Court Opinion

ID: 9484283
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:47:01.699058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:50:08.543578
License: Public Domain

NOONAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The evidence in this case was as follows: On the afternoon of Saturday, August 3, 1991, Sharon Rahm entered the Canton Bazaar, 616 Grant Avenue, San Francisco. She ordered a box of tea costing $2.99 and offered to pay for it with a $100 bill. The store manager, Jason Boon Cheok, who was standing by the cashier, told Rahm that he would need to get change and would need to check on the bill. He went to another part of the store where he called the Secret Service, having reached the conclusion that the bill was counterfeit. He was told to call 911. He returned to Rahm and told her that he couldn’t find change and that he was having “some trouble with the bill.” Rahm said that she did not see “why there should be any problem with the bill because she just withdraw it from Wells Fargo Bank three days ago.” Cheok then went up to the main floor and called 911. There were at least 15 minutes when Rahm could have left the store without being stopped by Cheok.
A San Francisco police officer, Walter Chan, came to the store, having heard on the police radio that there was a problem at the Canton Bazaar. He put Rahm under arrest for possession of a counterfeit bill. He then searched the purse carried on her shoulder. The purse contained 98 $100 bills and nothing else. Elsewhere she carried $25 in genuine currency.
Russell Nelson, a secret service agent, testified that all 99 $100 bills were counterfeit. They were not printed on Crane paper, as genuine United States currency is. They did not have red and blue security fibers, as United States currency has. A number of the bills had the same serial numbers, whereas real currency has unique serial numbers. Unlike genuine currency, the bills had microdots made by an office color-copying machine. In Nelson’s opinion the chance of the bills passing inspection at a bank were slim to none. They were highly passable in a shopping mall during a holiday season with temporary help in the stores. In his opinion it was characteristic of counterfeiters to buy merchandise of small value with counterfeit bills of high denomination and to get the change in genuine currency.
The government rested after the testimony of Cheok, Chan and Nelson. The defense offered no evidence. To the jury the defense argued that the hole in the government’s case was that Rahm did not attempt to leave in the fifteen minutes that Cheok was absent from the cashier’s stand. Rahm could easily have walked away and did not, even though she knew the bill was being questioned. The defense also suggested the jury examine Cheok’s motivation — he might have been looking for a reward or for help in getting his family into the country from Malaysia.
The prosecution told the jury they could infer Rahm’s intention from the circumstances. She had a purse containing nothing but counterfeit bills. She had gone shopping for $3 worth of tea with almost $10,000 in cash on her person. The prosecution appealed to the common sense of the jurors to decide whether she knowingly and intentionally had passed the counterfeit bills and possessed the 98 other counterfeit bills.

THE EVIDENCE EXCLUDED

Prior to trial, the defense offered the report of Arvolea J. Nelson of the Berkeley Therapy Institute, who had “initiated a psychological evaluation” of Rahm. Dr. Nelson administered to her the Wechsler Adult In*1417telligence Scale- — Revised Test and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. The “most significant discrepancies from an otherwise average scoring pattern occurred on the Picture Completion and Picture Arrangement subtest” of the first test. The Picture Completion subtest required Rahm to examine a set of pictures, each of which had an important detail missing. The task was to identify what was missing. Rahm did so poorly that had she scored similarly on the rest of the subtests, her overall IQ would have been about 50. The score suggested that she had “difficulty perceiving and interpreting visual details.” On the Picture Arrangement subtest, her scale score was 8, below the average score of 10. The task was to arrange cartoon-like pictures to tell a logical story. She missed four out of 10 items. She showed a consistent tendency “to overlook important visual details.” In both subtests “her ability to attend to the test material appeared to be impaired by a tendency to answer according to her first impression rather than allowing herself to consider multiple hypotheses.”
Dr. Nelson concluded: “The results of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory suggest that Ms. Rahm’s intellectual ‘blind spots’” may be characteristic of an overall personality style which is marked by lack of insight. Her two highest scale scores were Hypochondriasis and Hysteria. Such scores characterize people who deny the psychological factors underlying problems such as their multiple chronic physical complaints. They tend to be overly optimistic and unrealistic about their own situations and the world in general.”
The government moved to exclude the proffered testimony. Defense counsel argued that Dr. Nelson could “testify about my client’s mental-psychological condition, which involves poor visual perception, and that, I think, has a bearing on the issue in this case. The defense in this case, [I] make no secret about it, is lack of knowledge.” The defense argued further that Rahm was not the kind of person “to look at things closely,” not because of any physical defect, but rather because of “a mental perception problem that she has.” The defense characterized this problem as “a mental irregularity,” not “a psychiatric disorder.”
The court observed: “I have never seen a ease where anybody, including a mental health professional, was entitled to give opinions about the past mental state of people who do not even have mental disorders. It seems to me to be sheer speculation, and the notion that the so-called irregularity would have relevance just doesn’t appear to me to be the threshold that it is admissible as testimony or opinion testimony.... I don’t think you have made a threshold to meet 702 of the rules.”

ANALYSIS

The sole issue on appeal is whether the court erred in excluding the psychologist’s proffered testimony. It was offered under Fed.R.Evid. 702, which reads as follows:
If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise.
Such testimony is subject to the trial court’s decision as to whether the jury can receive “appreciable help” from such testimony. United States v. Amaral, 488 F.2d 1148, 1152 (9th Cir.1972). It was a judgment call of the district court as to whether the jury would receive appreciable help from Dr. Nelson’s opinion. The only authority offered to the district court by the defense was United States v. Darby, 857 F.2d 623 (9th Cir.1988). In Darby psychiatric testimony would have been helpful in deciding whether an accused bank robber possessed the capacity to form the requisite intent, but the district court made an error of law when it held that culpable intent was irrelevant. Darby, 857 F.2d at 722. The district court’s first response to the testimony proffered here was as observation based on a concession made by the defendant: she did not have a mental disorder. Consequently, as the court implied, the proffered testimony could not bear on her capacity to form a specific intent. Darby didn’t work.
The district court’s second comment was that the proffered opinion did not reach the threshold, ie. that the court did not see how *1418the expert opinion could be “appreciably” helpful to the jury. The opinion of this court fails to focus on this point. A careful reading of Dr. Nelson’s opinion shows that she found Rahm to have not a “perceptual problem” based on her eyesight but a personality problem that made her overhasty and unrealistic. Most jurors, I would imagine, would not find such opinion evidence helpful in deciding whether Rahm knew she had a great quantity of counterfeit bills in her possession, carefully isolated from her genuine currency. If she couldn’t tell the difference, why did she segregate the bills? Just conceivably, the jury would have been marginally helped, but appreciably? It is hard to say so. In any event, the admissibility of expert testimony is committed to the broad discretion of the trial court and the court’s action will not be disturbed unless “manifestly erroneous.” Salem v. U.S. Lines Co., 370 U.S. 31, 35, 82 S.Ct. 1119, 1122, 8 L.Ed.2d 313 (1962); United States v. Demma, 523 F.2d 981, 987 (9th Cir.1975). We seriously distort our law when we intrude on the trial court’s discretion and hold its ruling to be manifestly erroneous.
Even then, the alleged error does not require a new trial. The circumstantial evidence against Rahm was strong. If one assumes that she had very poor sight, if one assumes that she could scarcely see at all, her lack of vision would not explain why she came with a purse filled with 98 counterfeit $100 bills, nor why she kept the genuine currency entirely separate, nor why she gave a false explanation to Cheok, nor why she tried to pass a counterfeit $100 bill to buy $2.99 worth of tea. None of these undisputed and converging circumstantial facts would have been affected by Dr. Nelson’s testimony. Nor would they have been affected if we assume that the testimony should be understood as bearing on some psychological capacity of Rahm’s rather than on her eyesight. Her mental irregularity, her intellectual blind spots, her tendency to act on first impressions, do not account for her possessing the purse with its special contents, nor her segregation of the genuine bills, nor her lie about the bank as the source of the bill, nor her use of the bill to buy tea. The opinion of this court invokes the standard of harmless error but misapplies it.
Rahm’s knowledge was so incontrovertibly established by what she did and by what she said and by what she carried on her person that it is far more probable than not that any jury would have found her guilty in spite of Dr. Nelson’s opinion.
Rahm goes on to argue that denial of the psychologist’s testimony was a violation of her Sixth Amendment right to present a defense. The majority does not reach this contention, but I necessarily do. Dr. Nelson was the only witness she intended to offer. When Dr. Nelson was excluded at the beginning of the trial she had no evidence at all. Every defendant has the right to present her own witnesses to establish a defense and to present her version of the facts. Washington v. Texas, 388 U.S. 14, 19, 87 S.Ct. 1920, 1923, 18 L.Ed.2d 1019 (1967) (murder defendant denied due process when one convicted of the same murder was not permitted to testify).
Applying this rule, we have reversed a conviction for bank robbery when testimony was excluded that another man matching the robber’s description might have committed the crime. United States v. Armstrong, 621 F.2d 951, 953 (9th Cir.1980). But as we later explained:
We reversed because the district court had made an error in applying [the Federal Rules of Evidence]. Mention was made of neither the sixth amendment nor due process. Nothing in Armstrong supports a belief that the Federal Rules of Evidence are constitutionally required, or that the Constitution requires admission of all relevant evidence.
Perry v. Rushen, 713 F.2d 1447, 1451 (9th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 838, 105 S.Ct. 137, 83 L.Ed.2d 77 (1984).
The raising of Rahm’s claim to a constitutional level does not make it meritorious. The error was harmless because it did not affect the verdict. It consequently does not call for a new trial and does not call for reversal because of constitutional error. Rahm had a fair opportunity to present whatever evidence she had that would indicate her absence of guilt, and she had a fair opportunity to have the facts in the case argued to the jury. The Constitution does *1419not require the admission of-all the evidence a defendant might desire to present. Id. Rahm was denied a witness, not a defense.
The majority’s intrusion into a district court’s discretion and the aberrational application of the rule of harmless error may do no permanent damage to the structure of the law. They will surprise those familiar with the ease. Justice, as Benjamin Cardozo long ago reminded us, is symmetrical. Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 328, 58 S.Ct. 149, 153, 82 L.Ed. 288 (1937). The prosecution deserves its due just as much as the defendant. Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 122, 54 S.Ct. 330, 338, 78 L.Ed. 674 (1934). Our duty is “to keep the balance true.” Id. Because the prosecution has not received its due here, I dissent.