Opinion ID: 2434794
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The impeachment testimony

Text: Rodríguez-Romero's first argument is that the district court violated his constitutional right to present a complete defense by refusing to let him introduce extrinsic evidence that he claims could have impeached Police Officer Víctor M. Veguilla Figuero. On October 24, 2008, Veguilla arrested Rodríguez-Romero with 150 vials of crack outside a home in Guayama, Puerto Rico. Rodríguez-Romero had stopped in front of the house in a grey Ford Taurus. [8] Veguilla testified that he received an instruction to arrest Rodríguez-Romero from a colleague, Officer Pérez, who claimed to have witnessed Rodríguez-Romero conducting a drug sale with a co-conspirator named David de León. On the same day, Pérez arrested David de León. At trial, Rodríguez-Romero sought to introduce the testimony of Tomasa Colón-Pérez, David de León's mother and the owner of the house in front of which Rodríguez-Romero was arrested. The district court reviewed Colon-Pérez's testimony outside the presence of the jury. Colon-Pérez's offer of proof was that, on the evening of October 24, 2008, she was sitting outside her house when police officers ran into her house and arrested her son, David. She witnessed the officers handcuff her son, and then a female officer escorted her into a bedroom, where Colon-Pérez remained for a period of time. She was allowed to exit the bedroom and kiss her son before the officers escorted him out of the house through the door in the back of the room which leads to the yard. The officers then brought Colon-Pérez back into the bedroom. About two hours went by, according to Colon-Pérez, at which point the officers standing in the bedroom with her said something to the effect of, It's about to arrive. It's about to arrive. A few minutes later, the officers said, It arrived. The car arrived. Colon-Pérez then heard a voice in the house say, David, David. From the bedroom, she could not see who was speaking, nor could she identify the voice. Colón-Pérez was inside her home, could not see outside, and did not witness Rodríguez-Romero's arrest. Though the offer of proof at trial was less than lucid, Rodríguez-Romero's attorney apparently sought to introduce Colon-Pérez's testimony in order to impeach Veguilla by showing that: (1) Officer Pérez could not have witnessed David de León and Rodríguez-Romero conducting a drug sale, because de León was already under arrest at that point; and (2) more generally, the events that day could not have transpired as Veguilla claimed they had, since de León was arrested two hours before Rodríguez-Romero. Rodríguez-Romero's argument fails. Colón-Pérez did not witness the arrest of Rodríguez-Romero, which is the arrest Veguilla conducted and about which he testified. Colón-Pérez contradicted none of the specific events that Veguilla described in his testimony. Veguilla did not testify that the drug sale between de León and Rodríguez-Romero occurred outside Colón-Pérez's house, that de León and Rodríguez-Romero were immediately arrested following the sale, [9] or that de León was still present at the house when Veguilla arrested Rodríguez-Romero. Nor did Colón-Pérez see the car that was allegedly arriving such that she could establish that the activity she heard two hours after her son's arrest was indeed the arrest of Rodríguez-Romero. Rodríguez-Romero argues that the exclusion of Colón-Pérez's testimony denied him a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense, a right the Constitution guarantees, [w]hether rooted directly in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, or in the Compulsory Process or Confrontation clauses of the Sixth Amendment. Crane v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 683, 690, 106 S.Ct. 2142, 90 L.Ed.2d 636 (1986) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). Yet a defendant's right to present relevant evidence in his own defense is not unlimited, but rather is subject to reasonable restrictions. United States v. Scheffer, 523 U.S. 303, 308, 118 S.Ct. 1261, 140 L.Ed.2d 413 (1998). See also Taylor v. Illinois, 484 U.S. 400, 410, 108 S.Ct. 646, 98 L.Ed.2d 798 (1988) (The accused does not have an unfettered right to offer testimony that is incompetent, privileged, or otherwise inadmissible under standard rules of evidence.). A witness cannot testify to a matter unless there is evidence sufficient to support a finding that she has personal knowledge of the matter. Fed.R.Evid. 602. We fail to see how Colón-Pérez had sufficient personal knowledge to testify regarding Rodríguez-Romero's arrest, see id., nor do we understand how her testimony would have been relevant to impeach Veguilla, see Fed.R.Evid. 401, 403. We thus affirm. [10]