Opinion ID: 46339
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Agent Stansel’s Testimony

Text: Hernandez was charged with transportation of illegal aliens in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(ii), which prohibits transporting illegal aliens knowing or with a reckless disregard for their immigration status. Hernandez’s challenge to Agent Stansel’s testimony revolves around whether Hernandez knew about or recklessly disregarded the passengers’ illegal status. Agent Stansel, a senior special agent with ICE, testified as an expert for the government. Hernandez argues that the district court erred when it admitted the testimony of Agent Stansel because certain portions of his testimony on Hernandez’s mental state came “unacceptably close” to illegal profiling. The Federal Rules of Evidence set out when a district court may permit expert testimony on a matter in dispute at trial. If scientific, technical, or specialized knowledge will aid the trier of fact in understanding the evidence or determining a fact in issue, an expert may testify. FED. R. EVID. 702. The expert, however, must be qualified by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education. Id. The testimony must be based “upon sufficient facts or data . . . [and] the product of reliable principles and methods.” Id. Critically for our purposes, an expert in a criminal case may not offer “an opinion or inference as to whether the defendant did or did not have the mental state or condition constituting an element of the crime charged.” FED. -5- R. EVID. 704(b). The defendant’s mental state is an issue for the trier of fact alone. Id. The district court erred in allowing Agent Stansel to testify to Hernandez’s mental state.1 A fine “borderline” exists between an improper opinion regarding the defendant’s mental state and “a mere explanation of the expert’s analysis of facts” relating to the defendant’s mental state. See United States v. Speer, 30 F.3d 605, 610 (5th Cir. 1994). An expert witness may violate Rule 704(b) by either explicitly offering an opinion as to the defendant’s state of mind or by giving the functional equivalent of such a statement. Id.; Gutierrez-Farias, 294 F.3d at 663. In Gutierrez-Farias, a Drug Enforcement Agency (“DEA”) agent testified as an expert on the business of transporting narcotics through South Texas, and we held that admission of that expert testimony was an abuse of discretion. See 294 F.3d at 663. The DEA agent’s testimony suggested that, because most drivers know 1 The parties do not address the required mental state for Hernandez’s conspiracy conviction. At the district court, the jury instruction for the conspiracy count read: “United States Code, Section 1324(a)(1)(A)(I) makes it a crime for anyone to conspire with someone else to transport or attempt to transport an illegal alien within the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that the illegal alien is here illegally, and in furtherance of the illegal alien’s violation of the law.” Neither party objected to the jury instructions. Agent Stansel’s improperly admitted testimony also affects the conspiracy conviction because the mental state in the jury instruction for conspiracy is the same as the mental state for the transportation of illegal aliens. -6- when they are smuggling drugs in their vehicles, Gutierrez must have known he was smuggling drugs. Id. “Rather than assisting the jury to understand the evidence presented on complicated fact issues, the agent presented the jury with a generalization that in most drug cases the person hired to transport the drugs knows that the drugs are in the vehicle.” Id. We held that this generalization was the functional equivalent of an agent’s direct comment on the defendant’s mental state and thus violated Rule 704(b). Id. In United States v. Mendoza-Medina, we held that the admission of similar expert testimony was an abuse of discretion. 346 F.3d 121, 128 (5th Cir. 2003). In Mendoza-Medina, a DEA agent testified about how people are recruited to transport drugs, the correlation between the amount of drugs in a load and the experience of the transporter, the importance of trust between the distributor and driver, and the practice of narcotic traffickers bringing their wives and children along with the specific intent of masking the drug trafficking offense. 346 F.3d at 127-28. Because Mendoza-Medina had his wife and child with him at the time of the stop, these generalized comments about distributors having to trust their couriers and the couriers’ practice of bring their families along were effectively used as substantive evidence that Mendoza-Medina also knew he carried drugs. Id. We held that use of this testimony was a violation of Rule 704(b) and came “unacceptably close” to -7- illegal profiling. See id. at 125. In this case, Agent Stansel testified that “camioneta” is a Spanish word meaning small bus or van and that law-enforcement officials generally refer to a camioneta operation as a van company that does not comply with regulations and that transports illegal aliens across the United States. He also noted that smugglers bring illegal aliens directly to the van companies, which then transport the aliens from larger cities, such as Houston and Dallas, to other locations in the United States. According to Agent Stansel, camioneta operations are considered a “front” for alien smuggling operations and do not put signs on their vans to avoid detection. The camioneta passengers do not volunteer that they are illegal aliens, and the company does not ask questions regarding the passengers’ immigration status so that its personnel can say they were unaware of it. Agent Stansel testified: Q. Now, Mr. Gilley was talking to you about, you know, what was required as far as asking for identification or verifying alien status. A. That’s correct. Q. Based on your understanding of those requirements, can someone just simply turn a blind eye to evidence that would indicate such and just plead ignorance? A. No, sir. Then they would be recklessly disregarding the fact that those people might be illegally in the country. Q. And again, these are not the kind of operations where someone’s going to ask or -8- someone’s going to tell, right? A. That’s correct. Q. And why is it that this is the practice? A. It is so that in a situation such as we have today, if you’re - - Q. Well, wait. Let’s talk about your experience. A. Right. In my experience, if they’re apprehended, then they can say: ‘I didn’t know, I didn’t talk to any of the people and I didn’t know what their immigration status was.’ In Agent Stansel’s opinion, border patrol agents watch for camioneta vans because they are “100% illegal” and the facts of this case were consistent with camioneta operations that he had investigated in the past. Agent Stansel’s generalization about the typical camioneta operation--that when the drivers avoid asking for or receiving information from aliens about their immigration status, they recklessly disregard the fact that their passengers may be in the country illegally--is problematic. His testimony is similar to the generalizations regarding the typical drug-smuggling operations in Mendoza-Medina and Gutierrez-Farias. GutierrezFarias, 294 F.3d at 663; Mendoza-Medina, 346 F.3d at 127-28. Although Agent Stansel did not expressly say that Hernandez knew or recklessly disregarded his passengers’ illegal immigration status, the clear inference was that Hernandez did so because the facts in this case were consistent with the typical camioneta -9- operation where, according to Agent Stansel, immigration status is disregarded. This is the “functional equivalent” of an express comment on Hernandez’s mental state. See GutierrezFarias, 294 F.3d at 663. The district court’s admission of this testimony by Agent Stansel was therefore an abuse of discretion.2 We do not hold that all of Agent Stansel’s testimony was improperly admitted; only that which amounted to a comment on Hernandez’s mental state was improper. If expert testimony would be helpful in assisting the trier of fact in understanding the evidence, background testimony by an expert familiar with the methods of transporting and smuggling illegal aliens is permitted, so long as the testimony does not comment on the defendant’s mental state. See United States v. Washington, 44 F.3d 1271, 1283 (5th Cir. 1995)(holding that an experienced narcotics agent may testify about the significance of certain conduct or methods of operation unique to the drug distribution evidence). We must next decide whether the error was harmless. Even when expert testimony is erroneously admitted, reversal is not 2 The government urges us to follow two unpublished opinions from the Ninth Circuit that permit expert testimony in transportation-of-illegal-alien cases. See United States v. Salazar-Munoz, 242 F.3d 385, 2000 WL 1529233 (9th Cir. 2000) (unpublished table decision); United States v. Vaca-Hernandez, 185 F.3d 871, 1999 WL 451214 (9th Cir. 1999) (unpublished table decision). Those cases are different from the situation in this case because while the expert testimony was admitted, the agents’ comments did not go to the defendants’ intent, knowledge, or mental state. See id. -10- required if the error is harmless. Gutierrez-Farias, 294 F.3d at 663. “[U]nless there is a reasonable possibility that the improperly admitted evidence contributed to the conviction, reversal is not required.” Mendoza-Medina, 346 F.3d at 127 (citing Williams, 957 F.2d at 1242). In both Mendoza-Medina and Gutierrez-Farias, the error was found to be harmless due to the substantial additional evidence provided at trial. Gutierrez-Farias, 294 F.3d at 663; MendozaMedina, 346 F.3d at 127-28. For example, in Mendoza-Medina the defendant had confessed to smuggling drugs and the confession was corroborated by other evidence. 346 F.3d at 129. In GutierrezFarias, the agent’s improper testimony was only a small part of “an otherwise strong case.” 294 F.3d at 663. Further, the district court attempted to cure the defects in the agent’s testimony by instructing the jury that it could not rely on the agent’s testimony alone as proof of the defendant’s mental state. Id. In this case, however, the circumstantial evidence is not nearly as strong as that in Gutierrez-Farias and Mendoza-Medina. See Gutierrez-Farias, 294 F.3d at 663; Mendoza-Medina, 346 F.3d at 127-28. There is no direct evidence of Hernandez’s knowledge, and apart from Agent Stansel’s testimony, the evidence of Hernandez’s knowledge of the passengers’ immigration status is slim. Hernandez did not confess to the crime charged, act aggressively toward law enforcement, or appear nervous during the -11- stop. Agent Stansel’s testimony served as a crucial part of the evidence presented at trial and provided the “link” that established Enlaces’s operations as similar to the typical illegal camioneta operation. The error in admitting Agent Stansel’s testimony is harmful because there is more than a “reasonable possibility that the improperly admitted evidence contributed to the conviction.” Mendoza-Medina, 346 F.3d at 127.