Opinion ID: 2978059
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Agent Goodell’s Summary of Fance’s Interview

Text: Pope claims a witness statement provided by the government materially misrepresented the completeness of the testimony it described. Investigator Sheila Goodell produced the statement at issue after interviewing Fance. Although Fance told Goodell about Pope’s drug transaction on the way to the meeting with Peake, Goodell did not mention the incident in the report. The prosecution did not question Goodell about the report during direct examination. According to Pope, he relied upon the alleged “completeness” of Goodell’s statement, and was later surprised when Fance testified about the first delivery. Pope asserts that the government’s conduct violated its obligations under the Jencks Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3500. “The Jencks Act requires the government to provide defendants with copies of certain reports and documents after the government witness has testified on direct examination.” United States v. DeFranco, 30 F.3d 664, 667 (6th Cir. 1994). Pope claims surprise not from anything Goodell said, but from Fance’s testimony regarding the first delivery. Goodell’s summary only qualifies as Jencks material if the witness—in this case, Fance—affirmatively adopts the statement, see 18 U.S.C. § 3500(e)(1); United States v. Arnold, 890 F.2d 825, 829 (6th Cir. 1989), or it represents “a - 13 - No. 08-1219 United States v. Pope substantially verbatim recital of an oral statement made by said witness and recorded contemporaneously with the making of such oral statement,” 18 U.S.C. § 3500(e)(2). Neither condition applies here. Goodell created the report after the interview, and Fance never saw it. Goodell also testified that she wrote the summary in her own words, not Fance’s. And she omitted many of Fance’s statements, making her report anything but a verbatim transcript. Thus, the government had no obligation to furnish the defense with Goodell’s report, and no Jencks Act violation occurred. Similarly, Pope’s claim that the government misled him into relying upon Goodell’s report as a complete statement of Fance’s trial testimony finds no support in law or fact. The government provided a copy of the report to the defense purely as a courtesy. Goodell, not Fance, authored the report, and the government never indicated that it contained Fance’s entire interview. Pope makes a spurious claim that because the summary contained certain details—e.g., that Fance and Pope planned to go Christmas shopping on December 12—he justifiably relied on it as a complete statement of Fance’s testimony. But Pope provides no authority to support this expansive proposition, nor could he. Pope therefore had no reasonable basis for concluding that Goodell’s report represented a comprehensive statement of Fance’s anticipated trial testimony. In any event, Pope fails to show prejudice. Defense counsel confronted Fance about the first delivery on crossexamination. Counsel also questioned Goodell about why she omitted Fance’s statements from the - 14 - No. 08-1219 United States v. Pope summary, and seized the opportunity to argue that Goodell acted nefariously in deciding what to include and what to omit. The district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Pope a new trial.