Federal Circuits, 11th Cir. (December 21, 1988)
Docket number: 87-5090
Permanent Link:
http://vlex.com/vid/evaristo-rivera-pedin-raymond-arrastia-37236761
Id. vLex: VLEX-37236761
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U.S. Supreme Court - McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987)
U.S. Supreme Court - Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972)
U.S. Supreme Court - Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967)
U.S. Supreme Court - Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963)
U.S. Supreme Court - Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264 (1959)
Florida Supreme Court - Wayne Tompkins, Appellant, vs. State of Florida, Appellee (2007)
U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Cir. - USA v. Juan Arroya (11th Cir. 2007)
U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Cir. - Dominick Occhicone v. James Crosby (11th Cir. 2006)
U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Cir. - United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Alenjandro Lopez A/K/a Flaco, John Doe A/K/a El Negro A/K/a Ramon de Los Santos, Raul Hernandez, Juan Raymond Herrera, Thomas Bahr, Defendants-Appellants., 985 F.2d 520 (11th Cir. 1993) Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Alenjandro Lopez A/K/a Flaco, John Doe A/K/a El Negro A/K/a Ramon de Los Santos, Raul Hernandez, Juan Raymond Herrera, Thomas Bahr, Defendants-Appellants.
Edward F. McHale, Melvyn Kessler, Hal Scott Kessler, Miami, Fla., for defendants-appellants.
Dexter W. Lehtinen, U.S. Atty., Linda Collins Hertz, Harriett R. Galvin, Asst. U.S. Attys., for the U.S.Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.Before TJOFLAT and HILL, Circuit Judges, and WARD*, District Judge.TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge:We set aside appellants' convictions and remand this case to the district court for a new trial on two grounds. First, the prosecutor knowingly permitted the Government's principal witness to testify falsely with respect to a matter critical to that witness' credibility; second, the district court, in failing to conduct an in camera examination of alleged Jencks Act1 material, permitted the prosecutor to withhold from appellants' counsel evidence favorable to the defense.I.Appellants, Raymond Arrastia and Evaristo Rivera Pedin, were convicted by a jury of conspiring to smuggle marijuana and cocaine into the United States.2 The conspiracy took place in the Southern District of Florida and covered a three-month period, March 18, 1985 to May 6, 1985. The Government's case against appellants was built on the testimony of an informant, Vincent Ream, secret tape recordings Ream made of telephone conversations he had with appellants, and selected pages from Ream's diary. Ream's credibility was vital to the Government's case; had it been successfully impeached, there would have been no convictions.Ream told the jury that his involvement in this case began in March 1985. He said that prior to that time he had piloted airplanes for drug smugglers on at least thirty separate occasions and had come under investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). Ream learned of the investigation and, in an effort to avoid prosecution, decided to cooperate with FDLE and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Ream thus became a paid informant for both agencies.On the basis of information provided by Ream, the DEA initiated an investigation of Ream's long-time acquaintance, appellant Arrastia. Refreshing his recollection from his personal diary, Ream told the jury that on the morning of March 18, 1985, he made a tape-recorded call from his home in Sarasota to Arrastia. As the recording revealed, Ream told Arrastia that he had an airplane, and Arrastia replied "there's a job" with "money up front." Ream testified that he understood Arrastia to be soliciting his skills as a pilot to make a drug run. Later that day Ream flew his plane, a Piper Cherokee Warrior, to Miami and met with Arrastia and appellant Pedin. According to Ream, the three made plans for Ream to travel to Puerto Rico with Pedin to inspect and determine the airworthiness of an airplane that Ream would use to transport marijuana and cocaine from Colombia to the United States. Ream received $500 in cash from Arrastia as an advance, which he turned over to the DEA agents who were monitoring his activity.On March 22, Arrastia gave Ream a commercial airline ticket to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Pedin met Ream in Puerto Rico, and the two went to Pedin's apartment. The next day Pedin gave Ream a pilot's map of Puerto Rico and told him that the Queen Air aircraft he was to inspect was unavailable. Ream flew back to Miami on a ticket provided by Pedin. Ream never returned to Puerto Rico to inspect the Queen Air.Ream testified that he next met with Arrastia a month later, on April 25, and the two went to the home of Ricardo Borato-Diaz,3 where they witnessed about a dozen men dump sacks of money on a table. Ream thought that he would eventually receive some of this money in payment for his services.On April 27, Ream made another tape-recorded call to Arrastia in which Arrastia said that a Venezuelan friend would be coming to town and "[h]e's talking about maybe 30, 40, I don't know." Ream testified that he understood this to mean that Arrastia had a Venezuelan source for a new drug smuggling operation. In a tape-recorded call on April 29, Arrastia told Ream that he had "something going for, from Thursday on" and that he would give Ream the "address," which Ream took to mean the coordinates of an airstrip in Colombia where Ream would land his plane. To Ream's inquiry, "no grass?," Arrastia replied, "no ... we're big time now," which Ream believed meant that he would be transporting cocaine rather than marijuana.During the next few days Ream modified the fuel tanks of his Piper airplane for the long flights to and from Colombia, rendering the plane legally unfit for flight in the United States. Ream later notified Arrastia that he could not fly to Colombia as planned because the airstrip that he was using was being occupied by several flyers who were holding a "spot-landing contest." Ream said that after this conversation he and Arrastia did not discuss drug smuggling. As it turned out, Ream never flew to Colombia, no narcotics were ever imported, and the undercover investigation was terminated.The defense's cross-examination of Ream began after he had been on the witness stand for nearly a day. Counsel for Arrastia went first and immediately began to question Ream about his personal diary, twelve redacted pages of which Ream had used to refresh his recollection on direct examination.4 Counsel believed that other pages of Ream's diary related to Ream's testimony on direct examination and also to his credibility. Ream indicated, in response to defense counsel's questions, that he had made entries in his diary for most of the events he had described. At this point, the court adjourned for the day. Following adjournment, defense counsel asked the prosecutor for all of the Jencks Act material in the Government's possession, including all of the pages of Ream's diary for the period of Ream's undercover work in the case. The prosecutor stated that he would reexamine those pages during the evening and produce any that might be relevant before the trial resumed the next morning. The following morning, the prosecutor informed defense counsel that no further diary entries were relevant; therefore he produced nothing more. Counsel nevertheless continued to tailor his examination of Ream in such a way as to demonstrate the need for additional diary entries.Counsel questioned Ream about each day of his involvement in the alleged conspiracy and, in the process, asked Ream what he had written in his diary for that day. When counsel reached the events of April 25--the day Ream and Arrastia purportedly saw a dozen men emptying sacks of money onto a table at the Borato-Diaz residence--counsel asked Ream if he had made an entry in his diary for that day. Ream said that he had made an entry, and the prosecutor immediately handed a copy of the entry to defense counsel. At this point, the defense asked the court for permission to approach the bench. The court granted the request, and a sidebar conference followed out of the hearing of the jury. Defense counsel asked the court to direct the prosecutor to produce all of the diary entries for the entire period of Ream's involvement in the case; counsel also requested a recess so that they could examine the additional entries.The court instructed the prosecutor to reexamine the entire diary and give the defense any undisclosed entries that might relate to Ream's testimony. The court then declared a ten-minute recess to permit the prosecutor to conduct his examination. At the conclusion of the recess and before the jury returned, defense counsel, having received nothing from the prosecutor, requested the court to examine the diary in camera for Jencks Act material. The court refused counsel's request. The court did, however, direct the clerk to place the diary under seal as part of the record.When the jury returned, the defense continued to question Ream about his diary but gained no further indication that Ream had made any relevant entries not already disclosed. Consequently, the defense abandoned the quest for information concerning additional diary entries and instead tried to impeach Ream in other ways. In response to this new line of questioning, Ream admitted that he had transported drugs numerous times in the past, that he had a history of intravenous drug use, that he had recently served time in prison for possession of 3,000 Quaaludes, that while in prison he had become skilled at the art of deception, that he was presently in great need of money, and that he received $4,000 from the DEA for his undercover work and testimony. Finally, the defense explored the possibility that Ream had colored his testimony against Arrastia because Arrastia had refused to pay him off.Counsel asked Ream three times, in three different ways, whether he had spoken with Ream's and Arrastia's mutual friend, private detective Jack Miller, about disappearing as a witness in the case for a price:Q. And have you had conversations with Jack Miller since the indictment in this case concerning attempting to extort funds from the defendants in exchange for your disappearing as a witness in this case? ...A. No....Q. Did you ever discuss the exchange of funds with Jack Miller in exchange for either the way you would testify or whether or not you would be available for the subpoena to testify in this case?A. No, sir, I didn't.Q. Never?A. No, sir.Q. Did Jack Miller ever approach you and talk to you about funds [that] could be available if you disappeared: did he ever discuss that?A. No, sir.As this colloquy indicates, Ream unequivocally denied having conversed with Miller about selling his unavailability as a witness. After Ream finished testifying, the Government called the DEA case agent5 and then rested its case in chief. Neither Arrastia nor Pedin put on a defense.6 The jury subsequently found them guilty as charged.Following the return of the jury's verdicts, Arrastia moved the court, pursuant to Fed.R.Crim.P. 33, for a new trial on the ground of newly discovered evidence. This evidence, Arrastia represented, consisted of testimony Jack Miller would give if a new trial were granted. According to an affidavit from Miller, in the spring of 1986 (twelve months prior to the trial) Ream told Miller that he would be willing to disappear if Arrastia would pay him $50,000. In a written response to Arrastia's motion, the Government argued that Miller's proposed testimony would not have altered the outcome of the trial;7 the Government therefore urged the court to deny the motion, stating that prior to trial Ream had toldSpecial Agent Christopher Warner, the case agent.... that Ream had had a conversation with a private detective [presumably Miller] from which Ream believed he was being asked not to testify against Arrastia. Agent Warner spoke to the undersigned [the Assistant United States Attorney who prosecuted the case] about this and was instructed to have Ream pursue the matter. Later, [Arrastia's attorney] told the undersigned that Ream had solicited a bribe in exchange for his disappearance.The prosecutor thus represented to the court that Ream and Miller in fact had the conversation, the existence of which Ream had unequivocally denied on the witness stand. In sum, the parties disputed whether Ream instructed Miller to solicit a bribe from Arrastia, or whether Miller offered a bribe to Ream on Arrastia's behalf; both agreed, however, that a conversation concerning an exchange of money for Ream's silence indeed took place.Arrastia, seizing upon the Government's response, argued in a supplemental memorandum that he was entitled to a new trial on the additional ground that the prosecutor had remained silent at trial, in derogation of his duty to correct the testimony of a Government witness which he knew to be false.8 The district court acknowledged that the prosecutor knew Ream was giving false testimony; nevertheless, the court denied Arrastia's motion for a new trial, concluding that the prosecutor's failure to correct the testimony would not "in any reasonable likelihood have affected the judgment of the jury."We now turn to the issues presented in this appeal: whether appellants were denied Jencks Act material that would have affected the outcome of the trial, and whether the prosecutor prejudiced the appellants' case by failing to take steps to correct Ream's testimony concerning his conversation with Miller.9 We discuss these issues in order.II.The Jencks Act, 18 U.S.C. Sec . 3500 (1982),10 requires that the prosecutor disclose to the defendant any written statement made by a Government witness which relates to the subject matter of the testimony that witness has given on direct examination. See id. Sec. 3500(b). If the prosecutor claims that portions of the witness' written statement do not relate to the testimony, the Act requires the prosecutor to deliver the entire statement to the court for in camera inspection. See id. Sec. 3500(c). The court then may excise any part of the statement that does not relate to the witness' testimony and deliver the redacted version to the defendant. Id. Initially, we note that the prosecutor properly conceded that Ream's diary entries for the period covering Ream's involvement in the case constituted Jencks Act material. See United States v. Carrasco, 537 F.2d 372, 375 (9th Cir.1976) (witness' diary given to government held a "statement" within the Jencks Act). The prosecutor, however, exceeded his role when he unilaterally decided which pages of the diary met the Jencks Act requirement of "relate[ing] to the subject matter of the testimony of the witness." 18 U.S.C. Sec . 3500(c). In United States v. Conroy, 589 F.2d 1258, 1272-73 (5th Cir.), cert. denied,