Opinion ID: 774782
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Devereaux's Opening Brief

Text: 26 It is well-established that an appellate court will not consider issues that were not properly raised before the district court. Slaven v. American Trading Transp. Co., 146 F.3d 1066, 1069 (9th Cir. 1998). Although our discussion above demonstrates that Devereaux barely presented and never supported his deliberate-fabrication-of-evidence claim before the district court, we nonetheless discuss the additional arguments that he has raised on appeal. As that discussion shows, his failure to allege and to offer proof of the requisite facts continues. 27 In his opening brief on appeal, Devereaux generally argues only that Defendants used improper methods in interviewing witnesses. He never argues that they pursued their investigation of him even though they knew or should have known that he was innocent. The closest that he comes to making such an argument is a vague reference to evidence that the state defendants . . . held an animus and preconception against Devereaux which led to their intentional manipulation of child witnesses. But the animus and preconception  referred to could just as well be Defendants' good-faith belief that Devereaux was guilty, which could lead to aggressive or manipulative questioning of the child witnesses in order to get them to testify truthfully, if reluctantly, to his guilt. We conclude that if Devereaux's brief is intended to raise a deliberate-fabrication-of-evidence claim, it is not based on any allegation that Defendants knew or should have known that he was innocent. 1 28 Thus, if there is a deliberate-fabrication-of-evidence argument in Devereaux's opening brief on appeal, then it must be based on a claim that Defendants' interviewing techniques were so coercive and abusive that Defendants knew or should have known that the interviews would yield false information. Liberally construed, Devereaux's brief does raise this argument: It includes a discussion of Pyle, and it makes repeated reference to coerc[ion] or influence[ ] to provide false testimony, and the like. 29 The problem once again, however, is that the improprieties Devereaux describes cannot possibly support his claim. The alleged improprieties are well described and addressed in the panel opinion. See Devereaux I, 218 F.3d at 1054-55. For example, Devereaux repeatedly focuses on the interview in which Perez, in Carrow's presence, confronted A.R. regarding her prior recantation of her allegations of abuse and threatened her with charges for false reporting if she stuck to her recantation. Devereaux emphasizes the fact that A.R. suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome and is therefore a particularly vulnerable witness. What Devereaux mentions only in passing is that, despite the coercive nature of the threat and despite A.R.'s heightened susceptibility, A.R. stuck to her recantation -Devereaux expressly recognizes that Perez  unsuccessfully applied pressure upon A.R. by threatening to prosecute her for perjury. (Emphasis added.) Because this coercive technique did not, on Devereaux's theory of the facts, yield any false testimony even though it was applied to an especially vulnerable witness, it can hardly serve as a basis for a claim that Defendants violated Devereaux's rights by using techniques that they knew or should have known would yield false information. 30 We conclude that to the extent that Devereaux has raised a deliberate-fabrication-of-evidence claim in his opening brief, he has again failed to allege facts that would support such a claim. The grant of summary judgment in favor of Defendants must therefore be affirmed.