Opinion ID: 773307
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Special Agent Neal's Testimony

Text: 28 Special Agent Joan Neal, the FBI case agent in charge of the investigation of Ross's murder, testified in connection with the recorded telephone and visitation conversations between Peoples and Lightfoot. Drawing on her investigation, Agent Neal gave her opinion regarding the meaning of words and phrases used by the defendants during those conversations. Her testimony was not limited to coded, oblique language, but included plain English words and phrases. She did not personally observe the events and activities discussed in the recordings, nor did she hear or observe the conversations as they occurred. Agent Neal's testimony included her opinions about what the defendants were thinking during the conversations, phrased as contentions supporting her conclusion, repeated throughout her testimony, that the defendants were responsible for Ross's murder. 29 At various points during her testimony, Agent Neal asserted that Peoples went to Ross's house to murder Ross, that he had paid the killers to do the job, that Peoples's various comments about being in need of money revolved around his debt to hit men, and that both defendants had sought confirmation of Ross's death. She asserted that during the course of her investigation she had uncovered hidden meanings for apparently neutral words; for example, she testified that when one of the defendants referred to buying a plane ticket for Ross, he in fact meant killing Ross. In short, as the recordings of the Peoples/Lightfoot conversations were played for the jury, Agent Neal was allowed to offer a narrative gloss that consisted almost entirely of her personal opinions of what the conversations meant. During several hours of testimony alternating with recorded conversation, Agent Neal made the argument that the defendants had conspired to hire someone to kill Ross, had tendered substantial sums as a partial payment, and then had become anxious when Ross's death was not publicly reported. During direct examination, the prosecutor referred to Agent Neal's statements both as Agent Neal's contentions and as the contentions of the government. 30 The following excerpts are examples of Agent Neal's testimony. After a recording of Lightfoot requesting a loan was played, Agent Neal stated, I contend [Lightfoot] is needing a loan to pay the hit man to actually murder Ross. Peoples made repeated references in the taped conversations to lost and found situations. Agent Neal stated, When he discusses lost and found, I believe he is talking about no one had found the body yet. It's just a lost situation until somebody finds the body. After the jury heard a recording of Peoples saying, I done already gave my loot, Agent Neal stated, I contend that he has already paid the killers to do the job. In response to conversations that related to the burglary of Ross's house, Agent Neal testified, I believe [Peoples] was there to actually murder Ross at the time. 31 Both before and during trial, the defendants objected to the admission of Agent Neal's testimony. The government responded by arguing that Agent Neal's contentions constituted lay opinions admissible under Rule 701 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. 2 Stating that it was possible though not certain that Agent Neal's testimony was admissible under Rule 701, the district court ruled that her contentions were being admitted as snippets of early argument from the witness stand and not as evidence. United States v. Peoples, No. 98-00149-01/02-CR-W-6, 2000 WL 97180 at  (W.D. Mo. Jan. 25, 2000) (internal quotation marks omitted). 32 Federal Rule of Evidence 602 requires that a witness have personal knowledge of the matters about which she testifies, except in the case of expert opinions. Rule 701 adds that testimony in the form of lay opinions must be rationally based on the perception of the witness. When a law enforcement officer is not qualified as an expert by the court, her testimony is admissible as lay opinion only when the law enforcement officer is a participant in the conversation, has personal knowledge of the facts being related in the conversation, or observed the conversations as they occurred. See, e.g., United States v. Parsee, 178 F.3d 374, 379 (5th Cir. 1999) (witness was a participant in the conversation); United States v. Saulter, 60 F.3d 270, 276 (7th Cir. 1995) (witness had first hand knowledge of the facts being related); United States v. Awan, 966 F.2d 1415, 1430 (11th Cir. 1992) (undercover agent was a participant in the conversations and had personal knowledge of the facts being discussed). Lay opinion testimony is admissible only to help the jury or the court to understand the facts about which the witness is testifying and not to provide specialized explanations or interpretations that an untrained layman could not make if perceiving the same acts or events. 3 See United States v. Cortez, 935 F.2d 135, 139-40 (8th Cir. 1991); United States v. Figueroa- Lopez, 125 F.3d 1241, 1244-45 (9th Cir. 1997). 33 Law enforcement officers are often qualified as experts to interpret intercepted conversations using slang, street language, and the jargon of the illegal drug trade. See, e.g., United States v. Delpit, 94 F.3d 1134, 1144 (8th Cir. 1996) (police officer gave expert testimony interpreting slang and drug codes in connection with recorded telephone calls); United States v. Plunk, 153 F.3d 1011, 1017 (9th Cir. 1998) (police officer gave expert testimony based on his specialized knowledge of narcotics code terminology); United States v. Earls, 42 F.3d 1321, 1324-25 (10th Cir. 1994) (expert testimony was proper to show that defendants were speaking in code). What is essentially expert testimony, however, may not be admitted under the guise of lay opinions. See, e.g., United States v. Figueroa-Lopez, 125 F.3d at 1244-46; Harvey v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 33 F.3d 969, 971 (8th Cir. 1994); Wactor, 27 F.3d at 351; Kostelecky v. NL Acme Tool/NL Indus., Inc., 837 F.2d 828, 830 (8th Cir. 1988); Krueger v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 707 F.2d 312, 316-17 (8th Cir. 1983). Such a substitution subverts the disclosure and discovery requirements of Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 26 and 16 and the reliability requirements for expert testimony as set forth in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993) and Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999). 34 Agent Neal lacked first-hand knowledge of the matters about which she testified. Her opinions were based on her investigation after the fact, not on her perception of the facts. Accordingly, the district court erred in admitting Agent Neal's opinions about the recorded conversations. The court's instructions to the jury that Agent Neal's opinions constituted argument rather than evidence finds no warrant in the Federal Rules of Evidence and could not serve to render admissible that which was inadmissible testimony. 35 There remains the question whether the admission of Agent Neal's testimony constituted harmless error. We conclude that it did not. The erroneous admission of testimony is not harmless when there is a significant possibility that the testimony had a substantial impact on the jury. See Delpit, 94 F.3d at 1145. 36 In Delpit, we held that the admission of expert testimony interpreting wire- tapped telephone conversations was harmless despite the fact that the police expert's testimony appear[ed] on occasion to have gone beyond its permissible scope because the expert's occasional elaborations were supported by other evidence. Id. Unlike Agent Neal, however, the police witness in the Delpit case was qualified as an expert in interpreting street slang and code words. Id. Moreover, the Delpit error resulted only in occasional impermissible interjections within a body of properly admissible testimony, id., whereas the error in this case infected the totality of Agent Neal's testimony. Nor can we describe Agent Neal's testimony as grounded in other evidence, id., because it consisted largely of her assertions about the meaning of apparently clear statements, together with her addition of details and explanations absent from the recordings. Under the guise of offering lay opinion, Agent Neal was allowed to emboss apparently neutral conversations between the defendants with the imprimatur of the government's case. Rather than offering evidence of which she had personal knowledge, such as the details of her investigation, she was allowed repeatedly to assert that the defendants were discussing not everyday events, but a complicated murder plot. 37 We note that Larry Platt, a participant in some of the robberies, testified extensively against the defendants. His testimony, however, was not so damaging to them as to render Agent Neal's testimony harmless. Platt had no first-hand knowledge of Ross's murder, and he testified only to a series of conversations about issuing a plane ticket to Ross, conversations that he admits he never told anyone about until after he was charged in the robberies. Agent Neal's testimony contained conversations and details that were absent from Platt's testimony, particularly regarding the defendants' efforts to get money to pay hit men and to discover whether Ross's murder had been accomplished. The defendants also subjected Platt to rigorous cross- examination as an interested witness whose story had changed dramatically, and the jury may well have found his testimony inadequate to support a guilty verdict beyond a reasonable doubt had it not been buttressed by Agent Neal's supporting information and opinions. 38 Moreover, the jury may well have been inclined to give Agent Neal's conclusions undue weight because of her status as an FBI agent. Despite the fact that the court did not qualify her as an expert, Agent Neal was identified as a law enforcement officer, and we cannot rule out the possibility that the jurors may have been inclined to substitute her conclusions on the ultimate issue of the defendants' guilt for their own. In a word, Agent Neal's testimony so invaded the province of the jury that we cannot with confidence say that there was no significant possibility that it had substantial impact on the jury. Accordingly, we must set aside the convictions. 39 The judgments of conviction are reversed, and the case is remanded to the district court for new trial.