Court Opinion

ID: 9843195
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:30:19.743193+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:00.547025
License: Public Domain

TROTT, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the results:
The advocate-witness rule would have barred the prosecutor in this case from taking the stand at trial and testifying that he warned Sayakhom that her business was illegal and advised her to cease her illegal operation. See United States v. Polizzi 801 F.2d 1543, 1558 (9th Cir.1986); United States v. Edwards, 154 F.3d 915, 921 (9th Cir.1998). Instead, AUSA Wong called an investigator who testified that he, Wong, told the defendant that what she was doing “was a crime,” that she should stop, and that if she didn’t do so, she could be “charged with the additional crimes.”
In my view, AUSA Wong should not have been permitted to do through a surrogate what he could not have done himself. Moreover, through this surrogate testimony, he vouched for the legal validity of his case.
'Nevertheless, this error was demonstrably harmless given the rest of the evidence on the issue, and I otherwise concur in Judge Beezer’s comprehensive opinion.