Opinion ID: 177231
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The drug trial

Text: A four-day trial on the drug charges followed, and the evidence against Kinsella was strong: phone records, recorded calls, and testimony from Hitchcock, Agent Luce, and the arresting officer helped nail down his guilt. Kinsella does not contend that the evidence could not support conviction. Instead his trial-error claims target the prosecutor's questioning of Hitchcock and the prosecutor's closing argument, so we highlight here only those facts needed to put these issues into proper perspective. Throughout the trial, defense counsel never missed an opportunity to paint Hitchcock as a plea-bargained witness who had set Kinsella up to avoid a 20-year sentence. Hitchcock needed someone anyone so he would not be left holding the bag, Kinsella's lawyer said in her opening statement. Pulling no punches, defense counsel asked Hitchcock on cross-examination whether he had cooperated with the government so he wouldn't have to do as much time. Yes, Hitchcock said, conceding, too, that he was testifying for the prosecution as part of his plea agreement and that he could have received a 20-year rather than a 2-year sentence had he not cooperated. Hitchcock also admitted that he would do anything  to get his old life back. On redirect the prosecutor tried to focus on the sentencing process. Asking Hitchcock to recall defense counsel's questions about the sentence and the cooperation agreement with the government, the prosecutor queried: Do you remember where you were sentenced, where your sentence took place? Right here, Hitchcock said, in this courthouse. The prosecutor then askedand this is the allegedly offending questionwhether Hitchcock recalled  who  had sentenced him. Judge Woodcock, Hitchcock replied. And who decided what your sentence was? the prosecutor inquired. The judge, Hitchcock said. Kinsella's lawyer neither objected to the prosecutor's questions nor moved to strike Hitchcock's responses. Instead she confirmed with Kinsella on re-cross that the judge  had decided his sentence after the government had agreed to ask for less time. Before closing arguments, Judge Woodcock cautioned the jurors to consider Hitchcock's testimony with great care. Cooperating witnesses, he said, are not always truth-tellersthey sometimes spin lies about what others have done to save themselves jail time, so the jurors had to consider whether Hitchcock had an ax to grind against Kinsella or had received any reward for cooperating with the prosecution. Hitchcock's guilty plea was fair game in assessing his credibility, Judge Woodcock said, but the jurors could not consider his plea as evidence against Kinsella in any way. Judge Woodcock also told them that counsel's arguments are not evidence and that they were the sole triers of fact and determiners of witness credibility. In closing argument the prosecutor hammered home the evidence against Kinsellathe controlled drug buys, Hitchcock's pinning Kinsella to the crimes, the coded conversations about OxyContin, Kinsella's agreeing to slip Hitchcock 100 or so OxyContin pills on March 19 at a Bangor Burger King, Kinsella's lying to a police officer that evening about having to drive to a Bangor airport to pick up his sister, the officer's seizing 100 pills from him after Kinsella lied about having no pills, etc. Regarding the recorded jailhouse calls, the prosecutor said: [Kinsella] knows Chris [Hitchcock]; he knows the number; and he wants someone to call Chris. First and foremost, if [Kinsella] can off-load the Oxy, theoretically, he could get some money if he needed to make bail or anything else of that nature. But he knows Chris; he knows the number; and he provides the same number that's been called all along. There was, in fact, no evidence that Kinsella had tried to deal OxyContin from jail. But defense counsel did not object. Instead she argued in her closing that sloppy investigative work caused the police to arrest an innocent man. Hitchcock had told a pack of lies to avoid a 20-year sentence, defense counsel said. Hitchcock needed a patsysomeone he could roll over onand Kinsella would do just fine. Not so, the prosecutor said in his rebuttal closing argument. There's no cheating here, and there's no conspiracy to frame Kinsella. After about five hours of deliberations, the jury convicted Kinsella on the OxyContin-related counts. Kinsella filed a timely new-trial motion. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 33(b)(2). His lead argument was that the prosecutor crossed the line by prompting Hitchcock to say that Judge Woodcock had sentenced him a comment Kinsella insists suggested to the jury that the Judge (who had given Hitchcock a 2-year sentence out of a possible maximum sentence of 20 years) had believed every word Hitchcock said on the stand. Calling Kinsella's claim odd and elusive, Judge Woodcock ruled that the prosecutor never tried to put a stamp of judicial approval on Hitchcock's testimony and never even intimated that the jury should find one. The prosecutor simply wanted to rehabilitate Hitchcock, Judge Woodcock stressed. Invoking the saying once burned, twice shy, Judge Woodcock found that this evidence implied that Hitchcock would think twice before perjuring himself in front of a judge who had already sentenced him to prison. Finding no caselaw to bolster the fanciful notion that the prosecutor had somehow vouched for the judge's knowledge of [Hitchcock's] credibility, Judge Woodcock denied Kinsella's new-trial motion.