the Rule 804(b)(3) exception to the hearsay rule.
53 Jackson's final evidentiary contention, that Brown's plea allocution satisfies the residual exception to the hearsay rule, requires little discussion. Rule 807 provides that statements not covered by Rule 803 or 804 but having equivalent circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness are not excluded by the hearsay rule if they meet certain requirements. Here, because Brown's plea allocution statements lacked corroborating circumstances indicating their trustworthiness under Rule 804(b)(3), the statements clearly lack equivalent circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness required under Rule 807. See id. 54