Opinion ID: 698644
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Denial of Criminal Justice Act funds

Text: 149 During the Group II trial, cooperating witness James Minor testified that in a Virginia hotel in August 1988 he received a 50-kilogram delivery of cocaine from an older man from California wearing glasses--a man who other government evidence suggested was appellant Childress. To rebut this testimony, Childress asked the district court for Criminal Justice Act (CJA) funds to call Dr. Wong, a California optometrist. Dr. Wong would evidently have testified that when he examined Childress's vision in 1989, his medical history card did not list a previous prescription for him; this might indicate that he did not wear prescription glasses at the time of the 50-kilogram transaction. Appellant told the court that Dr. Wong's fee for travel and testimony time would be $200 per hour, to which the court responded that CJA regulations required special approval of the chief judge of the district court for expert fees over $1,000. Although the court expressed skepticism about the need for such testimony, it nevertheless agreed to consider the motion. 150 The next day Childress withdrew his request. His counsel suggested that he would instead look for a local optometrist who could testify about Childress's prescription record. Five days later and two hours before he was to present his case to the jury, however, Childress renewed his request for CJA funds for Dr. Wong because he had been unable to find a local optometrist who could testify in person rather than by telephone. The court denied the request, finding it would intolerably delay the proceedings; it also denied Childress's motion for a mistrial and post-conviction motion for a new trial, concluding that he was not prejudiced by the lack of funds for Dr. Wong. Childress, 746 F.Supp. at 1141-42. At trial, Childress did not introduce the prescription record into evidence; instead, his sister testified (and received CJA funds for her testimony) that he wore neither prescription glasses nor sunglasses in August 1988; and he introduced his driver's license, which listed no vision restrictions. 151 Childress again argues that he was wrongly denied the CJA funds for Dr. Wong and that he was prejudiced by the denial. We reject these arguments. A district court deciding whether to authorize CJA funds for medical experts must determine whether the service is necessary to the preparation and presentation of an adequate defense, United States v. Chavis, 476 F.2d 1137, 1141 (D.C.Cir.1973) (emphasis in original); see also United States v. Anderson, 39 F.3d at 343. We review this determination of necessity for abuse of discretion. See United States v. Nichols, 21 F.3d 1016, 1017 (10th Cir.1994); United States v. Castro, 15 F.3d 417, 421 (5th Cir.1994); United States v. Becerra, 992 F.2d 960, 965 (9th Cir.1993). The district court here did not abuse its discretion by determining that Dr. Wong's services were not sufficiently necessary to the defense to justify spending thousands of dollars and calling the entire trial to a halt. Given that Childress would introduce his driver's license and his sister's testimony, the incremental value of Dr. Wong's testimony was slight: The blank on the prescription record could not establish conclusively that Childress had never worn prescription glasses and could say nothing about whether he ever wore non-prescription glasses, which would have been entirely consistent with Minor's testimony and the government's theory that Childress was the courier he had met. 152 Furthermore, we do not believe that Childress was prejudiced as a result of the denial of the CJA funds. Childress argues that he was forced by the denial of funds to introduce his driver's license to show that he had no visual impairment. The prosecution then used the license as a writing exemplar to prove that Childress signed the receipts for the hotel room where the 50-kilogram deal took place; thus, Childress claims, he was forced to provide crucial evidence for the prosecution and was thereby prejudiced. But there was no logical, one-to-one correspondence between the denial of funds for Dr. Wong and Childress's decision to introduce the license. Even if Wong had been able to testify, Childress might well have introduced the license to bolster his claim that he did not wear glasses; as we have said, the value of Dr. Wong's testimony about the prescription record would have been slight. And had it occurred to Childress that the license would supply crucial evidence to the prosecution, he might well have chosen not to introduce it, even if Dr. Wong had testified. To the extent that Childress was in a bind, moreover, it was largely of his own making. He withdrew the motion for funds voluntarily, failed to find a local witness, and then reinstated his request two hours before his case was set to start. We will not overturn Childress's conviction on the basis of his tactical choices.