Opinion ID: 3170402
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Absence from Instruction Conference

Text: Before the government rested its case in chief, the district court conducted an inchambers conference “to cover the final evidentiary instructions, final form of verdict, take any objections and address those.” Id., Vol. I at 313. Both counsel attended. One instruction proposed by the government concerned Fed. R. Evid. 404(b), which states that evidence of a person’s prior bad acts may be admissible for a purpose other than “to prove a person’s character in order to show that on a particular occasion the person acted 7 in accordance with the character.” If such evidence is admitted, the court must give upon request a “limiting instruction . . . caution[ing] the jury to consider the evidence only for the limited purposes for which it is admitted and not as probative of bad character or propensity to commit the charged crime.” United States v. Mares, 441 F.3d 1152, 1157 (10th Cir. 2006). Because of the defense opening statement, the government expected Defendant to testify that he had lied in his police interviews and that another individual actually shot the gun. The government explained that if Defendant so testified, it planned to impeach his credibility with evidence of the aggravated-assault charge against him in state court. Defense counsel unsuccessfully objected to the admission of the evidence. The court ruled that it was admissible “as probative of credibility,” Aplt. App., Vol. II at 329, and agreed to give the limiting instruction. Defendant did not request to be at the conference and at no point did defense counsel object to his absence. Defendant now argues that he had a constitutional right to attend. We disagree.1 The constitutional right of the defendant to be present at trial is rooted in both the Confrontation Clause and the Due Process Clause. See United States v. Gagnon, 470 U.S. 522, 526 (1985) (per curiam). The Confrontation Clause assures the defendant of “the privilege to confront one’s accusers and cross-examine them face to face.” 1 The parties dispute which standard of review should apply since counsel for Defendant did not object to his absence from the conference. Because we hold that Defendant had no constitutional right to attend the conference, Defendant’s challenge fails under either de novo or plain-error review. 8 Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 106 (1934), overruled in part on other grounds by Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1 (1964). For trial proceedings other than the presentation of evidence, the Due Process Clause governs. See Gagnon, 470 U.S. at 526. Under the clause a criminal defendant has the “right to be present at a proceeding whenever his presence has a relation, reasonably substantial, to the fullness of his opportunity to defend against the charge.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). That is, “[t]he presence of a defendant is a condition of due process to the extent that a fair and just hearing would be thwarted by his absence, and to that extent only.” Id. (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted). Three Supreme Court opinions illustrate the scope of due process in this context. In Snyder the Court held that a defendant’s exclusion from the jury’s viewing of the crime scene was consistent with due process. See 291 U.S. at 108–22. Although if the defendant were present, he could be sure that the jury had seen the right place and nothing had been altered, “[o]pportunity was ample to learn whatever there was need to know,” id. at 109. He could easily “examine the bailiffs at the trial and learn what they had looked at,” could view the scene at another time with counsel, and could inquire “of witnesses in court and of counsel out of court.” Id. at 108. In Gagnon the Court held that the defendant had no constitutional right to be present at an in camera discussion between a juror, the judge, and defense counsel regarding the juror’s concern that the defendant had been drawing pictures of the jurors. See 470 U.S. at 524, 527. The Court said that the defendant “could have done nothing had [he] been at the conference, nor would [he] 9 have gained anything by attending.” Id. at 527. In Kentucky v. Stincer, 482 U.S. 730, 747 (1987), the Court rejected the argument that the defendant had a due-process right to be present at a hearing to determine the competency of two child witnesses. The trial judge and counsel had questioned each child “to determine if she were capable of remembering basic facts and of distinguishing between telling the truth and telling a lie.” Id. at 733. The Court expressed the due-process right as follows: “[A] defendant is guaranteed the right to be present at any stage of the criminal proceeding that is critical to its outcome if his presence would contribute to the fairness of the procedure.” Id. at 745. The Court noted that there was no questioning of the girls at the hearing “regarding the substantive testimony that [they] would have given during trial,” id., and said that the defendant “ha[d] given no indication that his presence at the competency hearing in this case would have been useful in ensuring a more reliable determination as to whether the witnesses were competent to testify,” id. at 747. In accordance with these principles, we have held “that the exclusion of a defendant . . . from the courtroom during argument on a question of law does not violate defendant’s constitutional right to be present at every step of the proceedings.” Deschenes v. United States, 224 F.2d 688, 693 (10th Cir. 1955). In particular, in this circuit a defendant need not be present at a jury-instruction conference. See Larson v. Tansy, 911 F.2d 392, 395 (10th Cir. 1990). “The jury instruction conference traditionally encompasses purely legal issues and . . . it will be a rare case where a defendant can establish that his presence was essential to his opportunity to present his defense.” Id. 10 Defendant argues that he had a due-process right to be present at the instruction conference because he would have gained information—the prosecution’s plan to impeach him by asking about his assault charge—that would have “‘contributed to [his] opportunity to defend himself against the charges.’” Aplt. Br. at 17 (quoting Stincer, 482 U.S. at 744 n.17). He asserts that “[h]is presence would have allowed him to weigh the government’s trial strategy when making his own decision whether to testify and subject himself to cross-examination, and his presence would have allowed him to consider how the government’s trial strategy might be dealt with in the event he did decide to take the stand.” Aplt. Br. at 19. But due process guarantees his presence only when his presence would be helpful at the proceeding he seeks to attend—that is, only “if his presence would contribute to the fairness of the procedure.” Stincer, 482 U.S. at 745. The “procedure” whose fairness is at issue is the procedure not attended by the defendant. In Snyder, Gagnon, and Stincer the Supreme Court’s focus was on whether the defendant could have assisted at the proceeding (the jury view, the juror questioning, and the competency hearing) from which the defendant was absent. Due process does not give a defendant a right to be present at a proceeding just so he can gather information for later use. That proposition has been clear since Snyder, where the Supreme Court pointed out that a defendant absent from the jury’s view of a crime scene could view the scene at a different time and could determine what happened during the view by inquiring “of witnesses in court and of counsel out of court.” 291 U.S. at 108. Defendant could have learned (and may well have learned) from his counsel all he needed to know about what 11 happened at the instruction conference. If he was not adequately informed, that is a matter to be dealt with under the constitutional guarantee of effective assistance of counsel, not the Due Process Clause. Because the instruction conference was devoted to purely legal issues, and because Defendant makes no argument that his presence would have contributed to the fairness of the conference, Defendant had no due-process right to attend.