Opinion ID: 556408
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Propriety of the Post-Trial Evidentiary Hearing

Text: 21 Defendants argue that the district court erred in admitting some of the central findings of the SIC Report relating to the County's pattern of negligence in failing to investigate and discipline instances of police and prosecutorial misconduct. Defendants focus in particular on the district court's decision to admit selected excerpts from the SIC Report without a hearing and to conduct a trustworthiness hearing only at the post-trial stage after the jury had already reached a finding of liability against the County. They insist that the district court's deferral of a full trustworthiness determination until the conclusion of trial constituted a denial of their right to a timely and meaningful trustworthiness hearing. Defendants argue that the delay was prejudicial because when the hearing took place the court had already invested much time and effort in conducting the trial and the jury had already relied on this evidence in rendering a verdict. This, it is argued, necessarily compromised the trial court's impartiality in reaching a post-trial determination of the trustworthiness of the Report. 22 It is important to note that, contrary to defendants' claim, the district court did not defer a ruling on the admissibility of selected portions of the Report until after the post-trial trustworthiness hearing, but found as a preliminary matter that they were admissible. Gentile v. County of Suffolk, 129 F.R.D. at 440. He thereby explicitly relied on Fed.R.Evid. 104(a), which states that [p]reliminary questions concerning the ... admissibility of evidence shall be determined by the court.... Id. Indeed, in admitting excerpts of the Report, Judge Weinstein clearly stated at trial that he was making a factual finding that these excerpts were trustworthy, thereby complying with the condition governing the public records exception to the hearsay rule, Fed.R.Evid. 803(8)(C). That rule provides for the admissibility in civil actions and proceedings and against the Government in criminal cases [of] factual findings resulting from an investigation made pursuant to authority granted by law, unless the sources of information or other circumstances indicate lack of trustworthiness. 23 It is true that in deciding to admit selected portions of the Report, Judge Weinstein rejected defendants' request to conduct an evidentiary hearing on its trustworthiness before reaching a ruling on admissibility. He noted, however, that he would have been willing to grant such a hearing prior to trial, but that, in view of plaintiffs' pretrial notice that the Report would be offered into evidence, defendants' request for a such a hearing on the third day of trial was untimely. At the same time, he informed defendants' counsel that he would give him the opportunity to seek a post-trial review of the trustworthiness of the Report if the County was found liable so that defendants would not [be] prejudiced by your failure to raise the issue in a timely way.... After the jury verdict against the County, defendants did move for and were granted a post-trial hearing on admissibility, and it was in this context that Judge Weinstein fully considered and rejected their arguments that selected portions of the Report were untrustworthy. 24 In light of this sequence of events, the judge acted fully within the scope of his authority both in first admitting selected portions of the Report without an evidentiary hearing, and in later allowing defendants to contest the trustworthiness of the Report in a post-trial proceeding. Defendants are not entitled as a matter of law to an evidentiary hearing to resolve questions of admissibility merely because they request one. As stated in United States v. Boffa, 89 F.R.D. 523, 528 (D.Del.1981): 25 In general, an evidentiary hearing need not be granted as a matter of course and must be held only if the moving papers allege facts with sufficient definiteness, clarity and specificity to enable the trial court to conclude that relief must be granted if the facts alleged are proved. United States v. Carrion, 463 F.2d 704, 706 (9th Cir.1972). General and conclusory factual allegations which are based upon mere suspicion or conjecture, however, will not suffice to necessitate a hearing. Cohen v. United States, 378 F.2d 751, 760 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 897, 88 S.Ct. 217, 19 L.Ed.2d 215 (1967). Moreover, if facts urged in support of a hearing would not entitle the moving party to relief as a matter of law, no evidentiary hearing is required. See United States v. Irwin, 612 F.2d 1182 (9th Cir.1980). 26 There is no evidence on the record before us that defendants alleged facts with sufficient specificity that would, if proved, have required the district court to rule the SIC Report inadmissible as a matter of law and thus made the granting of an evidentiary hearing mandatory. Defendants' allegations in their memorandum of law briefing this question at trial were general and conclusory, focusing on the Report's supposed lack of relevance, its possible prejudicial effect and extant (though unspecified) questions concerning the integrity of the report. 27 Indeed, prevailing law on this issue indicates that admissibility of evidence of this sort is generally favored. See Rule 803(8)(C) of the Fed.R.Evid. Reports such as those issued by the Commission are presumed to be admissible in the first instance, Masemer v. Delmarva Power and Light Co., 723 F.Supp. 1019, 1021 (D.Del.1989), and the party opposing the introduction of a report bears the burden of coming forward with enough 'negative factors' to persuade a court that a report should not be admitted. Id., citing Beech Aircraft Corp. v. Rainey, 488 U.S. 153, 167, 109 S.Ct. 439, 448, 102 L.Ed.2d 445 (1988). This presumption of admissibility extends not merely to factual determinations in the narrow sense, but also to conclusions or opinions that are based upon a factual investigation. Beech Aircraft Corp. v. Rainey, 488 U.S. at 170, 109 S.Ct. at 450. Since defendants did not meet their burden of specifying negative factors that would outweigh the presumption favoring admissibility of the SIC Report, they were certainly not entitled as a matter of law to an evidentiary hearing in the middle of a trial. 28 Although we find that defendants were not entitled as a matter of law to a trustworthiness hearing, defendants' argument suggests that once the judge agreed to have one, it should have been conducted prior to the completion of trial and the jury's verdict. To do otherwise, the argument goes, compromises the trial court's impartiality in reaching a final determination on the issue of trustworthiness. While this argument has some surface plausibility, it fails to recognize that a decision to postpone a hearing on a motion to the post-trial phase, though not ordinarily favored, falls within the discretion of the district court and is generally permissible for good cause. See United States v. Thompson, 558 F.2d 522, 525 (9th Cir.1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 914, 98 S.Ct. 1466, 55 L.Ed.2d 504 (1978); see also United States v. Montilla, 870 F.2d 549 (1989), modified on other grounds, 907 F.2d 115 (9th Cir.1990); United States v. Tortorello, 480 F.2d 764, 785 n. 18 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 866, 94 S.Ct. 63, 38 L.Ed.2d 86 (1973); United States v. Boffa, 89 F.R.D. at 533-34. 29 In this case, defendants had pretrial notice of plaintiffs' intention to introduce the SIC Report, failed to request an evidentiary hearing until the third day of trial and did not controvert a presumption favoring its admission. 2 Under the circumstances, it was certainly within the discretion of the district court to admit carefully selected excerpts from the Report and defer a full hearing on trustworthiness until after the completion of trial. This decision was justified on grounds of trial management and judicial economy and also by the court's concern about balancing the danger of prejudice posed by unedited admission of the Report against its probative value in supporting plaintiffs' Monell claim. Indeed, the court's decision to grant defendants a post-trial hearing afforded them greater procedural protection than they were legally entitled to, and reflected its desire to avoid the possible prejudice resulting from defendants' own failure to file a timely motion for such a hearing. 30 Matters would stand quite differently, of course, if defendants could sustain the claim, advanced in oral argument, that the deferral of the trustworthiness hearing to the post-trial stage somehow inhibited them from bringing evidence to the attention of the jury during the trial itself that would have impeached or otherwise undermined the credibility of admitted portions of the Report. In making this claim, defendants rely in particular on a statement made by Judge Weinstein in deciding to admit selected portions of the Report: 31 I am very reluctant to allow this in, but I am not going to sit here for weeks and weeks and weeks and in effect retry the SIC matter, which is what would be required if the plaintiffs were to make out a case under Monell. 32 Defendants argue that this statement discouraged them from introducing evidence at trial to contest the trustworthiness of the Report. 33 We find defendants' argument without merit both on conceptual and factual grounds. First, defendants fail to distinguish between a trustworthiness determination, which is made by the trial court to decide whether certain evidence (e.g., a government report) is admissible, and a credibility determination, which is made by the trier of fact to decide exactly what weight to accord to evidence that has been admitted. Second, the argument has no basis in the trial record. It is significant in this connection that after Judge Weinstein made a factual finding at trial that the SIC Report was trustworthy in order to admit portions of it, he explicitly denied plaintiffs' motion that the jury be instructed that the Report was trustworthy, emphasizing that his trustworthiness determination is a basis for my f[i]nding in order to admit it but I'm not going to characterize it for the jury. Furthermore, in prefacing his reading of excerpts of the Report to the jury he noted that [t]he findings of this Commission are irrelevant to the claims against the four police officers and are admitted in regard to the claim against Suffolk County, for whatever weight you wish to give them  (emphasis added). Finally, in rejecting defendants' claim at the post-trial trustworthiness hearing that they were prejudiced by admission of the Report, Judge Weinstein explicitly noted that defendants had ample opportunity at trial to introduce testimony diminishing the credibility of the Report: 34 The trustworthiness and probative value of the SIC report, considered in conjunction with the limiting instructions given by the court, other protections afforded defendants and the opportunity defendants were given to produce evidence in derogation of the report, adequately protected against the risk that the excerpts read to the jury may have had an unfair prejudicial effect. 35 129 F.R.D. at 461 (emphasis added). 36 We see no merit to defendants' contention that Judge Weinstein's statement at trial, quoted above, that he did not want to retry the SIC matter somehow inhibited them from calling witnesses to challenge the Report. We believe that this argument rests on a misreading of the remark in the overall context of the trial. The judge's concern here was that, if he did not admit any portion of the Report, plaintiffs would be in the position of having to introduce an extensive range of evidence, already considered by the Commission, in order to prove that the individual defendants' violation of their rights was the result of an established custom or policy of the County. It was clear, in other words, that the judge's concern was not with the burden posed by the prospect of defendants' challenge to the Report, but with the additional evidentiary burden imposed upon plaintiffs' case by not admitting portions of it. Judge Weinstein reiterated this concern in ruling on defendants' post-trial trustworthiness motion: 37 Were reports such as the SIC report to be excluded, plaintiffs would be forced to introduce proof of innumerable individual incidents of police and prosecutorial misconduct in order to show that a municipal practice, policy or custom existed.... Such a limitation would also needlessly duplicate--at great cost to the parties, the court and the taxpayers--the work of a competent agency already vested with the expertise and legislative authority to conduct such inquiries. 38 Id. at 459-60. 39 At oral argument of this appeal, we pressed defendants' counsel to identify a specific reference in the trial record that would demonstrate that defendants were precluded from calling witnesses to attack the credibility of the SIC Report. Counsel was asked to submit a letter that would pinpoint in the record exactly where the district court restricted defendants on this issue. The written response of defendants' counsel, however, fails to persuade us that the court prohibited defendants from presenting evidence at trial that would challenge the credibility of the Report. 3 It appears that defendants' decision not to call witnesses at trial on the issue of the credibility of the Report was a product of understandable trial strategy 4 rather than the result of any ruling by the district court. 40 In sum, we find that in following the procedure regarding the SIC Report set forth above, the judge did not commit reversible error. 41 Aside from challenging the timing of the trustworthiness evidentiary hearing, defendants also allege that the hearing itself was procedurally flawed and did not provide them with a full and fair opportunity to examine the trustworthiness of the Report. They claim that the district court refused to permit them to call either Dean Trager, Chairman of the Commission, or any of the Commissioners, and that they were unable to review approximately 4,000 pages of transcript of testimony that the Commission took at private hearings. However, when the question of calling the Commission Chairman as a witness at the post-trial hearing was initially raised, Judge Weinstein pointed out that this might pose particular problems but explicitly invited defendants to call other members of the Commission as an alternative. Defendants thereafter apparently made no attempt to call any of the five Commissioners other than Dean Trager at the post-trial hearing, and their witness list submitted in advance of the hearing did not include the names of any other Commissioners. Moreover, defendants do not advance any specific allegations suggesting that the district court abused its discretion in its discovery rulings at the trustworthiness hearing. In view of defendants' failure to identify any negative factors rebutting the presumption of the SIC Report's trustworthiness, we find that the court's refusal to grant certain contested discovery motions did not deny defendants their opportunity for a full and fair trustworthiness hearing.