United States v. Joseph Avila ( 2017 )

FILED
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
DEC 21 2017
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 17-10065
Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No.
1:11-cr-00319-LJO-1
v.
JOSEPH AVILA, MEMORANDUM*
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of California
Lawrence J. O’Neill, Chief Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted November 17, 2017
San Francisco, California
Before: LEAVY, W. FLETCHER, and PAEZ, Circuit Judges.
Joseph Avila appeals from the district court’s judgment revoking his
supervised release and the 24-month sentence imposed upon revocation. We have
jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm in part, vacate in part, and
remand.
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
The superseding revocation petition alleged that Avila violated the provision
of his supervised release prohibiting him from committing another federal, state or
local crime. Charge One alleged that Avila discharged a firearm in the direction of
Yolanda Fuentes. Charge Four alleged that Avila possessed ammunition. The
district court determined that these two allegations were supported by a
preponderance of the evidence.
1. Avila contends that Charge One was not supported by sufficient evidence
because the key piece of evidence identifying Avila as Fuentes’ assailant – footage
from police officer Manuel Jaramillo’s body camera – was never formally received
into evidence. This argument fails because our case law holds that evidence is
deemed admitted where, as here, the district court ruled it was admissible, it was
presented to the trier of fact, and the parties treated it as having been received into
evidence. See, e.g., United States v. Brown, 832 F.2d 128, 130 (9th Cir. 1987);
United States v. Stapleton, 494 F.2d 1269, 1270-71 (9th Cir. 1974).
2. Avila contends that his due process right of confrontation was violated
because the district court permitted the government to play Officer Jaramillo’s
body camera footage, during which Fuentes identified Avila as her assailant,
without requiring the government to produce Fuentes as a witness. We review de
novo, see United States v. Perez, 526 F.3d 543, 547 (9th Cir. 2008), and we agree.
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Under Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471(1972), “every releasee is
guaranteed the right to confront and cross-examine adverse witnesses at a
revocation hearing, unless the government shows good cause for not producing the
witnesses.” United States v. Comito, 177 F.3d 1166, 1170 (9th Cir. 1999). When
deciding whether a violation has occurred, we consider “the importance of the
hearsay evidence to the court’s ultimate finding,” id. at 1171; the “‘traditional
indicia of reliability’ borne by the evidence;” United States v. Martin, 984 F.2d
308, 312 (9th Cir. 1993) (quoting United States v. Simmons, 812 F.2d 561, 564
(9th Cir. 1987)); and the “difficulty and expense of procuring witnesses,” id.(internal quotation marks omitted)..
As to the first consideration, the evidence at issue here was important to the
district court’s finding on Charge One because Fuentes’ identification of Avila as
her assailant was the key piece of evidence on this charge.
As to the second consideration, Fuentes’ identification of Avila bore few
indicia of reliability. Whether the identification qualifies as an “excited utterance”
under Federal Rule of Evidence 803(2) presents a close question. Fuentes
identified Avila ten to fifteen minutes after the shooting, not contemporaneously
with it. Before identifying Avila as the shooter, Fuentes paused for three or four
seconds, allowing time for deliberation and fabrication. Fuentes previously had
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been convicted of making a false representation to a police officer. Moreover,
Fuentes was not honest with Officer Jaramillo because she lied to him about her
relationship with Avila. Given these concerns, as well as the weak evidence
corroborating Avila as the shooter, the evidence at issue bore few traditional
indicia of reliability.
As to the final consideration, the government has not established good cause
for failing to produce Fuentes as a witness. Although the government presented
evidence of unsuccessful efforts to secure Fuentes as a witness in a prior separate
proceeding, the government made no efforts to procure Fuentes’ cooperation as a
witness in this case. Nothing in the record suggests that Fuentes’ reluctance to
cooperate in a prior proceeding would have carried over to this proceeding.
Furthermore, although police records contained two phone numbers and addresses
for Fuentes, the government attempted to contact Fuentes at only one of these
numbers and addresses in connection with the prior proceedings.
In sum, weighing Avila’s due process confrontation right against the
government’s good cause for denying it, we conclude Avila has demonstrated a
constitutional violation. With respect to Charge One, the error was not “harmless
beyond a reasonable doubt.” Comito, 177 F.3d at 1170. Fuentes’ identification of
Avila as her assailant was the key piece of evidence on this charge and was critical
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to the district court’s finding. As to Charge Four, by contrast, the error was
harmless. The finding on Charge Four was based on the ammunition found in
Avila’s automobile, not Fuentes’ recorded statements to Jaramillo.
3. Avila also challenges the district court’s imposition of a special condition
of supervised release prohibiting him from possessing or using “a computer or any
device that has access to any ‘on-line computer service’ unless approved by the
probation officer.”
The district court plainly erred by imposing this condition. See United
States v. Vega, 545 F.3d 743, 747 (9th Cir. 2008). First, this condition
indisputably “implicates a significant liberty interest.” United States v. Blinkinsop,
606 F.3d 1110, 1119 (9th Cir. 2010); see also Packingham v. North Carolina, 137
S. Ct. 1730, 1735-36 (2017). Second, nothing in the record suggests this condition
is “reasonably related to the goal of deterrence, protection of the public, or
rehabilitation of the offender, and ‘involve[s] no greater deprivation of liberty than
is reasonably necessary for the purposes of supervised release.’” United States v.
Rearden, 349 F.3d 608, 618 (9th Cir. 2003) (quoting United States v. T.M., 330
F.3d 1235, 1240 (9th Cir. 2003)). Neither Avila’s underlying conviction nor his
supervised release violations involved use of the internet. Cf. United States v.
Antelope, 395 F.3d 1128, 1142 (9th Cir. 2005) (upholding supervised release
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condition restricting internet access where the internet had been essential to the
commission of the crime); Rearden, 349 F.3d at 621 (same). Accordingly, the
condition is invalid. See United States v. LaCoste, 821 F.3d 1187, 1192 (9th Cir.
2016).
We vacate the judgment as to Count One. We affirm the judgment as to
Count Four. We vacate the special condition of supervised release relating to
computer use.
AFFIRMED in part; VACATED in part; REMANDED.
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