Court Opinion

ID: 9489775
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:23:57.658402+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:42.619696
License: Public Domain

*1408BEAM, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The court takes over the conduct of this criminal trial and permits a validly convicted drug smuggler to walk away, untouched by the jury verdict. From this result, I dissent.
The court overlooks or misconstrues important facts on its journey toward applying immaterial legal precedent or failing to apply relevant procedural and evidentiary rules.
Montgomery was a California state corrections officer and a close friend of Johnnie Barnes, a long-time acquaintance he had only recently bailed out of jail. Montgomery was out of money and, with two remaining weeks of vacation time and three dollars in his pocket, he claims to have agreed to accompany Johnnie, at Johnnie’s expense, to a Barnes family reunion in Memphis, Tennessee. At the last minute, and without warning to Montgomery, Johnnie purportedly substituted his brother Sir Lancelot Barnes as Montgomery’s traveling companion.
The one-way travel reservations on the train were acquired in Johnnie’s name on the date of departure and were routed from Los Angeles through Chicago in such a way that the travelers could maintain their sleeper ear during the entire trip. There was no specific showing by Montgomery as to how he was to return to California from a family reunion at which he would presumably know only one person — Sir Lancelot Barnes — although he testified that he thought someone in the Barnes family would probably buy him an airline ticket.
The court’s opinion otherwise adequately outlines the events leading up to the police contact in Kansas City. As noted by the court, Montgomery and Sir Lancelot consented to the search that occurred. Ownership of the bag containing the 996.3 grams of cocaine was admitted by Montgomery. Prior to the search, he volunteered that the bag contained only stereo equipment. Instead, it contained personal toiletries, paycheck stubs with Montgomery’s name and, of course, the cocaine wrapped inside of two shirts. While testifying at trial, Montgomery not only claimed that he didn’t know about the cocaine but he also denied that the drugs found in his luggage were ever in his luggage.
Curiously, the court contends that “[t]he government put the ownership of the clothing [shirts] squarely at issue,” supra at 1407, presumably by requiring Montgomery to try on the shirts in the presence of the jury. This is clearly incorrect. Montgomery placed the shirt ownership in issue when he earlier testified that he did not own the shirts and that he did not know how they ended up in his luggage. Thus, the Montgomery shirt episode was in direct response to Montgomery’s under-oath testimony, after he had affirmatively waived his Fifth Amendment rights.
The court cites four Fifth Amendment cases for the proposition that “physical evidence” may be compelled in spite of constitutional prohibitions. In a proper case, this is beyond dispute but it is irrelevant to the issues presented in this appeal. None of the cases are factually apposite. There is no third-party compulsion involved in any of them. Each case deals .with the Fifth Amendment rights of a criminal defendant on trial or the target of a specific criminal investigation. Also, whether or not the Barnes brothers could have been compelled to put on the shirts without violation of their Fifth Amendment rights does not reach the question of the fairness of that happening in the presence of the jury during this trial. Thus, the issue here is not the Fifth Amendment at all. The issue concerns Federal Rules of Evidence 401,402 and 403 and the discretionary power of the trial judge to control the admissibility of evidence at trial.
Montgomery clearly wanted to present the Barnes brothers to the jury and have them assert Fifth Amendment objections. This was an impermissible maneuver. United States v. Doddington, 822 F.2d 818, 822 (8th Cir.1987). To parade them before the jury as living, but not speaking exhibits, identified foundationally by Montgomery as suggested by the court, would barely attenuate the impermissible Fifth Amendment message. Further, the proffer did not involve “physical evidence such as fingerprints, photographs, measurements, writing or speaking for identification,” supra at 1406 (emphasis added), it required physical acts of trying on clothing to imply ownership of two shirts by Sir Lan*1409celot or Johnnie Barnes which shirt ownership would, in turn, purportedly be an inference of ownership of the cocaine found wrapped in the shirts in Montgomery’s bag which cocaine ownership would, in turn, prove that Montgomery did not possess the drugs found in his luggage. This four-tiered approach was required, according to the court, to offset the government’s straight forward use of the shirts in direct rebuttal of Montgomery’s testimonial claim that he did not own the garments that were found in a bag he claimed to own. At best for Montgomery, these leaping inferences and implications were barely relevant.
The Supreme Court has said time and again that there is no constitutional entitlement to present all relevant facts. Just last term the Court reiterated that “the proposition that the Due Process Clause guarantees the right to introduce all relevant evidence is simply indefensible.” Montana v. Egelhoff, — U.S. -, -, 116 S.Ct. 2013, 2017, 135 L.Ed.2d 361 (1996). So, even if forcing the Barneses to try on the shirts is not precluded by the Fifth Amendment, and the evidence is deemed to be at least marginally relevant, the trial court’s decision to exclude evidence under Federal Rule of Evidence 403 must be evaluated under the very deferential abuse of discretion standard. United States v. Williams, 95 F.3d 723, 729 (8th Cir.1996).
The government correctly argued at trial that this evidence is .a classic example of information prohibited by Rule 403. The marginal relevance of the proffered evidence was clearly outweighed by the prejudice and potential prejudice to the government. First, as earlier indicated, this would have been a thinly veiled dramatization of the Fifth Amendment stance of the Barneses. Second, since testimonial evidence from either witness was precluded by their invocation of the Fifth Amendment, there was no way to examine the accuracy of the implications advanced by the proffered acts. For instance, Montgomery was arrested on October 27,1994, and the proffer was made early June of 1995. Thus, whether either Johnnie or Sir Lancelot had undergone weight loss or weight gain or could otherwise shed light on the ownership of the shirts was beyond inquiry by the government. On the other hand, Montgomery was free to take the stand and discuss any matters concerning his fit of the shirts that he felt might be helpful to him.
At issue was not a question of blood type, fingerprints, voice, height, stride or similar characteristics that were reasonably immutable and would run to identification. Montgomery was not limited in his quest to disclaim ownership by Fifth Amendment protections he had already waived. In essence, the court now allows him to use Fifth Amendment jurisprudence as both a sword through an inference of ownership by the Barneses and a shield to escape testimonial rebuttal from the Barnes brothers. In short, the trial court was correct in its evidentiary ruling and this court is wrong to find otherwise. There was no abuse of discretion.
Finally, under the facts adduced in support of Montgomery’s guilt, evidentiary error, if any, was clearly harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Even if Johnnie or Sir Lancelot owned the shirts, such fact should not allow Montgomery to escape the consequences of having 996.3 grams of cocaine in his possession in his toiletries bag, whomever may have actually owned the cocaine. Accordingly, I would affirm.