Opinion ID: 2808339
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Birth Documents

Text: Through the custodian of the California Office of Vital Records, the government introduced Macias’s delayed registration of birth and the amending affidavit that had been executed by the border patrol agents. More specifically, the evidence showed that in 1998, Macias, then age 37, completed the application for a delayed registration of birth and mailed it to the California Office of Vital Records. The application contained the purported signatures of his mother, UNITED STATES V. MACIAS 7 Maria Macias (“Maria”), and a family friend, Ernestina Guerrero (“Guerrero”). The application provided that Guerrero was present at Macias’s birth on October 31, 1960, at “home” in Riverside, California. To receive a delayed registration of birth, the applicant must submit proof of his place of birth. Macias submitted with his application a copy of his daughter’s California birth certificate which listed her father’s (Macias’s) birthplace as California. The California Office of Vital Records issued the delayed registration of birth with the above information and mailed it to Macias. As set forth previously, in 2012, the agents filed an amending affidavit, which was attached to the delayed registration of birth. Although the delayed registration of birth was admitted at the first trial, the amending affidavit was not in existence at the time of the first trial. At the time the government introduced into evidence the delayed registration of birth with the attached amending affidavit, the two agents who signed the affidavit had not testified. However, defense counsel subsequently called Agent Kahl, and he testified with respect to their investigation of Macias’s birthplace and the execution of the amending affidavit. The government also introduced a copy of the previously mentioned Mexican birth certificate dated November 7, 1960, which provided that Macias was born in Mexico on October 31, 1960. Macias’s father, Felipe Macias, Sr. (“Felipe”), had signed this birth certificate, and there were two witnesses listed on it. This birth certificate had not been submitted at the first trial. Felipe testified that Macias was born in Yurecuaro, Michoacan, Mexico, and that he was present at Macias’s birth. Eight days after the birth, he and Maria took Macias to the civil registry and obtained this birth certificate. He further testified that Maria, who could not read or write, 8 UNITED STATES V. MACIAS did not sign the certificate but did place her fingerprint on it. The birth certificate also contained Felipe’s and Macias’s fingerprints.1 Consistent with this evidence, one of Macias’s older brothers, Gil Macias, testified that Macias was born in Yurecuaro, Michoacan, Mexico.