Opinion ID: 866145
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Labeling of Transcripts

Text: Díaz-Arias' second argument is that the district court abused its discretion when it allowed the government to provide the jury with transcripts of the intercepted phone conversations which identified one of the speakers by his first name, i.e. Hipólito.
On July 25, 2011, Díaz-Arias filed a motion in limine aimed at precluding the government from introducing the transcripts of the wiretapped conversations it prepared, because one of the speakers was labeled as Hipólito. After hearing arguments, the district court ruled that the transcripts could be used as the government proposed, with the caution to the jury that it's a point the government has to prove, not only to identify who the speaker is but that, in fact, it is the defendant. At trial, Díaz-Arias requested a limiting instruction when the government began playing the recorded telephone calls and providing the jury with the transcripts. The district court imparted the following instruction: Let me just tell the jurors that the government's labeled these conversations, and the transcripts have been prepared, obviously, from their point of view as to who the speakers are and what their names are and so on and so forth. Ultimately, that's your judgment to make, whether those people are who are actually recorded on the matter to the extent it's important. Particularly, the person identified as Hipólito. You'll have to decide if there was such a person and, ultimately, the question will be whether that -27- was the defendant or not, or somebody else. But because the government has labeled it as Hipólito doesn't mean that that's determinative. You will make the determination at the appropriate time. The jury was allowed to use the transcripts several times in order to follow along whenever the government played a recording of an intercepted telephone call. The jury was also provided with a copy of the transcripts to use during their deliberations.8 Díaz-Arias now reiterates his objections to the use of the transcripts before this forum.
We review for abuse of discretion the district court's decision to allow the use of a transcript at trial. United States v. Anderson, 452 F.3d 66 (1st Cir. 2006).
Díaz-Arias mainly advances three arguments regarding the admissibility of the contested transcripts: (1) that there was no compelling evidence supporting Trooper Cepero's identification of him as one of the speakers; (2) that the district court did not properly instruct the jury that it was up to them to decide whether the speaker labeled as Hipólito was indeed Díaz-Arias; and (3) 8 Díaz-Arias lodged a continuing objection to the use of the transcripts at trial. He also objected to the government's request to provide the jury with the transcripts for their deliberations. The district court overruled both objections. -28- that labeling one of the speakers as Hipólito constituted impermissible vouching by the government. The first two arguments are derived from Díaz-Arias' reading of our decision in United States v. Jadlowe, 628 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2010). In Jadlowe, the district court admitted the lay opinion testimony of a police officer identifying the defendant's voice in several recordings of wiretapped communications. 628 F.3d at 24. The defendant had argued that it was error to admit such testimony, because the identification was not based on the officer's prior personal experience with him, and because the jury was perfectly capable of drawing its own independent conclusion[s] based on the evidence presented. Id. (internal quotations omitted). We agreed with the defendant that it was error for the district court to admit as lay opinion testimony the voice identification of the officer, because the officer was not in a better position than the jurors to make the identity judgments. Id. We also agreed with the defendant that the district court erred when it allowed the prosecution to furnish the jury with the transcripts of the recorded conversations, because the transcripts reflected the officer's identification of the defendant's voice by labeling one of the speakers with his name. However, since the record established that there was compelling circumstantial evidence that Jadlowe was properly identified as the speaker in the calls and the district court providently instructed the jury that -29- it was up to them to make a determination as to whether the transcripts accurately identified the speaker as Jadlowe, we held that any error in admitting the lay opinion testimony and allowing the transcripts was harmless. Id. at 25. Díaz-Arias claims that, contrary to Jadlowe, the circumstantial evidence pointing to him as the speaker in the phone call recordings was not compelling, and that while the district court did give the jury an instruction as to the use of the transcripts, this instruction was not given at the time that the transcripts were provided to the jury. Díaz-Arias' arguments, however, are misplaced, because the situation in Jadlowe is completely distinguishable from the one present in this case. The centerpiece of our holding in Jadlowe, as it pertained to the use of the transcripts, was that the officer's testimony identifying Jadlowe as one of the speakers was not helpful to the jury, because the evidence the officer relied upon to make that assessment was readily available to the jury. Id. at 24. Instead, here one of the speakers in the transcript was labeled with the name Hipólito based on Trooper Cepero's identification of Díaz-Arias as said speaker, and as we have already explained, Trooper Cepero in this case was in a better position than the jury to make that assessment, based primarily on his mastery of the Spanish language and his familiarity with the accents of native speakers. -30- Therefore, Díaz-Arias' attempts to frame his arguments within the context of our holding in Jadlowe are unavailing. In any event, we agree with the government that there is sufficient evidence to establish that the speaker in the intercepted telephone conversations was someone named Hipólito, and that Hipólito, in turn, was the defendant, Díaz-Arias. There is strong circumstantial evidence that the speaker in question was referred to as Hipólito by the other members of the Pinales organization when they communicated with each other over the phone. For example, on the night of July 11, 2004, Pinales told Pena to call Hipólito the next day so that Pena and Hipólito could meet. A minute after that conversation took place, Pena called Hipólito to ask if he could visit him. On September 28, 2004, Hipólito called Pinales to inform him that tomorrow, I am going to send the guy over there and the next day, Hernández called Pinales and identified himself as Hipólito’s guy. Later that day, Pinales called a phone number and asked to speak with Hipólito, after which he spoke with the speaker in question. Apart from Trooper Cepero's admissible testimony identifying the speaker as Hipólito, there was enough circumstantial evidence here to support the labeling of the transcript with the name Hipólito.9 9 In addition, two of the phone numbers used by Hipólito during the intercepted telephone calls were listed in Pinales’ address books as belonging to H.P., which a reasonable juror could infer is an abbreviation for Hipólito. -31- The same can be said about the government's theory that Hipólito was the defendant, Díaz-Arias. As we have previously recounted, a reasonable jury could have concluded that Fresa was the woman Hipólito referred to in the tapes, given the ample evidence connecting the two. This evidence, coupled with Trooper Cepero's testimony that he was able to match the voice of Hipólito with the voice of Díaz-Arias, the latter of which he was able to discern from stipulated recordings of Díaz-Arias' voice, is enough to support the jury's conclusion that the voice of Hipólito belonged to Díaz-Arias. The record also belies Díaz-Arias' second argument, that the district court did not properly instruct the jury that it was up to them to decide if the speaker labeled as Hipólito was in fact Díaz-Arias. As previously recounted, the district court did give the jury such an instruction when the government began playing the audio recordings of some of the intercepted calls. This instruction was given at the behest of Díaz-Arias' counsel. The district court again reminded the jury that the labeling of the transcripts was not determinative when it gave its concluding instructions, stating that it is the government's position that the person referred to in . . . the transcripts of the intercepted telephone conversations as Hipólito is this defendant. To convict the defendant, the government must convince you of that fact beyond a reasonable doubt. We thus find that the district court -32- sufficiently instructed the jury that it was up to them to decide whether the speaker in question was Díaz-Arias. Lastly, we are similarly unswayed by Díaz-Arias' third argument, that permitting the transcript to identify the speaker in question as Hipólito constituted improper governmental vouching. Improper vouching occurs when prosecutors place the prestige of the United States behind one of their witnesses by making personal assurances about the credibility of [that] witness or by indicating that facts not before the jury support [that] witness' testimony. United States v. Rosario-Díaz, 202 F.3d 54, 65 (1st Cir. 2000). Improper vouching can also be said to occur when a prosecutor implies to the jury that they should credit the prosecution's evidence simply because the government can be trusted. United States v. Castro-Davis, 612 F.3d 53, 66 (1st Cir. 2010) (citing United States v. Pérez-Ruiz, 353 F.3d 1, 9 (1st Cir. 2003) and Flores-De Jesús, 569 F.3d at 18). We fail to see how any vouching took place with regards to the district court's allowance of the impugned transcripts. In his appellate brief, Díaz-Arias cites to some of our case law on the vouching doctrine, but fails to explain how the situations in those cases -- of government witnesses and prosecutors improperly bolstering the credibility of other government witnesses -- are mirrored in this case. Neither can we find any evidence on the record to suggest that the prosecutor improperly implied to the jury that they should take the -33- transcript at its word that the speaker in question really was Hipólito, simply because the government and Trooper Cepero could be trusted to speak the truth. On the contrary, the government properly authenticated the transcripts via Trooper Cepero's testimony, and the labeling of those transcripts with the name Hipólito merely memorialized a part of that testimony: the identification of the speaker in question as a man named Hipólito. Therefore, we reject Díaz-Arias' claims of improper vouching. Consequently, we find no abuse of discretion in the district court's decision allowing the jury to use the transcripts. However, notwithstanding our validation of the evidence in this case, we suggest that in future cases it would be better practice for the government to establish the basis for the labeling of the transcripts, before these documents are initially presented to the jury, in addition to the court instructing the jury as was done by the district court in this case.