Court Opinion

ID: 9571242
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:30:11.97541+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:30:10.203588
License: Public Domain

CLIFTON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The case turns on the Immigration Judge’s decision not to admit into evidence certain exhibits alleged by petitioner Vladimir Vatyan to be documents issued by the Armenian government. The IJ concluded that the documents had not been authenticated. Even though the IJ was assigned the responsibility to make that evidentiary ruling, identified the pertinent controlling precedent by name, heard what Vatyan had to say about the documents, and explicitly made a determination supported by substantial evidence that Vatyan was not credible, we grant the petition for review and send the case back for another round because the majority thinks that the IJ might have disregarded the possibility that the documents could have been authenticated by Vatyan’s own testimony. The majority opinion ignores reality, both in faulting the evidentiary ruling made by the IJ and in concluding that the ruling could have made any difference in the outcome of the immigration court proceeding. I respectfully dissent.
1. The evidentiary ruling
The IJ did not abuse his discretion or make a legal error in deciding that the documents had not been authenticated. The IJ knew what Vatyan claimed they were. The IJ reviewed the documents and marked them for identification. He also heard what Vatyan had to say about the documents. Although the majority opinion suggests otherwise, Vatyan was not cut off when he tried to testify about the documents — his testimony on that subject spanned ten pages of transcript. Nor did the IJ exclude testimony about how Va-tyan obtained the documents. To the contrary, the IJ explicitly said, “I’d like to know how they came into his possession.” In his argument on appeal, Vatyan has not identified anything further that he might have testified to. There is simply no reason to conclude that anything is missing from the existing record, let alone that Vatyan had a better case to make than he had already made.
Moreover, there is nothing in the record suggesting that the IJ took a narrow view of how documents could be authenticated. It is true, as the majority opinion describes, at 15157, that the government appeared to take the position during the immigration court hearing that authentication was limited to certification under 8 C.F.R. § 287.6(c). But the IJ got it right, explicitly citing by name our court’s decision in Khan v. INS, 237 F.3d 1143, 1144 (9th Cir.2001) (per curiam), for the proposition that a foreign public document may be authenticated in an immigration proceeding either under § 287.6(e) or, in the words used by the IJ during the hearing, in “any other recognized manner.”
The majority opinion identifies some uncertainty in our caselaw as to whether “any other recognized manner” of authentication might include Rule 901 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. Nothing in the IJ’s citation to Khan suggests that he read his authority to admit evidence narrowly, however. Nothing in the record of this case suggests that the IJ misunderstood his ability to admit the disputed documents into evidence if he believed they were authentic.
The premise of the majority — that the IJ must have rejected the documents because they were not certified — cannot be squared with the IJ’s citation of Khan and *1187his explicit recognition that exhibits could be authenticated in “any other recognized manner.” The problem with Vatyan’s effort to authenticate the documents with his own testimony was not that his testimony was insufficient under the law. It was that the IJ did not believe Vatyan’s testimony. Vatyan failed to prove authenticity as a matter of fact.
The majority opinion reads too much into the IJ’s later statements, well after the authentication discussion had concluded, about the relevance of Vatyan’s testimony about the documents. The majority takes these statements to mean that the IJ had refused to consider whether this testimony could help authenticate Vatyan’s documents. The record fails to support such a reading. When the IJ first considered the authentication issue, he asked Vatyan’s lawyer how he planned to authenticate the documents. Vatyan’s lawyer said that Vatyan would testify on their behalf. Soon thereafter, the IJ concluded that Vatyan’s documents had not been properly authenticated. It is plain that the IJ at this point had weighed and rejected the idea that Vatyan’s testimony would be factually sufficient for authentication. That was hardly a surprise, given the IJ’s doubts about Vatyan’s credibility, which culminated in the adverse credibility determination. The statements made by the IJ during Vatyan’s testimony merely indicate that the IJ did not need to hear further testimony from Vatyan on the matter, because he had already heard enough, and additional testimony by Vatyan would not persuade him. The IJ by that time had moved beyond the question of authentication.
The IJ did not abuse his discretion or make a legal error in deciding that the documents had not been authenticated.
2. The lack of prejudice
Vatyan was not prejudiced by the evi-dentiary error which the majority claims to have found. This was a bench trial. The IJ served as both the gatekeeper for evidence and the ultimate finder of fact. The rules of evidence are not ordinarily applied as stringently in bench trials or in administrative proceedings as in jury trials. See 1 Weinstein’s Federal Evidence, 2d § 102.06, at 102-13 (2006); 2 Admin. L. & Prac. § 5.52 (2d ed. 2007) (“[T]he rules of evidence are designed to protect unsophisticated members of a jury and hence are not appropriate for hearings in which the trier of fact is sophisticated and usually expert in the area of the factual controversy.”). Appellate review of evidentiary rulings in district court bench trials, where the same judge is making both the eviden-tiary rulings and the ultimate findings of fact, is ordinarily highly deferential. See Lentini v. Cal. Ctr. for the Arts, 370 F.3d 837, 843 (9th Cir.2004).
Even in a criminal prosecution before a jury, where the most care is taken to apply the rules of evidence correctly, a district court’s evidentiary ruling during trial is reviewed for abuse of discretion. See United States v. Alvarez, 358 F.3d 1194, 1205 (9th Cir.2004) (noting “wide discretion”). An evidentiary ruling even in such a criminal jury trial will be reversed for abuse of discretion only if such error “more likely than not affected the verdict.” See United States v. Pang, 362 F.3d 1187, 1192 (9th Cir.2004). The standard in this case, in which we are reviewing the decision of an administrative agency resulting from a bench trial, is surely at least as high.
There is simply no serious possibility that the IJ’s purported failure to consider Vatyan’s testimony with regard to the authenticity of the disputed documents could have affected the IJ’s ultimate conclusion *1188here, let alone done so “more likely than not.” The majority goes astray when it disregards the fact that the IJ who ruled on the authenticity of the documents was the same person who explicitly and unequivocally found that Vatyan was not a credible witness. It defies logic to think that either Vatyan’s testimony about the origin of these documents or the admission of the documents themselves would miraculously cause the IJ to believe the rest of Vatyan’s testimony.
Take, for example, the letter purportedly from the Ministry of Internal Affairs which “certified” that Vatyan had been imprisoned, as Vatyan testified. The IJ did not believe Vatyan’s testimony about that imprisonment. The letter on its face appeared to corroborate Vatyan’s story, but Vatyan provided nothing to authenticate the letter beyond his own testimony. If the IJ had believed Vatyan’s testimony about the imprisonment, then he might have believed the document to have been authentic. But he didn’t. The IJ heard that testimony and looked at the document. If the document’s appearance and Vatyan’s testimony about the document were persuasive, the IJ might have been led to conclude that Vatyan had been imprisoned as he testified and should be found credible. But that didn’t happen, either. Despite seeing the document and hearing the testimony, he explicitly found that Vatyan “was not a credible witness.”
There is simply no serious possibility that the IJ’s purported failure to consider Vatyan’s testimony with regard to the authenticity of the disputed foreign documents affected the ultimate outcome of the proceeding. Requiring the IJ to “consider” what Vatyan had to say about these documents does not change the reality that he already heard what Vatyan had to say and was not persuaded.
3. Conclusion
I am confident that if we were reviewing a similar evidentiary decision made by a federal district judge, we would not reach this result. We would affirm a similar rejection of documents by a district court based on lack of authentication, both because we would accept the district judge’s evidentiary ruling, and because we understand that errors in evidentiary rulings should be disregarded unless they actually affect the outcome. We should reach the same result here. Our review of factual findings by an IJ is, after all, supposed to be even more deferential than our review of factual findings by a district court. A factual finding by a district court is subject to being overturned if we conclude it to be “clearly erroneous,” but a finding of fact by an IJ, including findings that a petitioner is not credible or a certain document is not authentic, must be upheld “unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.” 8 U.S.C. § 1251(b)(4)(B). Our court’s recurring tendency to hold IJs to more exacting standards is not justified under the statute.
Remanding this matter is an empty and pointless exercise, and it is not cost free. Not only will Vatyan’s case continue to take time and resources, the precedent established by this decision will make it even more difficult for immigration judges to work through their heavy caseloads. The message to IJs from this decision is to admit all proffered evidence and not to try to focus the presentation of evidence on subjects that could actually affect the substantive outcome of the case. We wouldn’t say that to a district judge. We shouldn’t say it to an immigration judge.
The petition for review should be denied.