Opinion ID: 2744629
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Franks’ Testimony

Text: The defendants contend that Detective Franks’ testimony as both a gang expert and a percipient witness to the events in his investigation violated their Confrontation Clause rights and Federal Rule of Evidence 403.5 We review the district 5 We reject the defendants’ argument that admitting this evidence violated the Due Process Clause. The admission of evidence violates due process only when “there are no permissible inferences the jury may draw from the evidence” and that evidence is “of such quality as necessarily prevents a fair trial.” Jammal v. Van de Kamp, 926 F.2d 918, 920 (9th Cir. 1991) (quoting Kealohapauole v. Shimoda, 800 F.2d 1463, 1465 (9th Cir. 1986)) (internal quotation marks omitted). The gang testimony was probative of Salvador’s control over drug transactions in Bishop Manor in which he did not directly take part. Because Armando was Salvador’s “number two man,” establishing that Salvador controlled the drug trafficking organization allowed the jury to infer that Armando managed UNITED STATES V. VERA 9 court’s rulings on the Confrontation Clause de novo and on Rule 403 for abuse of discretion. See United States v. Gomez, 725 F.3d 1121, 1125 (9th Cir. 2013); United States v. Hankey, 203 F.3d 1160, 1166–67 (9th Cir. 2000). We hold that admitting Franks’ gang testimony did not constitute reversible error.
The Supreme Court held in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), that a defendant’s Confrontation Clause rights are violated by the admission of “testimonial statements of a witness who did not appear at trial unless he was unavailable to testify, and the defendant had . . . a prior opportunity for cross-examination.” Id. at 53–54. Nevertheless, an expert witness may offer opinions based on such inadmissible testimonial hearsay, as well as any other form of inadmissible evidence, if “experts in the particular field would reasonably rely on those kinds of facts or data in forming an opinion on the subject.” Fed. R. Evid. 703. Moreover, the expert may disclose to the jury the inadmissible evidence relied on in forming his opinion “if [its] probative value in helping the jury evaluate the opinion substantially outweighs [its] prejudicial effect.” Id. Under these rules, there is generally no Crawford problem when an expert “appli[es] his training and experience to the sources before him and reach[es] an independent judgment.” Gomez, 725 F.3d at 1129 (quoting United States v. Johnson, the daily activities of a larger operation, thus widening the scope of the conspiracy. Additionally, Franks’ testimony on this point dovetailed with Reyes’ testimony, thereby somewhat “rehabilitat[ing] (without vouching for)” Reyes’ credibility, which had been thoroughly impeached. United States v. Bighead, 128 F.3d 1329, 1331 (9th Cir. 1997). 10 UNITED STATES V. VERA 587 F.3d 625, 635 (4th Cir. 2009)). But an expert exceeds the bounds of permissible expert testimony and violates a defendant’s Confrontation Clause rights when he “is used as little more than a conduit or transmitter for testimonial hearsay, rather than as a true expert whose considered opinion sheds light on some specialized factual situation.” Id. (quoting Johnson, 587 F.3d at 635). Accordingly, the key question for determining whether an expert has complied with Crawford is the same as for evaluating expert opinion generally: whether the expert has developed his opinion by “applying his extensive experience and a reliable methodology.” United States v. Dukagjini, 326 F.3d 45, 54 (2d Cir. 2003). The Second Circuit’s opinion in United States v. Mejia, 545 F.3d 179 (2d Cir. 2008), illustrates how case agent expert testimony can violate a defendant’s Confrontation Clause rights. The defendants in Mejia were members of the MS-13 gang who were being tried for racketeering and related charges. See id. at 183. An agent qualified as a gang expert, see id. at 193–94, identified custodial interrogations of MS-13 members as at least a partial basis for his testimony “that MS13 taxed non-member drug dealers,” “that MS-13 treasury funds were used to purchase narcotics and that MS-13 members used interstate telephone calls to coordinate activities.” Id. at 199. This testimony was directly relevant to several material issues in the case, including whether MS13 was an enterprise, had an effect on interstate or foreign commerce or engaged in narcotics trafficking. See id. at 200. The agent’s testimony violated the Confrontation Clause, however, because he presented testimonial hearsay “in the guise of an expert opinion,” id. at 199 (quoting United States v. Lombardozzi, 491 F.3d 61, 72 (2d Cir. 2007)), rather than presenting the information to explain a bona fide expert UNITED STATES V. VERA 11 opinion. The Mejia court was “at a loss in understanding how [the agent] might have ‘applied his expertise’ to these statements before conveying them to the jury.” Id. Most problematically, the agent’s drug tax testimony “was based directly on statements made by an MS-13 member in custody (during the course of this very investigation).” Id. (emphasis omitted). To form his drug tax opinion, therefore, the agent did not have to conduct a “synthesis of various source materials” or apply any of “his extensive experience [or] a reliable methodology.” Id. at 197 (quoting Dukagjini, 326 F.3d at 58) (internal quotation marks omitted). Instead, the agent “communicated out-of-court testimonial statements of cooperating witnesses and confidential informants directly to the jury in the guise of an expert opinion.” Id. at 198 (quoting Lombardozzi, 491 F.3d at 72). The agent’s direct repetition of testimonial hearsay about the drug tax “impugn[ed] the legitimacy of all of his testimony,” leading the court to suspect he had merely summarized an investigation conducted by others, rather than applying his expertise to draw his own conclusions. Id. at 199. The court therefore held that the agent’s “reliance on and repetition of out-of-court testimonial statements made by individuals during the course of custodial interrogations violated [the defendants’] rights under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment.” Id. Here, Detective Franks testified both as a gang expert witness and as a percipient witness regarding his observations during the investigation. Specifically, he testified that Bishop Manor fell within the territory of the Minnie Street Lopers gang and that the gang maintained control over narcotics sales within Bishop Manor and the surrounding areas by requiring any non-member drug dealers in the area to pay a tax. Because he knew from reviewing intercepted telephone calls that Salvador did not pay taxes to anyone else in the 12 UNITED STATES V. VERA neighborhood, Franks concluded that Salvador was “one of the leaders of the narcotics trade in Bishop Manor.” He also testified about a recorded phone call between Salvador and a friend that was played for the jury, opining that a rival gang was trying to tax Salvador because they believed his friend was selling drugs within their territory. Because the leader of one neighborhood gang is generally the person who pays taxes to the higher-ranking gang in another area, Franks opined that Salvador was “[m]ore than likely the leader” of the Minnie Street Lopers in Bishop Manor. The defendants contend that Franks exceeded the bounds of permissible expert testimony by “serving as a conduit for admission of hearsay in violation of Crawford.” They argue that by testifying that the Minnie Street Lopers controlled narcotics trafficking within Bishop Manor and “were able to force non-members dealing drugs there to pay a tax,” Franks directly “imparted important testimonial facts gleaned from his exposure to gang members and affiliates” without applying any independent judgment. Id. We disagree and hold that Franks’ testimony fell within the bounds of permissible expert opinion. First, Detective Franks applied his experience to his observations to form expert opinions about the Minnie Street Lopers and their tactics. Franks testified he had extensive training about and experience with gangs, including some formal classroom training, his time on the Santa Ana Gang Task Force and his work at the Santa Ana Police Department as a gang homicide investigator and gang suppression detective. He was familiar with the Minnie Street Lopers gang in particular from his contacts with members when he worked as a deputy sheriff in the jail, when he patrolled the area and when he transferred to the gang unit of the Santa Ana Police Department. Unlike the gang expert in Mejia, UNITED STATES V. VERA 13 nothing in Franks’ testimony suggests that he was directly repeating what someone else told him about the Minnie Street Lopers during this or any other investigation. Rather, his testimony that gangs “control the narcotics trafficking in an area” by maintaining control “of selling drugs to buyers” and “of the money,” and by requiring “other drug dealers in that area that are not part of that gang” to “pay what’s called a tax to that gang,” distilled and synthesized what he had learned through his experience. See Mejia, 545 F.3d at 197 (implying that the “synthesis of various source materials” constitutes permissible expert testimony). More importantly, Franks did not impart this information for its own sake, but to explain the basis for his expert opinion that Salvador was “one of the leaders of the narcotics trade in Bishop Manor.” He testified that he formed this opinion by reviewing the wiretapped telephone calls, learning that Salvador did not pay taxes to anybody in the neighborhood and applying his knowledge and experience of gang practices to deduce the significance of that information. He further applied this expertise to explain the meaning of a recorded phone call between Salvador and a friend, Walter, that was played for the jury. According to Franks, Walter told Salvador in the call that members of a rival gang believed Walter was “slinging for Salvador” within their territory and were looking for Salvador to verify that he had paid the required tax. Based on his knowledge that the leader of a neighborhood gang is generally responsible for paying taxes to a higher-ranking gang, Franks testified that the phone call further supported his opinion that Salvador was in charge of narcotics trafficking in Bishop Manor. Franks’ expert opinion therefore was not merely repackaged testimonial hearsay but was “an original product” that could have been “tested through cross-examination,” 14 UNITED STATES V. VERA Gomez, 725 F.3d at 1129 (quoting Johnson, 587 F.3d at 635), although the defendants declined to do so. Because Franks “appl[ied] his training and experience to the sources before him and reach[ed] an independent judgment,” his testimony complied with Crawford and the Confrontation Clause. Id. (quoting Johnson, 587 F.3d at 635).
The defendants further contend that the district court did not balance the probative value of Franks’ testimony against its unfair prejudice and that his testimony should have been excluded on this basis as well. Assuming without deciding that Franks’ testimony should have been excluded under Rule 403, we conclude that any error in admitting the testimony was harmless. See United States v. Gonzalez-Flores, 418 F.3d 1093, 1099 (9th Cir. 2005) (holding that for nonconstitutional errors, we will not reverse when “it is more probable than not that the error did not materially affect the verdict” (quoting United States v. Morales, 108 F.3d 1031, 1040 (9th Cir. 1997) (en banc)) (internal quotation marks omitted)). First, because Franks’ most damning testimony was cumulative, its impact on the jury was limited. Before Franks testified, the jury had already heard Reyes’ testimony that Salvador was the highest-ranking member of the Minnie Street Lopers, that Salvador controlled all narcotics trafficking in Bishop Manor and that anyone who dealt drugs without his permission would be physically assaulted. This testimony was elicited without objection from the defense, and its admission has not been challenged on appeal. Admittedly, corroboration from law enforcement carries heavy weight, especially given that Reyes’ testimony had been thoroughly impeached. Nevertheless, the jury had UNITED STATES V. VERA 15 already heard the most potentially inflammatory information from other sources. Second, as to the conspiracy count, Franks’ testimony could not have influenced the verdict because the defendants effectively conceded guilt. Armando’s attorney stated in closing argument that “Armando Vera is not disputing that he distributed narcotics[.] That’s a given.” Salvador’s attorney added that he would not “talk[] at all about guilt or innocence as to Count 1,” but only about “quantity and types of drugs and whether the government met their burden of proof to prove those quantities.” Third, Franks’ testimony did not materially affect the defendants’ convictions for use of a minor in Counts 2 and 3 and the special verdict on the drug quantities. The far more specific testimony from Lavis and Reyes about the role of the defendants’ minor nephew in the drug organization and the extensive testimony from Lavis regarding drug type and quantities overshadowed anything Franks may have contributed.6 Finally, we note that in one respect, Franks’ gang testimony prejudiced one of the two defendants, Armando. Because there was no evidence that Armando, as opposed to Salvador, was a gang member, the gang testimony could have 6 For the same reasons, the district court did not commit reversible error by failing to give, sua sponte, a limiting instruction regarding the purpose of the gang testimony. See United States v. Teague, 722 F.3d 1187, 1192 (9th Cir. 2013) (noting that to satisfy plain error review, a defendant must establish “that the error affected substantial rights,” meaning that it “affected the outcome of the district court proceedings” (quoting United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 734 (1993)) (internal quotation marks omitted)). 16 UNITED STATES V. VERA influenced the jury to view Armando in an unfairly negative light. See Kennedy v. Lockyer, 379 F.3d 1041, 1055 (9th Cir. 2004) (noting that “evidence relating to gang involvement will almost always be prejudicial and will constitute reversible error”). But under the unique circumstances of this case, this possibility is not a reason to conclude that the admission of Franks’ testimony was prejudicial error. Reyes also testified extensively about Salvador’s gang ties and the activities of the Minnie Street Lopers gang, and neither defendant has challenged the admission of that testimony. Accordingly, Franks’ testimony was not in itself the cause of any prejudice Armando may have suffered on that score. We further note that Armando could have, but did not, request a separate trial or even a limiting instruction to shield himself from the effects of the gang-related evidence.