Opinion ID: 6290
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Explanatory Parentheticals in Transcripts

Text: 94 Perla De Los Santos, Juan Castro, Jose Puig, and Abigail Puig complain that the district court committed reversible error by allowing into evidence transcripts with parentheticals containing the transcriber's interpretation of certain code words. The government contends that the transcripts provided to the jury were redacted to eliminate the explanatory parentheticals pursuant to the instructions of the district court at trial. 95 At trial, the government offered into evidence recordings of the original telephone conversations between Valles and various members of the conspiracy. At the pretrial conference, counsel for Abigail Puig and Araceli Castro objected to admission of the transcripts on the grounds that the agent's analysis is contained in the transcript and that the transcriber had, throughout the documents, defined several code words by placing the word marihuana within parentheses. The district court responded that the transcripts were not evidence and were only to be used to assist the jury in its analysis of the tape recordings. The court also noted that the defense had the right to proffer what you believe to be a different meaning for the particular [']code word['] if you think it has a different meaning. 96 During the portion of the testimony of Valles when the government offered the tape recordings into evidence, counsel for Araceli Castro repeated her pretrial objection and argued that the interpreter of the tapes should be subject to cross-examination. Overruling her objection, the court explained that the defense could question Valles about the translation in the transcript. After further discussion, defense counsel made clear that the only objection to the transcripts was the inclusion of the explanatory term marihuana. Sustaining this objection, the court ordered the government to eliminate from the transcripts to be provided to the jury the parentheticals containing the word marihuana. The record reflects that the government in fact removed the parentheticals from the copies of the transcripts submitted to the jury, and nothing presented by the appellants in this appeal indicates otherwise. Hence, the appellants have no factual basis for their appeal in this respect. 14