Opinion ID: 2995593
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Coconspirator waiver

Text: For those defendants who did not participate in Willis’s murder or its cover-up (Stephanie Johnson and Anthony Thompson), the government urges us to follow United States v. Cherry, 217 F.3d 811 (10th Cir. 2000). Cherry holds that if a murder is reasonably foreseeable to a conspirator and within the scope and in furtherance of the conspiracy, the conspirator waives his right to confront that witness just as if he killed the witness himself. Although we believe that Cherry is well-reasoned, we find thatWillis’s murder was not reasonably foreseeable to these defendants. But because admission of the statements was harmless, the error does not require reversal.
The Tenth Circuit’s decision in Cherry involves three main points. We summarize them briefly and explain why we find them persuasive. First, coconspirator waiver is consistent with waiver-by-misconduct jurisprudence. Several waiver-by- misconduct cases recognize the possibility of imputed waiver, although none ruled explicitly on the question. In Olson v. Green, 668 F.2d 421 (8th Cir. 1982), the Eighth Circuit noted that someone acting on a defendant’s behalf may waive his hearsay and Confrontation Clause objections. Id. at 429. Also, one of the Supreme Court’s early waiver-by- misconduct cases (not cited in Cherry) contains similar language, saying that waiver may be actual or imputed. Snyder v. Com. of Mass., 291 U.S. 97, 106 (1934). Coconspirator waiver fits within the federal rules’s codification of the waiver-by-misconduct rule as well. Under Rule 804(b)(6), a defendant who acquiesces in conduct intended to procure the unavailability of a witness waives his hearsay objection. We agree with the Tenth Circuit that, by using the term acquiesce, the drafters of Rule 804(b)(6) expressed an intent to allow for the imputation of waiver. See Cherry, 217 F.3d at 816. This makes sense because acquiescence itself is an act. See Webster’s Third New Int’l Dictionary 18 (1986) (defining acquiesce as to accept or comply tacitly or passively). And when that act is done intentionally and voluntarily it is no less valid as a means of waiver than the decision to more directly procure the unavailability of a witness by, for example, murdering a wit ness oneself. Second, coconspirator waiver strikes the proper balance between protecting a defendant’s confrontation rights and preventing witness tampering. See Cherry, 217 F.3d at 820. Without a rule of coconspirator waiver, the majority of the members of a conspiracy could benefit from a few members engaging in misconduct. Such a result is at odds with the waiver-by-misconduct doctrine’s equitable underpinnings. Cf. White, 116 F.3d at 911. Third, as a practical matter, [i]t would make little sense to limit forfeiture of a defendant’s trial rights to a narrower set of facts than would be sufficient to sustain a conviction and corresponding loss of liberty. Cherry, 217 F.3d at 818. Pinkerton established the rule that a defendant may be held liable for acts committed by her coconspirator that were within the scope and in furtherance of the conspiracy, and were reasonably foreseeable to her. See Pinkerton, 328 U.S. at 647; see also United States v. Sandoval-Curiel, 50 F.3d 1389, 1392 (7th Cir. 1995). Under this rule, a defendant may be held criminally responsible for any act committed in furtherance of the conspiracy, including acts taken to prevent apprehension. See United States v. Williams, 81 F.3d 1434, 1439 (7th Cir. 1996); United States v. Nowak, 448 F.2d 134, 139 (7th Cir. 1971). Witness tampering is one example of these sorts of acts, see, e.g., United States v. Maloney, 71 F.3d 645, 661 (7th Cir. 1995), and, of course, can constitute waiver-by-misconduct. Not only do we agree with the reasoning of the majority in Cherry, but the dissent in Cherry does not persuade us to reject coconspirator waiver. The dissent primarily focuses on the idea that mere membership in a conspiracy should not be sufficient to establish waiver. Accord United States v. White, 838 F.Supp. 618 (D.D.C. 1993) aff’d, 116 F.3d 983 (D.C. Cir. 1997). We agree with this proposition and believe that it is inherent in our holding--for waiver to be imputed to a conspirator, the conduct resulting in the witness’s unavailability must have been committed in furtherance of the conspiracy, within its scope, and reasonably foreseeable to the conspirator. Cf. Williams, 81 F.3d at 1441 (engaging in particularized foreseeability inquiry). In addition, the Cherry dissent’s reliance on a quote from Olson v. Green that states that constitutional rights are personal to the accused is unavailing. That phrase was first iterated by the Eighth Circuit in United States v. Carlson, 547 F.2d 1346 (8th Cir. 1976), to make the point that a defendant may not revive at trial through his counsel a right he previously, personally waived. Id. at 1359, n. 11. The Carlson court’s use of the phrase does not express a disapproval of imputed waiver. To the extent that the Cherry dissent’s reliance on the phrase personal to the accused communicates a concern that the imputation of waiver will result in the unintentional waiver of defendants’ rights (compare Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464 (1938) ([F]or waiver to be effective, it must be intentional.) with Sandoval-Curiel, 50 F.3d at 1392 (A defendant is responsible for a substantive offense committed by his coconspirators . . . even if the defendant does not have knowledge of it.)) we believe that the formulation of the rule we adopt today will insure that the conspirator’s waiver meets this constitutional standard. By limiting coconspirator waiver-by-misconduct to those acts that were reasonably foreseeable to each individual defendant, the rule captures only those conspirators that actually acquiesced either explicitly or implicitly to the misconduct. Finally, the act of misconduct in this case is not relevant to our waiver inquiry. There is a possibility that the specific intent requirement necessary to support a conviction for first-degree murder will be lost in of the application of Pinkerton to the waiver context. Cf. Clark v. Louisiana State Penitentiary, 694 F.2d 75, 78 (5th Cir. 1982) (express ing concern that jury inappropriately convicted conspirator of first-degree murder under Pinkerton based solely oncoconspirator’s intent). There is no cause for concern, however, because (in those cases that involve premeditated murder) the specific intent requirement is captured by the reasonable foreseeability qualification. Waiver may be imputed only to those conspirators to whom it was reasonably foreseeable that another conspirator would engage in premeditated murder in furtherance and within the scope of the conspiracy. Accord United States v. Tse, 135 F.3d 200, 206-07 (1st Cir. 1998) (If [the conspirator] possessed the requisite intent when he entered into the conspiracy then all foreseeable crimes committed by the conspiracy can be attributed to that intent.). It is also conceivable that some cases will involve non-premeditated murder, in which circumstance there is no specific intent requirement./7 See Haas v. Abrahamson, 910 F.2d 384, 399 (7th Cir. 1990) (internal citation omitted). In sum, a defendant who joins a conspiracy risks many things--e.g. the admission of his coconspirator’s statements at trial under Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2)(E), the potential conviction for substantive offenses committed in furtherance of the conspiracy, and the inclusion of his coconspirator’s acts in the computation of his relevant conduct at sentencing. We see no reason why imputed waiver should not be one of these risks, particularly when the waiver results from misconduct designed to benefit the conspiracy’s members. For these reasons and the others expressed above, we follow the Tenth Circuit’s decision in Cherry and hold that the waiver-by-misconduct of one conspirator may be imputed to another conspirator if the misconduct was within the scope and in furtherance of the conspiracy, and was reasonably foreseeable to him.
However, we conclude that Marcus Willis’s murder was not reasonably foreseeable to Stephanie Johnson and Anthony Thompson. There is no evidence that these defendants knew or had reason to know that an informant would be murdered. Cf. United States v. Romero, 897 F.2d 47, 51-52 (2d Cir. 1990) (holding that conspirators could be held criminally liable for coconspirator’s assault and attempted murder of a federal officer [g]iven the ammunition spread around the apartment, the precautions [two of the conspirators] took to ensure the informants were neither armed nor police, and the stationing of [one conspirator] as an armed triggerman in the closet.). As we noted in our discussion of the First-Degree Murder Guideline, there is no evidence that this conspiracy had previously engaged in murder or attempted murder. Therefore, we find that Willis’s murder was not reasonably foreseeable to either of these defendants.