Opinion ID: 1384933
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: did the immunity agreement and resulting inculpatory testimony deprive zinn of a fair trial?

Text: On appeal, Zinn argues that Agreement # 1, premised as it was on Return of [victim] alive or conviction of her killers, was an impermissible condition to the grant of immunity in that it coerced testimony calculated to return a guilty verdict against Zinn regardless of the actual facts. This is an issue of first impression in New Mexico, and the parties in their briefs rely on a substantial number of federal and other out-of-state authority. In doing so, the parties do not disagree as to what the law is. Rather, they disagree as to the applicability of the law to the facts of this case. The leading federal authority is United States v. Dailey, 759 F.2d 192 (1st Cir.1985), wherein the government granted accomplices an immunity agreement in which the government promised to recommend a specific term of imprisonment depending principally upon the value to the Government of certain desired testimony. Id. at 194. The court held that the agreement did not deny the defendant's right to due process because the trial court had provided the following traditional safeguards: (1) informing the jury of the exact nature of the agreement; (2) permitting defense counsel to cross-examine the accomplices concerning the agreement; and (3) instructing the jury to weigh the accomplices' testimony carefully. By way of dictum the court stated, [W]e note that at present we can think of no instance in which the government would be justified in making a promised benefit contingent upon the return of an indictment or a guilty verdict. Id. at 201. The court in United States v. Waterman, 732 F.2d 1527 (8th Cir.), vacated en banc by an equally divided court, 732 F.2d 1533 (8th Cir.1984), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1065, 105 S.Ct. 2138, 85 L.Ed.2d 496 (1985) at first reversed the trial court's decision in a case where the government's immunity agreement was conditioned on an accomplice's giving testimony that would lead to further indictments. Without comment, the court then vacated its decision, so that Waterman stands for the proposition that the agreement under review did not deprive the defendant of a fair trial. The court in Dailey took notice of Waterman, but only to point out that the facts before it did not present as much of a risk to a defendant's right to fair trial as did the facts reviewed by the Eighth Circuit in Waterman. The dictum in Dailey doubtless was intended as a restrictive comment on Waterman. Generally speaking, the rule in the federal circuits is as follows. So long as an immunity agreement falls short of requiring that an accomplice's testimony return a conviction against the defendant, and so long as the traditional safeguards outlined in Dailey are provided, the defendant is said not to have been denied a fair trial. See United States v. Miceli, 446 F.2d 256 (1st Cir.1971); United States v. Insana, 423 F.2d 1165 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 841, 91 S.Ct. 83, 27 L.Ed.2d 76 (1970); United States v. Vida, 370 F.2d 759 (6th Cir.1966), cert. denied, 387 U.S. 910, 87 S.Ct. 1695, 18 L.Ed.2d 630 (1967); but see United States v. Valle-Ferrer, 739 F.2d 545 (11th Cir.1984), in which an agreement conditioned on testimony resulting in a conviction was said not to have deprived the defendant of a fair trial. Further, so long as permissible agreements as discussed above are involved, the federal circuits do not look upon an accomplice's testimony under an immunity agreement as a question of admissibility, but as a question of credibility, United States v. Evans, 697 F.2d 240 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 460 U.S. 1086, 103 S.Ct. 1779, 76 L.Ed.2d 350 (1983), and as evidence to be weighed by the jury, United States v. Gomez, 810 F.2d 947 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 107 S.Ct. 2488, 96 L.Ed.2d 379 (1987). The rule in the state courts is slightly stricter than in the federal circuits. In People v. Green, 102 Cal. App.2d 831, 228 P.2d 867 (1951), the court struck down a conviction where an immunity agreement was conditioned on an accomplice's testimony leading to the defendant's being bound over for trial. In People v. Medina, 41 Cal. App.3d 438, 116 Cal. Rptr. 133 (1974), the court reversed a conviction in a situation where the immunity agreement provided that the accomplice must not deviate in her testimony from her earlier recorded statement given to police. The court interpreted such an arrangement as meaning that the accomplice was placed under a strong compulsion to testify in a particular fashion. 41 Cal. App.3d at 455, 116 Cal. Rptr. at 145. The decision in Medina, however, is limited by People v. Allen, 42 Cal.3d 1222, 232 Cal. Rptr. 849, 729 P.2d 115 (1986), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 108 S.Ct. 202, 98 L.Ed.2d 153 (1987), where an immunity agreement was not executed until after an accomplice made a pre-trial statement. The accomplice then testified in accord with his earlier statement to the police. The court held that the accomplice was not, by the holding in Medina, placed under a strong compulsion to testify in a particular fashion. 42 Cal.3d at 1255, 232 Cal. Rptr. at 867, 729 P.2d at 132. As in the federal circuits, so too in the state courts, the principal requirement for the validity of an immunity agreement is that the accomplice testify truthfully, People v. Lucev, 188 Cal. App.3d 551, 233 Cal. Rptr. 222 (1986); likewise, absent an agreement that induces an accomplice to testify in a certain fashion, the testimony of an accomplice goes to credibility, not to admissibility. State v. Blevins, 108 Idaho 239, 697 P.2d 1253 (App. 1985), State v. Nerison, 136 Wis.2d 37, 401 N.W.2d 1 (1987). We now turn to an analysis of Agreement # 1. It must be kept in mind that at the time the agreement was executed the district attorney did not yet know that the victim had been murdered or if she had been murdered, who her murderers were. The purpose of Agreement # 1 was to provide the district attorney with information leading either to the return of the victim alive or to the conviction of her killers if she was dead. It is obvious then that Agreement # 1 focused on the State's attempt to investigate its gradually forming case, and not on the State's efforts to direct its prosecutorial gaze upon Zinn. This fact alone makes the agreement different from any agreement censured by the cases we have just discussed. Had the State known that Zinn was its principal defendant, then Agreement # 1 would conceivably have been suspect as conditioned upon the accomplices' giving the State a certain result directed against a certain defendant. As it was, however, the statements which Scartaccini and Sliger made to the police were just as inculpatory of Pierce (if not more so, since he pulled the trigger) than they were of Zinn. The essential question to be asked here is what risk for perjury existed on the night that Scartaccini and Sliger gave their statements to the police. In answering that question, we must keep in mind that unlike the other immunity agreements we have reviewed in the cases above, this was an agreement negotiated between a defense attorney and a prosecuting attorney. The fact that Scartaccini and Sliger were not aware that the negotiations were going on, and had no opportunity to enter into them, greatly reduces the risk that they would perjure themselves in giving their statements. Zinn asks us to make a substantial leap of faith when he argues that once Scartaccini and Sliger learned that Taylor and the district attorney had concluded an agreement, Scartaccini and Sliger from different jail cells simultaneously concocted a false story that was the same in all essentials. Even given the possibility that Scartaccini and Sliger possessed the mental acumen to piece together a virtually identical story of the kidnapping and murder (which seems unlikely, since they initially had failed to construct a credible story placing them in Muleshoe, Texas on the weekend in question), it also must be remembered that it was not Agreement # 1 which was controlling by the time of trial, but Agreement # 2, and the latter agreement said nothing about Scartaccini and Sliger returning a conviction. Finally, Taylor's recollection of Agreement # 2, as meaning that his clients would be granted immunity regardless of the outcome of Zinn's trial, likewise demonstrates that the State had used Agreement # 1 not to make a case against Zinn, but simply to make a case. As such, Agreement # 1 was a proper inducement promoting the State's investigation and was not prejudicial to Zinn, either before or during his trial.