Opinion ID: 462493
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Confrontation of Cobb with Telex

Text: 146 When the government called Potkonjak and offered most of the disclosed portion of the telex into evidence, Agent Cobb had already testified and had been excused. The defense moved for an order that the government make Cobb available or reveal his whereabouts so that he might be subpoenaed. The court denied the motion, and Cobb was not recalled. DiSalvo contends that the court's refusal to permit confrontation of Cobb with the telex violated his rights under the Sixth Amendment, the Jencks Act, and Brady v. Maryland. 147 The Jencks Act and Brady arguments are easily disposed of. The Jencks Act requires the government to produce, but only on motion of the defendant after the witness has testified on direct examination, any statement of the witness it may have relating to the subject matter as to which the witness has testified. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3500. There are two independent reasons why no Jencks Act violated occurred. First, the government had already produced the portion of the telex in question before Cobb testified. Second, the telex is not a statement of Cobb's. The act defines statement [of a witness] as (1) a written statement made by the witness and signed or otherwise adopted and approved by him, (2) a substantially verbatim contemporaneous recording, or a transcription thereof, of an oral statement made by the witness, or (3) a statement made by the witness to a grand jury. The telex fits in none of these categories. Cobb was a source of information for the telex, but Potkonjak composed it, and not as a transcription of a recording of Cobb's words but as a summary of highlights. 148 Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 1196, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), requires the government to produce, on request, any exculpatory information it may have. As noted above, the government had already produced the relevant portion of the telex before Cobb testified. Consequently, there was no Brady violation. 149 It would appear that for the same reason there was no violation of the Confrontation Clause, either. The defendants had the telex when Cobb testified; they could have examined him on it then. But DiSalvo makes the following argument: the defense learned that Cobb was a source of the information in the telex only after Potkonjak testified. During Cobb's testimony the defense had no reason to suspect that Cobb had anything to do with the telex. Thus the need to cross-examine Cobb with the telex became apparent only after Potkonjak's testimony. 150 We think that the defense had every reason to suspect that Cobb had something to do with the telex. The defense knew that Cobb was one of the two undercover agents who had made contact with Balistrieri and his associates and that the events described in the telex were covered in Cobb's testimony on direct examination. We think the true reason why the defense did not attempt to confront Cobb with the telex is well stated in DiSalvo's brief: 151 [T]he telex itself cut both ways. It was exculpatory because it did not include numerous details about the Peppercorn conversation. Yet the fact that it mentioned the Peppercorn conversation at all tended to lend credibility to the agents' testimony. 152 Not to confront Cobb with the telex was apparently a tactical decision based on the defense's judgment that to put it into evidence might do more harm than good. We think the defense chose to run the risk of the government's later introduction of the telex. Because DiSalvo could have confronted Cobb with the telex but chose not to, no violation of his rights under the Confrontation Clause occurred. 153 United States v. De Gudino, 722 F.2d 1351 (7th Cir.1983), relied on by DiSalvo, does not compel a contrary result. In that case the trial court refused to allow the defense to question the witness about a previous arrest. We emphasized that defense counsel must be permitted to expose the facts from which the factfinder can draw inferences relating to the reliability of the witness and to make a record from which to argue why the witness might be biased. Id. at 1354. But we also noted that the trial judge has discretion to control and limit cross-examination. Id. The crucial question on appellate review, we said, is whether the jury had sufficient information to make a discriminating appraisal of the witness's motives and bias. Id. Finding that the jury did have sufficient information and that the witness's arrest had minimal value in demonstrating bias, we affirmed the conviction. 154 In De Gudino a specific piece of information about the witness's background known to the defense was kept from the jury. Cf. Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 94 S.Ct. 1105, 39 L.Ed.2d 347 (1974) (violation of Confrontation Clause to keep from jury information about witness's previous adjudication as juvenile delinquent). There is no corresponding feature in the instant case. The edited telex was in evidence, and the defense could use it to argue to the jury that Cobb fabricated some parts of his testimony. We cannot see that the defense's inability to cross-examine Cobb on the telex deprived the jury of any known information at all. Thus the test question of De Gudino does not really apply in these circumstances. Of course, the jury was denied whatever information it would have received from the cross-examination of Cobb on the telex, but the decision whether to permit cross-examination for whatever it might produce is one that is left to the sound discretion of the trial court. Because Potkonjak testified that the telex gave only the highlights of Cobb's report and not necessarily in Cobb's own words, because DiSalvo points to no specific information relevant to the assessment of Cobb's credibility that was kept from the jury, and because the actual cross-examination of Cobb was sufficiently thorough to enable the jury to make a discriminating appraisal of him as a witness, we cannot find that the trial court abused its discretion in not permitting Cobb to be recalled for cross-examination on the telex.