Court Opinion

ID: 9480546
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:51:02.169957+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:45.150661
License: Public Domain

EDMONDSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the court’s judgment and in most of the opinion. But I cannot agree that Cameron’s motion for hospitalization and “various other isolated portions of the record” constituted — as part II.C of today’s opinion says — an offer of proof regarding psychiatric evidence of insanity.
An offer of proof in accord with Federal Rule of Evidence 103 is ordinarily essential for relief when a decision excluding the admission of evidence is challenged. Unless the trial judge otherwise allows, the offer should be made when the objection or the motion to exclude evidence is made. District judges have no duty to sift through the record, including pretrial motions not expressly on point, to learn what evidence is in controversy.1 The offering party has the obligation to identify the proposed evidence and its importance so that the trial judge has the chance to rule correctly on evidentiary objections. In this case, Cameron made no such offer.
The district court’s decision to exclude Cameron’s evidence on the insanity defense, however, did not turn on the quality of the proposed evidence, but on what the district judge saw as Cameron’s failure to give adequate notice of her intention to assert the insanity defense. Put differently, the district court’s decision on the motion to exclude evidence was not an eviden-tiary ruling, but a ruling on a procedural point that prohibited evidence from being presented. See generally Federal Rule Criminal Procedure 12.2. In this context, Rule 103 is inapplicable and a proffer is unnecessary.2 Prejudice requiring a remand for further proceedings is presumed from the erroneous prohibition of the insanity defense which might have barred conviction; to justify this remand, we need not consider defendant’s evidence.

. The March 2, 1988 motion for hospitalization dealt with a matter that the district court would not have to consider until Cameron was found guilty: the motion, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 4244, sought psychiatric treatment in lieu of imprisonment if she were found guilty. Nothing in the record shows that before trial the judge had read this motion which dealt with post-trial proceedings; nor was there a requirement that he must have or should have done so. In addition, defendant’s motion for hospitalization stated only some facts to be proved — for example, that Cameron had been discharged from the military for schizophrenia — -and not the evidence that would prove these facts. Last, the motion for hospitalization, which was filed several days before the hearing on the government's motion to exclude evidence, was on its face in no way linked to questions of evidence pertinent to Cameron’s trial. Therefore, it is a fiction to call this motion "a formal offer of proof regarding psychiatric evidence of insanity” as does today’s opinion. If a proffer were needed, what was done here would be inadequate and untimely.

. Had Cameron not complied with Rule 12.-2(a)’s notification requirement, she would be unentitled to relief from the consequences of her procedural default absent a showing of cause for this failure and of actual prejudice. See United States v. Winn, 577 F.2d 86, 89 (9th Cir.1978). A showing of actual prejudice would require something in the record demonstrating a factual basis for a viable insanity defense. We have concluded, however, that Cameron complied with the rule and that she adequately notified the government and the trial court of her intent to assert an insanity defense.