Court Opinion

ID: 9487094
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:08:03.540893+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:05.639924
License: Public Domain

FERNANDEZ, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I do not agree that Olvera’s constitutional rights were violated when he was required to speak the words that the robber had used.
It is plain that having him parrot words after the witness did not implicate his privilege against self-incrimination. Simply put, there was nothing testimonial about that. See, e.g., Pennsylvania v. Muniz, 496 U.S. 582, 590-600, 110 S.Ct. 2638, 2644-49, 110 L.Ed.2d 528 (1990); United States v. Dionisio, 410 U.S. 1, 5-7, 93 S.Ct. 764, 767-68, 35 L.Ed.2d 67 (1973); United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 221-23, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 1929-30, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967). Nor does the fact that he was asked to repeat some words in Spanish change the analysis or the result. That did not disclose the contents of his mind. See Doe v. United States, 487 U.S. 201, 210 & n. 9, 108 S.Ct. 2341, 2347 & n. 9, 101 L.Ed.2d 184 (1988). It was no more redolent of testimony about mental processes than is speaking in English. It only demonstrated the sound of his voice. If the words incriminated him, that was because of the way they sounded, not because of their content. Indeed, contrary to his argument, his ability to repeat Spanish words does not even prove that he can speak Spanish.
Olvera’s claim that forcing him to speak the words of the robber violated his fundamental right to due process is no stronger. He asserts that parroting the words after the witness somehow cloaked him with an aura of guilt. I do not think so. We rejected that argument in United States v. Domino, 784 F.2d 1361, 1371-72 (9th Cir.1986), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 1038, 107 S.Ct. 893, 93 L.Ed.2d 845 (1987). So have many other courts. See Burnett v. Collins, 982 F.2d 922, 925-28 (5th Cir.1993), which collects some of the cases to that effect. It is true that in Domina, we, in a dictum, said that “it would have been a far better procedure to have had Domina repeat neutral words.” 784 F.2d at 1371-72. We are asked to place great weight on that statement. Nevertheless, we did uphold the conviction in that ease. Moreover, just why it would have been far better is far from clear.
Consider. Most people do not speak in a monotone. Their intonation varies from word to word and from phrase to phrase. If *1199you truly wished to identify a sound you once heard, you would not have different sounds played. But what are words if not collections of sounds? Cf. Dionisio, 410 U.S. at 3, 93 S.Ct. at 766 (in order to compare defendants’ voices with intercepted conversations, defendants were ordered to read from transcripts of those conversations.) When a defendant is asked to merely repeat words being stated by a witness in open court, it must be obvious to a jury that he is doing just that — repeating the sounds someone else is making. It requires a rather condescending view of jurors to make one think that they become confused and decide that the mere repetition of the words makes the defendant the robber. Moreover, in this case the court instructed the jury that Olvera was not testifying when he spoke the words but was simply demonstrating the sound of his voice.
Nor do I think that having Olvera speak the same words is at all like having him reenact the crime itself, which, it is said, would somehow confuse his persona with that of the robber. Not only is the sound of a few words palpably different from a reenactment, but also if a defendant were merely asked to repeat gestures made by the witness, the reenacting problem would be entirely removed. Again, it would be a fairly silly juror who would think that a defendant was guilty because he mimicked what another person in the courtroom was doing. I think that jurors are made of stronger stuff.
Olvera makes much of the fact that while the government sought to put in voice evidence in order to help the witness identify him, it never once asked the witness whether his voice at trial did help her. Quite so. If one wonders why not, the answer is close at hand. The witness said that the robber had a lisp, or unusual slur, when he spoke. The prosecutor took a chance; lo and behold, Olvera’s voice did not fit that description. Whatever the government’s plan might have been, like “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men,” it went “agley.”1 Not surprisingly, there was no follow-up by the government.
But that demonstrates another good, relevant reason for having a defendant speak. Tonal characteristics might well demonstrate that he has (or has not) the speech characteristics of the robber. Olvera’s alert counsel recognized that. So who in the midst of this supposed assault on fairness and due process ultimately made use of Olvera’s speaking? Olvera did. It was his counsel who told the jury that the wrong person had been accused. Counsel listed factors which tended to show that. “And,” he said, “of course, the strongest factor shows that Mr. Olvera is not the person, because the teller was certain that the person that came in had a lisp. You heard Mr. Olvera speak. He came right up here, stood right about here, said the words the teller said were used at the time, and there’s no lisp. The FBI agent, Special Agent Gonzalez confirmed that. He spoke to Mr. Olvera when he was serving him the subpoena for the line-up. He detected no lisp. And then he also was present at the live line-up and he says that nobody spoke any different than anyone else.”
If nothing else demonstrated the error in Olvera’s present position, that argument to the jury surely would. Olvera had a fair trial; he was not denied due process.
Thus, I respectfully dissent.

. Robert Bums, To a Mouse.