Opinion ID: 2805448
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Restrictions on Cross Examination

Text: Though we are already reversing Jiménez's conviction, we will still address his Confrontation Clause argument because it has been fully briefed and will almost certainly arise again should Jiménez be retried. See Compagnie Nationale Air France v. Castano, 358 F.2d 203, 208 (1st Cir. 1966) (Since there must be a new trial, and this matter is likely to come up again, we will deal with it.). According to Jiménez, the district court violated his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation by forbidding any cross- -28- examination about Pérez's or Albino's initial exposure to the death penalty. We disagree. The Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause guarantees criminal defendants the right to cross-examine those who testify against them. United States v. Vega Molina, 407 F.3d 511, 522 (1st Cir. 2005) (citing Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 315 (1974)). It extends to cross-examination reasonably necessary to delineate and present the defendant's theory of defense, id., and includes the right to cross-examine the government's witness about his bias against the defendant and his motive for testifying, United States v. Ofray-Campos, 534 F.3d 1, 36 (1st Cir. 2008). Indeed, we have consistently held that cross-examination is the principal means by which the believability of a witness and the truth of his testimony are tested. Brown v. Powell, 975 F.2d 1, 3 (1st Cir. 1992) (quoting Kentucky v. Stincer, 482 U.S. 730, 736 (1987)) (internal quotation marks omitted). This right, however, has limits, and [t]he Confrontation Clause does not give a defendant the right to cross-examine on every conceivable theory of bias. United States v. MartínezVives, 475 F.3d 48, 53 (1st Cir. 2007) (alteration in original) (quoting United States v. Callipari, 368 F.3d 22, 38-39 (1st Cir. 2004), vacated on other grounds, 543 U.S. 1098 (2005))(internal quotation marks omitted). As the Supreme Court explained in Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 679 (1986), -29- [i]t does not follow, of course, that the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment prevents a trial judge from imposing any limits on defense counsel's inquiry into the potential bias of a prosecution witness. On the contrary, trial judges retain wide latitude insofar as the Confrontation Clause is concerned to impose reasonable limits on such cross-examination based on concerns about, among other things, harassment, prejudice, confusion of the issues, the witness' safety, or interrogation that is repetitive or only marginally relevant. To that end, our review of a district court's decision to limit cross-examination involves a two-step inquiry. First, we review de novo the district court's conclusion that, even though cross-examination was limited, the defendant was afforded sufficient leeway to establish a reasonably complete picture of the witness' veracity, bias, and motivation. United States v. Capozzi, 486 F.3d 711, 723 (1st Cir. 2007) (quoting United States v. Byrne, 435 F.3d 16, 21 (1st Cir. 2006)) (internal quotation marks omitted). Then, assuming this initial threshold is satisfied, we review the particular limitations only for abuse of discretion. Martínez-Vives, 475 F.3d at 53. Here we have little doubt that Jiménez was able to paint for the jury a complete picture of both Pérez and Albino such that he was afforded a reasonable opportunity to impeach them. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Regarding Pérez, Jiménez introduced a number of facts calling both his identification of Jiménez and his credibility into question. First, Jiménez -30- established that beginning the morning of June 21, 2010, and continuing until after Sánchez's murder that afternoon, Pérez had multiple conversations with Lechón and Harry -- both of whom were involved in drug dealing in Falín Torrech and both of whom were included in Sánchez's threat to take everybody down -- yet failed to reveal this information to the authorities. Second, Jiménez elicited the fact that Pérez provided the authorities with inconsistent versions of his story. As to Albino, Jiménez showed a motive for implicating him and protecting Lechón, who he alleged was potentially the true shooter: Albino was in a relationship with Lechón. Moreover, though the district court forbade any questioning about death-penalty exposure, it never prohibited Jiménez from discussing the plea and cooperation agreement itself. To the contrary, Jiménez cross-examined both Pérez and Albino about the details of the agreement and their understanding that they would receive a more-lenient sentence if they cooperated. That Jiménez could not emphasize just how severe Pérez's and Albino's possible sentences could have been had they not cooperated did nothing to detract from his central argument: both Pérez and Albino were biased and motivated to provide incriminating testimony against Jiménez in an attempt to look out for their own best interests and receive a lighter sentence. We have previously upheld a district court's decision to prohibit cross-examination -31- into a cooperating witness's exposure to the death penalty so long as the defendant could still probe into other aspects of the plea agreement, and we see no reason to deviate from that position here. See Capozzi, 486 F.3d at 724 ([T]he district court did not commit constitutional error when it declined to allow [defendant] to inquire into the subject of [the cooperating witness's] avoidance of the potential death penalty attached to this uncharged crime which [the witness] had supposedly avoided by cooperating with the government because defendant had considerable ammunition . . . from which to demonstrate that [the witness] had a powerful motive to testify in a manner supportive of the government.). Reviewing the cross-examinations as a whole, we conclude that Jiménez provided a reasonably complete picture of the witness[es]' veracity, bias, and motivation despite the district court's limitation, and therefore the limitation did not violate the Confrontation Clause. See id. at 723; Brown, 975 F.2d at 5 (finding no violation of the Confrontation Clause where the district court prevented the jury from hearing the potential penalty of life imprisonment that a cooperating witness avoided by pleading guilty because the jury was clearly given sufficient information from which it could conclude that the [accomplice] had a substantial motivation to testify against petitioner, such as the specifics of the accomplice's plea agreement, the witness's criminal record, that the witness had given the police a different -32- statement than his testimony, that the witness had stolen the murder weapon, and that the witness had reviewed the investigative file before testifying); United States v. Twomey, 806 F.2d 1136, 1139-40 (1st Cir. 1986) (restricting cross-examination into an unsubstantiated charge that the witness was involved in two murders in part because the circumstances from which the jury could decide whether [the witness] might have been inclined to testify falsely in favor of the government was adequately presented); cf. Vega Molina, 407 F.3d at 523-24 (finding a Sixth Amendment violation where the district court precluded any cross-examination into a cooperating witnesses's motive for enlisting in the robbery scheme). Having found that Jiménez's opportunity to impeach Pérez and Albino satisfied this initial threshold, we turn to whether the district court nevertheless abused its discretion in precluding this line of questioning. An abuse of discretion has occurred only if the jury is left without 'sufficient information concerning formative events to make a discriminating appraisal of a witness's motives and bias.' Twomey, 806 F.2d at 1140 (quoting Harris v. United States, 367 F.2d 633, 636 (1st Cir. 1966)) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Ofray-Campos, 534 F.3d at 37 ('To establish that the district court has abused its discretion, the defendant must show that the limitations imposed were clearly prejudicial.' (quoting United States v. Williams, 985 F.2d 634, -33- 639 (1st Cir. 1993))). In other words, the restrictions must be manifestly unreasonable or overbroad. Ofray-Campos, 534 F.3d at 36 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Here, the district court's limitation was neither unreasonable nor overbroad. We have already explained how Jiménez questioned Pérez and Albino about the details of their plea and cooperation agreements and about their other potential biases and motivations for testifying. Moreover, as the district court correctly noted, while a complaint alleging a death-eligible offense was initially filed, Pérez and Albino were never indicted on this charge and consequently were never actually exposed to the death penalty. Still, when Jiménez argued that this was precisely because of an agreement, the district court inquired further and questioned the government and both witnesses' attorneys. Each party provided the same information: the non-death-eligible indictment was not a result of an agreement among the parties but rather due to the lack of evidence that either Pérez or Albino knew Sánchez would be killed at the Colmado Hernández mini market. The district court accepted this explanation and, as a result, believed that raising the issue with the jury would be misleading and confusing. Given the district court's wide latitude insofar as the Confrontation Clause is concerned to impose reasonable limits on cross-examination, Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. at 679, this conclusion -34- was not manifestly unreasonable. Nor did it prejudice Jiménez. See Ofray-Campos, 534 F.3d at 37. Accordingly, we find no abuse of discretion by the district court in prohibiting Jiménez from inquiring into the witnesses' potential exposure to the death penalty. See Capozzi, 486 F.3d at 724 (Nor did the court's decision to bar the questioning constitute an abuse of its general discretion. . . . Any risk that [the witness] would have been charged with the death penalty offense was at best . . . wholly speculative.); United States v. Álvarez, 987 F.2d 77, 82 (1st Cir. 1993) (finding no abuse of discretion where the district court prevented the jury from learning of the exact penalties the witness would face if found guilty); Twomey, 806 F.2d at 1139-40 (finding no abuse of discretion where the district court restricted crossexamination into a witness's supposed involvement in two murders to establish bias in part because [t]here is no evidence to support such a charge, and, in fact, [the witness's] plea agreement explicitly states that it does not protect him from prosecution for crimes of violence).