Court Opinion

ID: 9491825
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:24:41.885159+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:57.679556
License: Public Domain

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
The majority today establishes “two wrongs make a right” as the law of the circuit. The opinion recognizes that “[t]he relevant evidentiary issue here is whether the prior consistent statements were properly admitted.” Maj. op. at 1269. Although the majority bypasses the issue, they clearly were not. After the boy testified on direct examination that Beltran had told him to put the heroin in his pocket, the defense attorney inquired on cross whether the boy had prepared his testimony with the prosecutor and his mother before trial. The government attempts to justify the subsequent admission of the boy’s prior consistent statements by claiming that the defense attorney’s question constituted an “express or implied charge ... of recent fabrication or improper influence or motive” within in the meaning of Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(1)(B). This is quite a stretch. Any lawyer worth his salt prepares a witness he’s going to call to the stand. And whether a witness has prepared his testimony with opposing counsel is one of the most commonly asked questions on cross. To hold that this question is equivalent to a charge of improper influence would render Rule 801(d)(l)(B)’s requirement a nullity and open the floodgates to the admission of practically any prior consistent statement. “The Rules do not accord ... weighty, nonhearsay status to all prior consistent statements.” Tome v. United States, 513 U.S. 150, 157, 115 S.Ct. 696, 130 L.Ed.2d 574 (1995). Courts must ensure that prior consistent statements satisfy the requirements of Rule 801(d)(1)(B) before admitting them. Because there was no implied charge of fabrication or improper influence here, admitting the boy’s statements was error.
The majority assumes error but holds it was harmless because the district judge instructed the jury to consider the boy’s prior statements only in evaluating his credibility. See Maj. op. at 1269-70. We all agree this instruction is incorrect: A prior consistent statement that meets the requirements of Rule 801(d)(1)(B) is admissible as substantive evidence and not “solely for the more limited purpose of rehabilitating a witness.” United States v. Miller, 874 F.2d 1255, 1273 (9th Cir.1989).
Where we part company is on the effect of this erroneous instruction. The majority invokes the presumption “that a jury will follow an instruction to disregard inadmissible evidence inadvertently presented to it.” Greer v. Miller, 483 U.S. 756, 766 n. 8, 107 S.Ct. 3102, 97 L.Ed.2d 618 (1987). They insist that Beltran’s jury followed the erroneous instruction, and that admitting the boy’s prior statements was therefore harmless. Although we have held that a legally correct limiting instruction may be sufficient to cure the erroneous admission of evidence, see. e.g., United States v. Laykin, 886 F.2d 1534, 1544 (9th Cir.1989), 1 am unaware of any case where we concluded that an incorrect instruction could have the same effect. I find *1273this two-errors-are-better-than-one approach troubling. It allows the government to prevail by piggybacking instructional and evi-dentiary errors, and leads to the counterin-tuitive result of affirming convictions because of cumulative error.
This case illustrates why it is wrong to apply to an improper instruction the presumption that the jury will follow a proper instruction. The court here instructed the jurors to use the boy’s prior consistent statements solely to evaluate his credibility. However, if they concluded the boy was telling the truth at trial, they also must have concluded that the substance of his statements-that Beltran gave him the heroin-was true as well. The credibility/substance distinction is illusory in this context. Indeed, it’s precisely because “[i]t is hard to see how a statement can be offered for purposes of rehabilitation and yet not [as substantive evidence],” Miller, 874 F.2d at 1273 n. 12, that the Federal Rules of Evidence made prior consistent statements admissible for all purposes. Cf Fed.R.Evid. 801(d)(1)(B) advisory committee note. The instruction given the jurors is erroneous because jurors cannot be expected to follow it. I do not understand- and the majority does not explain-how we can presume the jurors followed an instruction they are incapable of following.
The majority makes this case harder than it need be. I would affirm because the boy’s prior consistent statements were cumulative of his mother’s, and thus admitting them, while erroneous, was harmless. As for the presumption that juries follow their instructions, the majority takes the rule far beyond its logical bounds and ends up in Never-Never Land. I don’t see the need to go there.