Opinion ID: 3216831
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Issues Raised by Cuevas

Text: Cuevas raises five arguments specific to the case against him, namely, that the district court (i) should have granted 10 Martinez Vega also asserts that he was eligible for a two-level reduction as a “minor participant” under Section 3B1.2 of the guidelines. The district court declined the decrease, finding sufficient evidence that Martinez Vega played a significant role in the conspiracy, Sentencing Tr. 45–46, and on this record we find no error in that ruling. 40 Cuevas’s motion for a mistrial after Garrido testified about a previously undisclosed conversation he had with Cuevas; (ii) should not have admitted into evidence recordings of Cuevas’s phone calls; (iii) violated the Confrontation Clause by limiting Cueva’s questioning of cooperating witnesses; (iv) wrongly permitted the exhibition of a video depicting a police raid; and (v) erroneously applied sentencing enhancements for being a manager or supervisor and for possession of a firearm. None has merit.
Throughout the trial, the Government alleged, and Cuevas denied, that Cuevas was the FARC’s prominent cocaine manufacturer known as “Mincho.” After two witnesses had identified Cuevas as Mincho, the Government called Garrido to testify about Cuevas’s extradition. The following exchange occurred: Q: When did you first encounter Mincho, or the defendant Cuevas Cabrera that day? A: I went inside that area while he was being processed by the Colombian authorities. I went in. I asked, “Are you Mincho?” He said, “Yes.” I verified his name. Erminso Cuevas Cabrera. Cuevas objected to the testimony on the ground that Cuevas’s alleged statement to Garrido had not been disclosed during discovery, and he requested that the testimony be stricken. The court sustained the objection and issued the following instruction to the jury: Ladies and gentlemen, Agent Garrido mentioned that when he spoke to Mr. [Cuevas] Cabrera, he 41 asked him if he was Mincho, and he said, yes, I am Mincho. I am going to strike that testimony. That was not previously announced as evidence in the case about any statements that Mr. Cabrera may have made that he was Mincho. So I am going to strike that from the testimony, have you disregard that statement by—allegedly made by Mr. Cabrera. Cuevas nevertheless moved for a mistrial, which the district court denied. Cuevas now argues the denial was error because the testimony was highly prejudicial and because the court’s curative instruction, by repeating the offending testimony and by implying its exclusion was due only to a technicality, exacerbated rather than mitigated the prejudice. A “mistrial is a severe remedy—a step to be avoided whenever possible, and one to be taken only in circumstances manifesting a necessity therefor.” United States v. McLendon, 378 F.3d 1109, 1112 (D.C. Cir. 2004). The district court’s principal consideration in ruling upon a motion for mistrial is the extent of prejudice suffered by the defendant, and we review the district court’s denial only for abuse of discretion. Id. In this case, it is not obvious why Garrido’s stricken testimony was prejudicial considering that at least two other witnesses previously had identified Cuevas as “Mincho,” and the evidence established that “Mincho” is a common nickname for Erminso. Further, whatever harm may have been done by the testimony was promptly undone by Judge Hogan’s curative instruction. “We normally presume that a jury will follow an instruction to disregard inadmissible evidence inadvertently presented to it, unless there is an overwhelming probability that the jury will be unable to follow the court’s instructions.” Greer v. Miller, 483 U.S. 42 756, 766 n.8 (1987) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Neither Judge Hogan’s repetition of the offending testimony (which was necessary to specify the objectionable content for the jury after numerous intervening questions) nor his stated reason (which was no more technical than any other evidentiary ruling) created such an “overwhelming probability” here.
In 2004 a federal judge in the Southern District of Florida authorized telephone wiretaps based upon a DEA agent’s affidavit stating that the “target telephones will be located overseas” and that the “intercepts will be conducted from, and monitored in, the Southern District of Florida.” A confidential DEA source then provided the monitored phones to targets in Colombia. The Government intercepted Cuevas discussing his operations on two calls, which it played at trial during the testimony of the other party to the recorded calls. Cuevas argues the tapes were inadmissible because federal law prohibits foreign surveillance and because the federal judge who approved the wiretaps lacked jurisdiction to do so. Cuevas forfeited these arguments by failing to raise them in the district court, so we consider them at most for plain error. United States v. Williams, 773 F.3d 98, 105 (D.C. Cir. 2014); see also United States v. Burroughs, 810 F.3d 833, 837–38 (D.C. Cir. 2016). First, Cuevas’s contention that extraterritorial surveillance is prohibited because “Title III . . . has no extraterritorial force” reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the statute. Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 “imposes . . . limitations on the use of electronic 43 surveillance.” United States v. Chavez, 416 U.S. 580, 580 (1974). If it does not apply extraterritorially, then government surveillance outside the United States is unconstrained, not forbidden, by Title III. Second, Cuevas’s contention that a “listening post” in the Southern District of Florida was insufficient to confer jurisdiction upon the federal court there is unavailing if only because every circuit that has considered the question has deemed a listening post sufficient. See, e.g., United States v. Luong, 471 F.3d 1107, 1109 (9th Cir. 2006); United States v. Rodriguez, 968 F.2d 130, 136 (2d Cir. 1992). With no “controlling precedent” or “other absolutely clear legal norm” to support Cuevas’s position, the purported error by the district court, if error it be, cannot be deemed plain. See United States v. Nwoye, 663 F.3d 460, 466 (D.C. Cir. 2011).
At trial, former members of the FARC testified for the Government. 11 Cuevas learned that these witnesses wore monitoring devices on their ankles both for their own safety and to prevent them from fleeing and illegally remaining in the United States. Cuevas sought to cross-examine the witnesses about the devices on the ground that they revealed potential bias. After consulting with the U.S. Marshal Service, the district court found the anklets were “a security practice used with many witnesses,” and were not being used because the witnesses were “under charges or otherwise untrustworthy.” The court concluded that the devices had “no 11 These witnesses were known as “reinsertados” because they had been reintegrated into civil society through a Colombian government program that grants members of the FARC immunity for past crimes in exchange for cooperation with law enforcement. 44 relevance” to the witnesses’ credibility and that inquiry would “lead into other areas . . . far afield from what is relevant in this trial,” such as the threat Cuevas himself posed to safety of the witnesses. Accordingly, the judge prohibited Cuevas from cross-examining the witnesses about the devices. Cuevas argues the limitation violated the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Although that Clause guarantees a criminal defendant “the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him,” a district judge has wide latitude insofar as the Confrontation Clause is concerned to impose reasonable limits on . . . crossexamination based on concerns about, among other things, harassment, prejudice, confusion of the issues, the witness’ safety, or interrogation that is repetitive or only marginally relevant. Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 679 (1986). We review the district court’s limitation of cross-examination for abuse of discretion, with the central inquiry being “whether the jury would have received a significantly different impression of the witness’s credibility had defense counsel been permitted to pursue the [disallowed] line of questioning.” United States v. Wheeler, 753 F.3d 200, 205 (D.C. Cir. 2014). The district court did not abuse its discretion here. Questions about the devices would be of no incremental value to the defendant in this case, and the district court reasonably concluded that such questions would “stray far afield from what [was] relevant in this trial.” The jury was already aware that all the former FARC members who testified were admitted participants in a cocaine trafficking organization; 45 that several had admittedly engaged in guerilla warfare; that some were admitted murderers; and that all had been spared prosecution in return for their cooperation with law enforcement. With all this laid bare, it is highly unlikely that questions about the monitoring devices would have left the jury with a “significantly different impression of the witness’s” propensity to bias or motivation to lie on behalf of the Government. Id.
At trial, Lieutenant Colonel Alvarez Ochoa of the Colombian National Police testified as an expert on Colombian cocaine laboratories and the organization of the FARC. Over Cuevas’s objection, the Government introduced a video of a police raid, in which Alvarez participated, on a cocaine laboratory unconnected to Cuevas. The video depicted a typical cocaine lab in the jungle, the recovery of seven tons of cocaine “base,” the demolition of the laboratory with explosives, and helicopters that provided armed air support. It is not clear from the testimony whether the video depicted any violent resistance from the operators of the laboratory, but Cuevas claims it did. Cuevas argues the video of a raid on a cocaine lab outside either defendant’s territory was irrelevant and highly prejudicial, and it should have been excluded under Federal Rule of Evidence 403. Rule 403 permits exclusion of otherwise admissible evidence if “its probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of . . . unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, [or] misleading the jury.” We review a district court’s determination under Rule 403 “with great deference, reversing only for grave abuse of discretion.” United States v. Clarke, 24 F.3d 257, 265 (D.C. Cir. 1994). In this case, Cuevas has failed even to offer any account of how the video 46 caused him any prejudice, let alone sufficient prejudice to say the district court gravely abused its discretion.
Cuevas raises the same objection to the three-level “manager/supervisor” sentencing enhancement as does Martinez Vega, namely that the district court erred in applying the enhancement because there was insufficient evidence of the culpability of anyone Cuevas supervised. Unlike Martinez Vega, however, Cuevas was expressly found by the district court to have supervised numerous culpable individuals. We are bound by this factual finding unless it is clearly erroneous, see United States v. Henry, 557 F.3d 642, 645 (D.C. Cir. 2009), which it is not. The evidentiary record here, including Maria Santiago’s testimony that she worked alongside 80 employees in a cocaine laboratory run by Cuevas, supports the court’s finding. Cuevas also objects to the imposition of a two-level enhancement, pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(b)(1), for possession of a firearm during a drug offense. The district court, however, expressly found that Cuevas carried a weapon while running the lab, and this finding is far from clearly erroneous. Two witnesses testified to having seen Cuevas carry a handgun while committing drug offenses. Cuevas challenges the credibility of those witnesses, but the “district court’s credibility determinations are entitled to the greatest deference from this court on appeal.” Carter v. Bennett, 840 F.2d 63, 67 (D.C. Cir. 1988). Cuevas gives us no basis for disturbing the court’s finding. 47