Opinion ID: 182445
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Confrontation of Garcia

Text: Hayes contends that he was denied his right to confront prosecution witness Debbie Garcia because the trial court prevented him from calling her attorney, Brad Wiles, to testify about communications between Garcia and Wiles. The court prevented Wiles from testifying because it concluded that the attorney-client privilege protected the communications that the defense wanted Wiles to reveal. Hayes argues that his inability to put Wiles on the stand denied him a chance to expose Garcia's bias and motive to deliver testimony favorable to the prosecution, in violation of the Confrontation Clause. In direct examination of Garcia, the prosecution drew attention to the fact that Garcia supposedly did not actively seek immunity for testifying against Hayes: Q: Other than that, insofar as anything that would happen to you, any way, were there any promises made by me or anyone associated with law enforcement other than protection? A: No. Q: Made to you? A: No. Q: At what point did you receive immunity in this case? A: Before the preliminary hearing, I believe in 1982. Q: Did you want it? A: No. Q: Who suggested it? A: I believe you [i.e., the prosecutor] did. Q: Did I tell you I wouldn't let you testify without it? A: I don't remember. I don't recall. Q: Do you recall whether or not it came from you or anyone hired by you, associated with you in any way, to ask for any kind of a deal, bargain, benefit, anything other than protection? A: No. On cross-examination, the defense tried to rebut the notion that Garcia had not affirmatively instructed her attorney, Wiles, to seek immunity on behalf: Q: Shortly after March 10th, you engaged the services of an attorney; correct? A: After March 10th? Q: First day you spoke with authorities. A: No, huh-uh. No, it was a long time after that I talked to a high school friend who is an attorney. Q: You engaged the services of Brad Wiles; correct? A: Just before the preliminary I believe, yes. Q: You engaged his services within weeks of your first statement to the police in March of 1982; correct? A: Not as far as I recall. Q: Did Mr. Wiles tell you that you had had some criminal liability with respect to this incident? A: No. Q: Did he tell you that you were liable to be prosecuted for murder? A: No. Q: Did he tell you that you needed immunity from prosecution? A: No. Q: Did he tell you that you could conceivably be looking at the gas chamber? A: No. Q: Did you tell him or agree with him that you needed immunity? A: No. Q: Did you ask him to negotiate with the District Attorney's Office here in Santa Cruz for a grant of immunity? A: No. It was after the District Attorney had talked about it. I didn't evenI didn't even know what it was. So I contacted him to find out exactly what it was and why theyyou know, they suggested it. So why it was needed, so I could understand. Q: And this is a couple of months after March of 1982, when you first go to the police; that is what you're telling me? A: I thought it was a lot later than that, but I thought it was just before the preliminary, but I could be mistaken. Q: The preliminary hearing was in November of 1982; correct? A: That's correct. Q: And you didn't instruct Mr. Wiles to negotiate with the local District Attorney's Office to insure that you get immunity in this case; is that what you're telling me? A: I did not, that's correct. The defense sought to call Wiles to testify and contradict Garcia's testimony about the advice he had given her and whether she had instructed him to seek immunity. The defense had some reason to suspect that Wiles might tell a different story than Garcia. Not knowing that the law firm of Biggam, Christensen & Minsloff represented Hayes, Wiles had contacted Lawrence Biggam to seek advice about representing Garcia. Biggam allegedly told Wiles to get Garcia immunity. Later, Wiles spoke to Jon Minsloff (Hayes's trial counsel) on the phone. He allegedly revealed that: Garcia had contacted him for advice within days of first speaking to the police; he advised Garcia that she could be prosecuted for first degree murder, faced the gas chamber, and needed immunity; Garcia agreed and told Wiles to get her immunity; and he negotiated with the prosecutor for immunity, which she agreed to grant months before it was officially given by court order at the preliminary hearing. The trial court quashed the defense's subpoena of Wiles, concluding that Garcia had not waived attorney-client privilege as to the communications about which the defense sought to question Wiles. As a federal court reviewing the denial of a habeas petition, our concern is whether the trial court's privilege ruling, regardless of its correctness under state law, infringed Hayes's constitutional right to confront Garcia. See McGuire, 502 U.S. at 67-68, 112 S.Ct. 475 ([I]t is not the province of a federal habeas court to reexamine state-court determinations on state-law questions. In conducting habeas review, a federal court is limited to deciding whether a conviction violated the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States.). The Supreme Court has held that, under certain circumstances, otherwise permissible exclusions of evidence from a criminal trial can deny a defendant's right under the Confrontation Clause to cross-examine witnesses against him. See, e.g., Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 94 S.Ct. 1105, 39 L.Ed.2d 347 (1974) (state law making records of juvenile offense inadmissible unconstitutionally limited the scope of defendant's cross-examination of an adverse witness for bias); Douglas v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 415, 85 S.Ct. 1074, 13 L.Ed.2d 934 (1965) (witness's invocation of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination denied the defendant an opportunity for effective cross-examination). Adequate cross-examination entails not only the right to ask [the witness] whether he was biased, but also the right to make a record from which to argue why [the witness] might have been biased or otherwise lacked that degree of impartiality expected of a witness at trial. Davis, 415 U.S. at 318, 94 S.Ct. 1105. Hayes contends that Wiles's testimony was necessary to establish a basis for impeaching Garcia on the ground that, contrary to her testimony, she had actively sought immunity with Wiles's help. A defendant's right to cross-examine adverse witnesses is not unlimited, though. [T]he Confrontation Clause guarantees an opportunity for effective cross-examination, not cross-examination that is effective in whatever way, and to whatever extent, the defense might wish. Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 679, 106 S.Ct. 1431, 89 L.Ed.2d 674 (1986) (quoting Delaware v. Fensterer, 474 U.S. 15, 20, 106 S.Ct. 292, 88 L.Ed.2d 15 (1985)). The Supreme Court consistently has held that a Confrontation Clause violation occurs when a trial judge prohibits any inquiry into why a witness may be biased. United States v. Larson, 495 F.3d 1094, 1108 (9th Cir.2007) (en banc) (Graber, J., concurring). However, when some inquiry is permitted, trial judges retain wide latitude ... to impose reasonable limits on such cross-examination. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. at 679, 106 S.Ct. 1431. No Confrontation Clause violation occurs `as long as the jury receives sufficient information to appraise the biases and motivations of the witness.' Larson, 495 F.3d at 1109 (Graber, J., concurring, but writing for a majority of the court on this point) (quoting United States v. Shabani, 48 F.3d 401, 403 (9th Cir.1995)). Hayes's cross-examination of Garcia gave the jury ample opportunity to appraise her biases and motivations. Hayes was not barred from asking Garcia whether she actively sought immunity. He did ask her, and she denied pursuing it. Hayes claims entitlement not just to the opportunity to question Garcia about this potential bias, but to put on an additional witness to refute Garcia's responses. This is more than the Confrontation Clause guarantees in light of the limited potential value of the proposed testimony from Wiles. The jury was well aware that Garcia had immunity. Whatever pro-prosecution bias might flow from that fact alone was plainly revealed. Even if Wiles's testimony could have established definitively that Garcia sought immunity rather than having it forced upon her, that difference was unlikely to have changed the jury's impression of her motivations. The fact of having immunity at all provided most of the reason that jurors might view Garcia's testimony skeptically. In any case, Wiles's proposed testimony was relevant only to impeaching Garcia on the collateral issue of her immunity deal. It did not relate to her testimony implicating Hayes, and so it was unlikely to influence the jury's impression of Garcia's trustworthiness on the central issue of Hayes's guilt. Moreover, the proposed testimony by Wiles would not have been especially impeaching of Garcia. That Wiles may have thought that it was important for Garcia to obtain immunity does not mean that Garcia did or that she understood what Wiles sought to negotiate on her behalf with the prosecutor. Garcia's testimony about when she received immunity was equivocal and acknowledged that she could be mistaken. Garcia testified that she didn't even know what [immunity] was before her involvement in the trial. That Wiles had a different perception of immunity would not have had represented much of a contradiction. A recent en banc decision of our court in a case with analogous facts supports our denial of relief, though the fractured opinions in that case provided no majority rationale. In Murdoch v. Castro, 609 F.3d 983 (9th Cir.2010) (en banc), the defendant sought disclosure of a letter a prosecution witness, Dinardo, sent to his lawyer. The letter allegedly revealed that Dinardo had been coerced into testifying against the defendant, and that his testimony was false. The defendant sought the letter as a basis for impeaching Dinardo, but the trial court denied access on the ground that it was protected by attorney-client privilege. Id. at 987. A five-judge plurality of the en banc court held that the Supreme Court has not clearly established whether and in what circumstances the attorney-client privilege must give way in order to protect a defendant's Sixth Amendment confrontation rights. Id. at 995-96. The plurality concluded, as a result, that it could not grant relief under AEDPA. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). Judge Silverman provided the outcome-determinative sixth vote, but he concurred under different reasoning. Judge Silverman reasoned that [t]here was no conflict between the attorney-client privilege and the Confrontation Clause, because the defendant's lawyer did not move to strike the testimony as to which cross-examination was limited. 609 F.3d at 996 (Silverman, J., concurring). The Murdoch opinions suggest the same result we have independently reached, because the conditions of both the Murdoch plurality and Judge Silverman's concurrence are satisfied in this case: (1) cross-examination was limited because of attorney-client privilege, and (2) and the defendant did not seek to strike the testimony he claims was not fully subject to cross-examination. But neither rationale garnered a majority of the court in Murdoch. When a fragmented Court decides a case and no single rationale explaining the result enjoys the assent of [a majority], the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken by those Members who concurred in the judgments on the narrowest grounds. Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 193, 97 S.Ct. 990, 51 L.Ed.2d 260 (1977) (quotation and citation omitted); see also Bradley v. Henry, 518 F.3d 657 (9th Cir.2008), amending 510 F.3d 1093 (9th Cir.2007) (applying the Marks rule to an en banc decision of the Ninth Circuit). The Marks rule does not distill a majority from the Murdoch votes, because the plurality opinion and Judge Silverman's concurrence offer independent ways of reaching the same result. Neither is broader or narrower than the other. [2] See United States v. Rodriguez-Preciado, 399 F.3d 1118, 1140 (2005) (Berzon, J., dissenting in part) ( Marks is workableone opinion can meaningfully be regarded as `narrower' than anotheronly when one opinion is a logical subset of other, broader opinions. In essence, the narrowest opinion must present a common denominator of the Court's reasoning. (quotation and citation omitted)). While the Murdoch court, were it presented with this case, would reach the same result we do, the lack of a majority rationale in that case leads us to rely on our own Confrontation Clause analysis. We conclude that the district court properly denied this claim.