Court Opinion

ID: 9627722
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:52:40.327088+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:39:15.332150
License: Public Domain

O’SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I begin with what one would think an unassailable proposition: An abuse of discretion standard of review presupposes that the district court has some amount of discretion. Apparently, however, that proposition is no longer true in this circuit in the context of whether and how to permit a replay of trial testimony in a criminal case. For under the court’s reasoning, if a district judge is to allow a replay at all without inviting reversible error, three requirements must be met. First, the district court must replay the testimony in open court with all parties present. Second, if the district court decides to allow a replay, it must replay the witness’s entire testimony, including cross-examination. Finally, the district court must give a limiting instruction, sua sponte, counseling the jury not to place undue emphasis on such testimony.
Although district courts might be well advised to observe these precautions, the majority’s rigid, rule-based approach effectively usurps the trial court’s function, transforming our abuse of discretion standard into a de novo review. Since I cannot conclude that the district court in this case abused its discretion by allowing an audio replay in open court of the specific portion of testimony requested by the jury, I respectfully dissent.
I
During deliberations, the jury requested to “have Nikole Reeder’s testimony and cross examination.” Since no transcript was yet available, the judge informed the jury that “[i]f you want to hear a readback of somebody’s testimony you have to let us *1118know what part you want to hear” and sent the jury back to the jury room for five minutes to decide. When the jury returned, it requested the portion of Reed-er’s testimony “from after the side bar until right after — or right toward the beginning of cross-examination.” Later, outside the presence of the jury, Richard’s counsel objected to playing only the excerpt selected by the jury and moved “that the court play the entire testimony of Ni-kole Reeder.” The judge overruled the objection as untimely.
The court then replayed the requested excerpt, which comprised 10 pages of the 42-page testimony. Prior to the excerpted testimony, Reeder had testified twice that she did not recognize anyone in the courtroom as the person sitting behind her in the car when it was pulled over. During the excerpted testimony, the government produced a photograph, which Reeder had identified as Richard during the grand jury proceedings, and asked her if she saw the person in the photograph in the courtroom. Reeder testified that she did not. Then the government directed her to look at the “person sitting at the defense counsel table as the defendant,” and Reeder replied, “I don’t think he’s in here.” After another round of prompting by the government, Reeder replied that the picture looked like the defendant, but his weight and hairstyle had changed. Three pages into the replayed excerpt, Reeder finally identified the defendant.
Reeder then established that she had met Richard for the first time that night through her “man” Martin, the driver of the car. She proceeded to describe what happened while the police pulled over the car, including hearing Richard say that “he had to run, he had warrants, and he had a gun,” and witnessing Richard pull a black handgun from his pants and put it in or under the seat.
After replaying the excerpt for the jury, the judge asked, “Was that sufficient for the jury then?” The foreman answered, “I think so, your honor.”
II
Our cases establish that when an objection is raised at trial, we review a district court’s decision to replay testimony for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Binder, 769 F.2d 595, 600 (9th Cir.1985) (“A decision to replay testimony during jury deliberations will not be reversed absent an abuse of discretion.”).1 Under the *1119abuse of discretion standard, “we will not reverse unless we have a definite and firm conviction that the district court committed a clear error in judgment.” United, States v. Plainbull, 957 F.2d 724, 725 (9th Cir.1992). Moreover, in this specific context, we have noted that the trial court has “ ‘great latitude’ over whether to allow rereading or replaying of testimony.” United States v. Sacco, 869 F.2d 499, 501 (9th Cir.1989) (quoting United States v. Nolan, 700 F.2d 479, 486 (9th Cir.1983)).
Applying this deferential standard of review, I would affirm Judge Mahan’s ruling.
A
Although the court performed the replay in open court, as we have preferred, see United States v. Hernandez, 27 F.3d 1403, 1408 (9th Cir.1994), it failed either to give a limiting instruction or to replay Reeder’s testimony in its entirety. Nevertheless, because I find no support in our case law for blanket rules requiring such precautions sua sponte, the district judge’s failure to adhere to the rules newly imposed by the majority does not compel the conclusion that the replay was unduly prejudicial.
1
The “facts and circumstances of the case” dictate whether the district judge should allow a replay and if so, which precautions are necessary to avoid “[u]n-due emphasis of particular testimony.” Binder, 769 F.2d at 600.2 In our previous cases, we have noted that providing the jury with “both the direct and cross-examination” of a witness’s testimony can serve as a “precaution” against undue emphasis. Hernandez, 27 F.3d at 1409; see also United States v. Barker, 988 F.2d 77, 80 (9th Cir.1993) (approving of the replay of “both the entire direct and the entire cross examination”); United States v. Sacco, 869 F.2d 499, 502 (same). But the majority today converts this precaution into what can only be described as a prerequisite. See Maj. Op. at 1114. There is no support in our case law, until now, for such an affirmative requirement; indeed, our cases have noted that the district court may permit portions of certain testimony to be reread, United States v. King, 552 F.2d 833, 850 (9th Cir.1977), and it “is not required to reread all of a particular witness’ testimony.” Binder, 769 F.2d at 604 (Wallace, J., dissenting) (citing King for the proposition).
The lack of a rigid rule requiring all testimony of a given witness to be read or played back finds support in cases decided by our sister circuits, which have emphasized the great discretion that a district court is given in rereading or replaying testimony, especially when the jury does not request it. See, e.g., United States v. Bennett, 75 F.3d 40, 46 (1st Cir.1996) (Boudin, J.) (citing United States v. Wright-Barker, 784 F.2d 161, 174 (3d Cir.1986)) (noting that “no inflexible rule exists that the cross must always be read”); United States v. McElroy, 910 F.2d 1016, 1026 (2d Cir.1990) (finding the court “well within the bounds of discretion in declining *1120to have more [than the cross-examination] reread”).3
While there admittedly is a danger that a partial replay may cause the jury to overemphasize certain testimony, I disagree with the majority’s assertion that the trial court “erystallize[d]” the risk of undue emphasis when it asked the jury to select what portions to hear. Maj. Op. at 1116; see also Hernandez, 27 F.3d at 1409 (inferring the “jury’s obvious intent to emphasize a specific portion of the transcript” after naming what part of the testimony it wanted excerpted). If the very act of naming which portions to rehear creates the risk of undue emphasis, then by that logic any replay request that fails to encompass the entire trial should be denied. We have already recognized the absurdity of such a proposition in United States v. De Palma, 414 F.2d 394, 396 (9th Cir.1969) (“Perhaps if any evidence is read, all should be read. Any trial could .thus be almost endless.”).
The trial court must balance the danger of undue emphasis created by partial replays against the delays caused by replaying a witness’s testimony in its entirety. United States v. Zarintash, 736 F.2d 66, 69-70 (3d Cir.1984). Here the portions requested by the jury encompassed about a quarter of the roughly hour-long testimony given by Reeder. While Richard argues that replaying the rest of the testimony would not have unduly delayed the proceedings, I see no reason that the jury should be forced to listen to “additional, related testimony that the jury made clear it did not need to rehear.” Bennett, 75 F.3d at 46.
Here the trial judge asked after replaying the excerpt whether it had been “sufficient for the jury,” and the foreman responded that it was. Having afforded the jury the opportunity to request additional testimony, which the jury declined,4 the court did not abuse its discretion when it failed to provide the remaining 45 minutes of the Reeder testimony. See Wright-Barker, 784 F.2d at 174 (finding no abuse of discretion even when the “[a]dditional testimony cited by defendants [was] only 4-5 pages long,” since “it was not within the jury’s description” and the “jury did not request any additional testimony” when prompted); see also McElroy, 910 F.2d at 1026 (finding no abuse of discretion when the court refused to allow additional testimony reread, since the court asked the jury whether the reread portion was “what [it] requested” and the jury answered in the affirmative); United States *1121v. Rosenberg, 195 F.2d 583, 598-99 (2d Cir.1952) (same).
2
The majority also faults the district judge for failing to include a limiting instruction to minimize the risk of undue emphasis. While I agree that providing a limiting instruction might have been prudent, see United States v. Lujan, 936 F.2d 406, 411 (9th Cir.1991), I cannot say on this record that the failure to do so warrants reversal of Richard’s conviction. First, Richard failed to request such an instruction. See Bennett, 75 F.3d at 46 (dismissing a claim of error for failure to provide a limiting instruction that the defense did not request). Further, in asking for a portion of the testimony and failing to request more when prompted, the jury may have “merely desired a confirming clarification on one point” in reaching “a verdict properly based on the totality of the evidence.” King, 552 F.2d at 850.
B
The majority opinion takes issue not only with the form of the replay but also with the substance of the testimony that was replayed. As we noted in United States v. Sacco, 869 F.2d at 502, “the quantum of other evidence against the defendant” and “the importance of the [replayed] testimony in relation to the other evidence” also factor into the abuse of discretion analysis.
According to the majority, the district court committed clear error by “ ‘effectively repeating] the entirety of the government’s case’ against Richard,” given that “Reeder was the only witness to directly testify to Richard’s possession of the gun — the only issue before the jury — and there was no physical evidence linking the gun to Richard.” Maj. Op. at 1115 (quoting Sacco, 869 F.2d at 502). The majority analogizes this case to Binder, in which the government’s entire case hinged on witness credibility, and distinguishes it from Sacco, in which ample additional evidence supported the replayed testimony.
In Binder, the defendant was accused of child molestation, and the parties agreed to substitute the children’s videotaped testimony to relieve their apprehension about testifying in open court. “None of the other witnesses corroborated the specific allegations of the children,” making their credibility “a crucial issue.” 769 F.2d at 598, 601. Consequently, replaying the videotaped testimony indeed “allowed the repetition of the government’s case against Binder.” Id. at 601.
In Sacco, the key issue was whether Sacco knew that a large quantity of money was hidden in the trunk of his car. Since customs officials testified they had seen Sacco “do[ing] something with his hands inside the trunk” and his hands showed traces of fluorescent powder used to mark the money, replaying one witness’s deposition “did not, therefore, effectively repeat the entirety of the government’s case against Sacco.” 869 F.2d at 502.
Here, while Reeder’s testimony was undoubtedly important, it did not comprise the “entirety” of the government’s case against Richard. Indeed, the government presented other strong circumstantial evidence corroborating Reeder’s testimony. First, the police recovered the weapon from inside the seat where Richard had been sitting in the car. He does not dispute the relative positions of the car’s occupants, nor does he dispute that the gun was found in his seat. Second, Detective Stanton testified that the other backseat passenger, Schneider, had seen Richard with the weapon. In addition, Detective Stanton testified that Schneider was the one who initially tipped off the police that Richard had a gun in the car and that *1122Schneider led police to the car in the impound lot and pointed out the specific position of the gun and how it had been wedged into the seat. Relatedly, there was no dispute that the car took at least a minute to stop, even though it could have pulled over immediately, giving Richard the opportunity to hide the weapon. Detective Stanton testified that in his experience, such delays usually mean an occupant of the car is attempting to hide contraband. Finally, Richard admitted to police that he may have touched the weapon.
Given the quantum of corroborating evidence against Richard, the majority’s analogy to Binder seems strained at best. The replayed testimony was far from the only evidence implicating Richard, and the government’s case did not hinge entirely on the credibility of Reeder’s account of the events.5 In my view, the facts of this case and the quantum of evidence set forth by the government are more akin to Sacco, where we affirmed the district court’s discretionary decision to allow a partial replay of testimony.
C
The majority also contends that the “portion replayed contained only the core of the government’s case against Richard, entirely omitting large portions of Reed-er’s testimony ... that may have impeached her credibility.” Maj. Op. at 1115. Specifically, the majority contends that the replay omitted “(1) portions of Reeder’s testimony that [the driver] was her boyfriend at the time; (2) Reeder’s extraordinary difficulty in identifying the backseat passenger she claimed to have seen with the gun; and (3) Reeder’s entire cross-examination.” Id. at 1115-16. Consequently, in the majority’s view, “the clearly one-sided nature” of the replayed excerpt warranted additional precautions.
However, as the majority reluctantly acknowledges in a footnote, Maj. Op. at 1115 n. 8, the replayed portion of Reeder’s testimony was not uniformly damaging to the defense, since it included several pages’ worth of Reeder’s failed attempts to identify Richard,6 and also noted the nature of her relationship with the driver Martin (whom she repeatedly referred to as “my man”).7 Thus, the excerpt captured key *1123credibility issues raised by Richard on appeal, including “her extreme difficulty in identifying Richard at trial and fuzziness on other details, which created doubt as to her memory and capacity to observe Richard in the vehicle,”8 as well as her potential bias. Since the replayed excerpt itself impeaches the witness’s credibility,9 I cannot agree that the district court was required to direct the jury to listen to more than it had specifically requested.
Ill
There can be little doubt that “[t]he district judge is in a better position than we are to determine whether the benefits of allowing the jury to review the ... testimony outweigh! ] the risk that the jury would give undue weight to that portion of the evidence.” Binder, 769 F.2d at 603 (Wallace, J., dissenting). I am therefore deeply troubled by the majority’s substitution of rigid rules for the sound discretion of our many able district judges. Moreover, in this particular case, while the conditions of the playback were not ideal, the additional corroborating evidence, the jury’s determination that the replayed portion was sufficient, and the mixed nature of the testimony significantly reduced the risk of undue emphasis by the jury. In short, I cannot say that the replay of a portion of Reeder’s testimony in this case warrants reversal of Richard’s conviction.
Accordingly, I must respectfully dissent.

. The district court ruled that Richard’s objection to the district court’s decision to replay a portion of Nikole Reeder's testimony was "untimely.” It is well settled that an untimely objection is treated as no objection at all, and thus the alleged error is subject to plain error review. See United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 731, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (a constitutional right "may be forfeited in criminal as well as civil cases by the failure to make timely assertion of the right before a tribunal having jurisdiction to determine it”) (quoting Yakus v. United States, 321 U.S. 414, 444, 64 S.Ct. 660, 88 L.Ed. 834 (1944)). Nevertheless, at oral argument in this case, the government conceded that the district court was incorrect in ruling the objection untimely because the objection came prior to the replay and therefore the district court had the opportunity to cure any possible error before the jury knew about it. That is true, but timeliness is not solely concerned with the possibility of cure; it is also concerned with preventing gamesmanship. See Wigmore, Code of Evidence 25 (3d ed. 1942) ("An objection must be made as soon as the ground of it is known, or could reasonably have been known to the objector, unless some special reason makes its postponement desirable for him and not unfair to the offeror.") (emphasis added). In this case, only after the jury decided to request a particular portion of the testimony that Richard deemed damaging did Richard's counsel object that the jury should hear all the testimony. If the jury had asked to rehear only the cross-examination, would an objection have been similarly forthcoming? Thus, on this record, there is at the *1119least a concern of gamesmanship. Nonetheless, despite these concerns, I agree with the majority that because of the government’s outright concession, we ought to review this case under our normal abuse of discretion standard.

. Our prior cases fail to elucidate the legal basis of the "undue emphasis” concern. One court points out that "[tjhose federal cases that discuss the issue of readbacks and transcript availability do so under the rubric of the court's supervisory authority over federal criminal trials, not on constitutional principles....” Bradley v. Birkett, 192 Fed.Appx. 468, 472 (6th Cir.2006).

. We have taken an extraordinarily negative view of the benefits of read-backs and replays of testimony, often remarking that such actions are "disfavored.” Binder, 769 F.2d at 600. In stark contrast, the Second Circuit has expressed a strong preference for read-backs, on the premise that they aid the jury in accurately and completely fulfilling their assigned role. See United States v. Criollo, 962 F.2d 241, 243-44 (2d Cir.1992) (citing United States v. Holmes, 863 F.2d 4, 5 (2d Cir.1988) (noting that "generally the better course of action is for a district court to allow the reading of testimony requested by the jury”)).

. Richard argues that the district judge "implicitly denied the jury's original request to rehear Reeder’s 'testimony and cross-examination' ” by "requiring the jury to decide 'what portion’ they wanted to hear.” However, the record belies this assertion. First, what the district court declined was the jury’s request to "have” the testimony, i.e., in the form of a transcript. Given our strong preference for readbacks taking place in open court, that clearly was not an abuse of discretion. Moreover, asking the jury to identify "what portion” to replay did not necessarily exclude the possibility that the jury could ask to rehear all of Reeder’s testimony. Finally, the fact that the court asked the jury whether the requested replay was "sufficient for the jury” provided an unmistakable opportunity to request additional testimony if desired.

. A related concern that I have is that the majority’s conclusion that Richard’s conviction must be reversed is overly influenced by its own perception of the reliability of Reed-er's overall testimony, given her numerous failures to identify Richard. I agree that the identification was flawed, but that question simply is not before us in any meaningful way. The jury made its credibility determinations and we are not free to inject our own views of the witness’s testimony under the guise of reviewing the discretionary determination of the judge to replay part of that testimony.

. During the replayed testimony, Reeder indicated that she knew what the person sitting behind her in the Jeep looked like and recalled recognizing Richard’s picture during the grand jury proceeding as that person. The government then showed Reeder the same picture from the grand juiy proceeding:
Q: And is it your testimony today that you don’t see that person here in the courtroom today?
A: No.
Q: The person silting at the defense counsel table as the defendant, is that the person in that exhibit?
A: A boy over there looks like him, but I’m not sure because he was smaller. So I don’t think he’s in here.
Reeder eventually admitted during the replayed excerpt that Richard “looks like him” and in fact was the same person in the picture, though his current hair and size made him "look[] different.”

.During the replayed testimony, Reeder made clear that she and Martin had an intimate relationship:
Q: And how did you come to meet [Richard] that night?
*1123A: Through my man.
Q: And that’s David Martin?
A: Yes.
Q: Describe the nature of your relationship to[Richard] at that time?
A: He was my man. I was his girl.
Q: I'm sorry, maybe you didn't understand the question. I’m asking you to describe the nature of your relationship with [Richard] on that date?
A: Oh, my relationship with him?
Reeder then explained that she “just met him that night,” and that she met him "[t]hrough my man.” Presumably, she had originally misunderstood the government’s question to refer to her relationship to Martin rather than Richard.

. Interestingly, though the majority asserts that the “case against Richard ... relied largely on the identification of one witness,” Maj. Op. at 1116, nowhere in the cross-examination does the defense question the reliability of her identification.

. The district judge’s comment before playing the excerpt that “[i]t may favor the government or it may favor Richard” turned out to be prescient. As Judge Hawkins observed during the oral argument, “This may be one of those unique situations where the direct examination was more damaging to the witness than the cross.”