Court Opinion

ID: 9467833
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:57:47.970452+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:33.313918
License: Public Domain

THOMAS A. CLARK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Respectfully, I dissent. The only permissible theory of relevance underlying the introduction of the suppressed evidence was to contradict the defendant’s testimony on cross-examination, to the effect that he did not knowingly possess quaaludes on the day in question. Once he had said that, the door was open for impeachment by the introduction of the suppressed evidence. I believe, however, that Hernandez was brought to this admission by an improper line of cross-examination. The prosecutor was allowed to range too far afield from matters testified to on direct, as a consequence of which Hernandez was forced either to claim his fifth amendment privilege or to explain as best he could matters that *980were unrelated both to the offense charged and to what he had testified to on direct. Had the prosecutor been confined to “proper cross-examination reasonably suggested by the defendant’s direct examination,” United States v. Havens, 446 U.S. 620, 100 S.Ct. 1912, 1917, 64 L.Ed.2d 559 (1980), Hernandez would not have been forced to make a choice that had an all too predictable outcome.
Of course a defendant’s familiarity with and possession of drugs on other or similar occasions may bear some degree of relevance to the issue of his involvement in a drug transaction on a given occasion, whether it is knowing or innocent. But it simply does not follow that because one may be aware of the nature of certain contraband generally that one also is aware of the concealed contents of a certain package, and yet this was the premise for the government’s line of cross-examination. The probative value of information concerning any other instances of knowing possession of contraband similar to that actually transferred is simply “outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice” and therefore should have been inadmissible under F.R.E. 403.
Before the adoption of the Federal Rules of Evidence and Rule 403, inquiry would have focused on whether the matters the government asked about — whether the defendant had ever been in possession of any other similar contraband — were “collateral” to the facts in issue as to which Hernandez testified on direct — that he was unaware of the true contents of the packages he transferred. Under the prevailing test the issue would have been whether “the fact, as to which error is predicated, [/. e., the admission into evidence of Hernandez’ possession of the pills in his briefcase, could] have been shown in evidence for any purpose independently of the contradiction?” Weinstein’s Evidence, ¶ 607[05], quoting from 3 Wigmore, Evidence § 1003 at 657 (3d ed. 1940). Under this test matters would not be collateral that were (1) material to facts in issue and (2) facts independently admissable for impeachment purposes. Id. As for (1), knowing possession of what is in one’s own bag bears no material relation to knowledge of what is in another package, and as for (2), F.R.E. 608(b) expressly bars proof by extrinsic evidence of similar bad acts for purposes of impeaching testimony concerning the conduct in question. These limits on the impeachment use of collateral evidence are carried forward in the balancing of probative value vs. danger of unfair prejudice under F.R.E. 403 that the district court should have resolved against the government’s whole line of inquiry. Weinstein’s Evidence, ¶ 607 [02].
All agree that an accused should not be allowed to turn the shield of the exclusionary rule into a perjury sword. For this reason it should not matter whether that which is sufficient to dispel the protection of the rule is first elicited by his own lawyer on direct, as in Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222, 91 S.Ct. 643, 28 L.Ed.2d 1 (1971), or by government counsel on cross-examination, as in Havens, supra. But there ought to be a substantial connection between what is said and what the government may then seek to prove. Harris involved flatly contradictory statements and Havens contradictory behavior. Here the relationship between what Hernandez testified to on direct and what the government used to impeach was far more tenuous, and indeed admitted of numerous possibilities, however slight, consistent with Hernandez’ innocence. To justify today’s result on the strength of Hernandez’ direct testimony extends the Harris-Havens rationale farther than I have seen it extended before, overruling Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20, 46 S.Ct. 4, 70 L.Ed. 145 (1925), in the process. And long before Hernandez was pushed on cross-examination to what I concede was the point of no return, the district court should have restricted the scope of examination to a more relevant line of inquiry, less susceptible to the danger of unfair prejudice.1

. Thus I agree with the majority that the admission of the pills into evidence, as probative of his by-then highly implausible responses to extended questioning beginning with unrelated *981involvement with quaaludes, did not violate F.R.E. 403, ante, n.3. But the government could not have reached the question it wanted to ask without asking a great many questions it should not have been permitted to ask.