Opinion ID: 2606
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: admission of contested testimony

Text: Fell next renews his challenge to the district court's admission, through the testimony of Marsha Thompson, of Debra Fell's non-testimonial hearsay statement that she was afraid of her son. He argues that this statement was repetitive of other similar statements that the district court struck as hearsay. In support of the mitigating factor that he had truthfully admitted his responsibility for King's murder, Fell contends that he previously gave several truthful confessions to law enforcement officers  one of which included an accurate account of his relationship with his mother. In this confession, he recalled an incident at a local bar involving a physical altercation in which his mother was the aggressor. The government called Thompson, the bartender at the local bar, to show that Fell had not given a truthful account of the altercation to the authorities investigating King's murder. Thompson testified that Fell aggressively struck his mother inside the bar and then assaulted her once they were outside of the bar. Thompson stated that she then called 911. After the police arrived and arrested Fell, his mother, highly distraught, returned to the bar and told Thompson that: She couldn't take it. She didn't want to go back home. She was afraid to go home. And I said to her, why don't you have him leave your home if you are afraid of him. She said I can't he's my son and I love him. Prior to Thompson's testimony, the district court ruled that Fell's mother's statement that she was afraid of [Fell] qualified as an excited utterance under Federal Rule of Evidence 803(2), a firmly rooted hearsay exception under Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 63-66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980) (holding that the Confrontation Clause requires that a hearsay exception be firmly rooted and reliable). The court concluded that Thompson's testimony was relevant to impeach aspects of Fell's confession  particularly to rebut the defense's claim that Donald Fell gave a truthful confession  was reliable for Confrontation Clause purposes and was not unduly prejudicial under 18 U.S.C. § 3593(c). Because Fell preserved his objection to this testimony at trial, we review this evidentiary ruling for abuse of discretion. Yousef, 327 F.3d at 156. No abuse of discretion occurred here. First, although Fell claims that his mother's statement was too attenuated to qualify as an excited utterance, an excited utterance need not be contemporaneous with the startling event to be admissible. United States v. Jones, 299 F.3d 103, 112 (2d Cir.2002). Rather, the key question governing admission is whether the declarant was, within the meaning of Rule 803(2), `under the stress of excitement caused by the event or condition.' Id. (quoting United States v. Scarpa, 913 F.2d 993, 1017 (2d Cir.1990)). We find that the stressful events surrounding the statement support applying the excited utterance rule. See id. at 113. In any event, the FDPA permits the admission of evidence at the penalty phase regardless of its admissibility under the Federal Rules of Evidence. See Fell I, 360 F.3d at 144. The district court correctly admitted this statement because it was relevant to rebut the mitigating factor that Fell had truthfully admitted responsibility for Teresca King's murder. The statement was not unduly prejudicial and would not have misled the jury. See 18 U.S.C. § 3593(c). It was clear from a plethora of evidence that Fell and his mother had an estranged and pathological relationship and Thompson's testimony did little other than confirm what the jury already knew. Fell also challenges the admission, through the testimony of Matt Cunningham  a teenage friend of Fell's  of prior statements conveying Fell's willingness to commit multiple murders and his desire to kill his mother. The evidence was offered in response to Fell's showing concerning the abuse and neglect he suffered at the hands of his parents. Fell argued that because the prejudicial value of the evidence exceeded its probative value, its admission violated the FDPA as well as the Fifth and Eighth Amendments. The government averred that the testimony was relevant to accurately complete the picture of Fell's formative years because, as we stated in an earlier opinion, it is appropriate for the sentencing authority ... to consider a defendant's whole life and personal make-up. Fell, 360 F.3d at 143. The district court permitted Cunningham to testify on the contested topics for the purpose of describ[ing] the general background and character of Fell during his late teenage years. Cunningham testified that during Fell's late adolescent years, he and Fell associated with a group of friends who drank, smoked marijuana, carried knives, and committed petty crimes. He further stated that although Fell rarely talked about his mother, when he did, he indicated that he hated her, and would say things like, `I could kill her.' Cunningham also recalled a conversation about murder in which Fell stated something along the lines of, well, if you killed one person, why stop there? Because you are going to get the same punishment anyway.... The government commented, without objection by defense counsel, on Cunningham's statements in its closing: You know as a matter of common sense that people have free will, and particularly when they grow up, they have free will to do the right thing and to decide what's right and what's wrong. And you know that for years, Donald Fell thought about killing. He thought about killing John Kozierski, his teacher, back when he was starting out in high school. A couple more years went by, and in conversations with Matthew Cunningham, a guy he hung out with back then, he thought about killing then. Talked about maybe killing his mother. And he thought, if you're going to kill someone, why stop at one. And more years went by, and he became an adult, and he came to Vermont, and after years of thinking about killing, he decided to kill, and kill again, and he had four hours to think about what to do with Terry King, and he decided to kill her too. People are responsible for what they do, particularly when they do severe, heinous crimes like this. We review admission of this evidence for abuse of discretion. United States v. Pepin, 514 F.3d 193, 202 (2d Cir.2008). At the sentencing phase, the defense adduced extensive mitigating evidence showing that because Fell was the victim of tragic early life experiences, he deserved a fate other than execution. Cunningham's testimony was offered, in the government's words, to correct the portrayal of Fell as simply a tormented youth consumed with his mother's wrongs. That image is only possible if the critical few years between the ages of 17 and 20  when Fell matured into an adult  are ignored. The district court appropriately found that this evidence was relevant to Fell's background and general character. In addition to its probative value, this testimony was not unduly prejudicial. Despite Fell's claim that a juror might have inferred that he planned his mother's murder, the government never alleged premeditated murder as an aggravating factor and did not argue in closing that Fell ever intended to kill his mother. Assuming arguendo, as Fell contends, that the Cunningham testimony presented a risk of unfair prejudice from a bleed-over effect potentially allowing the jury to find the unalleged aggravating factor  that the murders were premeditated  we are confident that the court's instruction that the jury only consider the charged aggravating factors adequately dealt with this remark. [25] Finally, it is unquestioned that the jury knew from other testimony that Fell was extraordinarily angry with his mother and that he watched Lee stab her multiple times without intervention.