Opinion ID: 785775
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Preclusion of the questions to Rodriguez regarding the offense supporting the arrest

Text: 37 Davis next claims that the district court erred when during trial of the excessive force claim — the only claim the judge allowed to go to the jury — he sustained defendants' objection to questions on cross-examination of Rodriguez concerning the charges Rodriguez had in mind when he first tried to arrest Davis. 10 Although the district court has wide discretion in controlling the admissibility of testimony and other evidence, Zahra v. Town of Southold, 48 F.3d 674, 686 (2d Cir.1995), we believe that under the circumstances here the court abused its discretion when it denied Davis the opportunity to ask Rodriguez about those charges. 38 Federal Rule of Evidence 402 provides that [a]ll relevant evidence is admissible, except as otherwise provided by the Constitution of the United States of the United States, by Act of Congress, by these rules, or by other rules prescribed by the Supreme Court pursuant to statutory authority. Rule 401 defines relevant evidence as evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence. 39 Davis's excessive force claim was the only claim remaining at the time Davis cross-examined Rodriguez. Defendants rely on Habiger v. City of Fargo, 80 F.3d 289, 298 n. 8 (8th Cir.1996), in which the Eighth Circuit observed that it was inclined to believe that the presence of actual or arguable probable cause is irrelevant to the objective reasonableness of the force used to effect an arrest. Defendants argue that the legality of Davis's arrest is irrelevant to whether the force used to effect it was excessive. 40 Defendants misunderstand the relevance of Davis's question to Rodriguez. The Supreme Court has explained that  all claims that law enforcement officers have used excessive force — deadly or not — in the course of an arrest, investigatory stop, or other `seizure' of a free citizen should be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment and its `reasonableness' standard. Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 395, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989). The Court has also explained that in determining whether the force used in a particular case was unreasonable, courts should look to the facts and circumstances of each particular case, including, among other things, the severity of the crime at issue. Id. at 396, 109 S.Ct. 1865; Soares v. Connecticut, 8 F.3d 917, 921 (2d Cir.1993). Davis's question was directly relevant to the excessive force claim because the reasonableness of the force used was partly dependent on the crime in question. We thus hold that the court's decision to preclude that line of questioning was an abuse of discretion. 41 Of course, a new trial should be granted only if the court's abuse of discretion clearly prejudiced the outcome of the trial. Annis v. County of Westchester, 136 F.3d 239, 247 (2d Cir.1998). It is arguable that by itself, the court's error on this evidentiary question might not have been significant enough to warrant a new trial on the excessive force claim. However, that error must be seen in the context of the court's prior error in granting JMOL on the unconstitutional false arrest claim. It must also be noted that the court did not instruct the jury that it could find in Davis's favor on the excessive force claim even if the arrest was lawful. Although the court was not specifically asked to give that instruction, it might have helped limit the prejudicial effect of the erroneous JMOL. Viewed together, these facts create a real possibility that the jury was unduly influenced to find against Davis. In order for the jury to rule for Davis on the excessive force claim, it had to believe his story as to what he had been doing when Rodriguez ordered him to approach his cruiser. By wrongly removing the unconstitutional false arrest claim from the trial and rejecting Davis's attempts right after that to ask Rodriguez about the charges he had in mind, the jury may have incorrectly concluded that the court disbelieved Davis's version of the events. Such a suggestion would have been fatal to Davis's excessive force claim. Under these unusual circumstances, we vacate the judgment for defendants and order a new trial also on Davis's excessive force claim. 11