United States v. Christopher Bounds ( 2022 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS APR 29 2022
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 21-30114
Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No.
3:18-cr-00290-DCN-1
v.
CHRISTOPHER WILLIAM BOUNDS, MEMORANDUM*
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Idaho
David C. Nye, Chief District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted April 11, 2022
Seattle, Washington
Before: BOGGS,** HURWITZ, and KOH, Circuit Judges.
Christopher Bounds appeals from his conviction on conspiracy, drug, and
firearms offenses. He argues that the district court erroneously barred him from
presenting a “public-authority” defense at trial and then improperly hindered his
ability to present a defense regarding his lack of requisite intent to commit several
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The Honorable Danny J. Boggs, United States Circuit Judge for the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, sitting by designation.
of the offenses. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.1
1. “Public authority” is an affirmative defense in which a defendant asserts that
“he reasonably relied on the authority of a government official to engage him” in an
offense. United States v. Burrows, 36 F.3d 875, 881 (9th Cir. 1994) (citation
omitted). To present this defense, a defendant’s proffered evidence must be
sufficient for a jury to find that he reasonably relied on an official’s “statement” or
“act.” Id. at 882; cf. United States v. Boulware, 558 F.3d 971, 974 (9th Cir. 2009).
Reviewing de novo, see Boulware, 558 F.3d at 974, we conclude that the
district court properly precluded this defense. The record demonstrates that no
communication by an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to
Bounds could reasonably be construed as a statement or act giving authorization for
his charged offenses; at most, these statements indicated that Bounds had not
received authorization, but that he might receive it at an indeterminate, future point.
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Bounds also contends that the district court erred by ordering a psychiatric
evaluation and by failing to exclude witnesses who were represented by an attorney
with a potential conflict of interest. The district court did not abuse its discretion by
ordering a psychiatric evaluation during competency proceedings as authorized by
18 U.S.C. § 4241(b), and Bounds suffered no Fifth or Sixth Amendment deprivation
because the evaluation was not used beyond the “limited, neutral purpose of
determining his competency.” Estelle v. Smith, 451 U.S. 454, 465 (1981).
Additionally, the court took “adequate steps” to ensure that there was no
conflict of interest by ordering the attorney in question to submit an ex parte affidavit
for in-chambers review. Wheat v. United States, 486 U.S. 153, 160 (1988). The
affidavit confirmed that the attorney did not disclose confidential information or
otherwise act in a manner that would require the exclusion of the witnesses.
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2. Bounds also claims that he was precluded from arguing that he lacked the
mental state necessary to commit an offense, because he honestly believed he was
cooperating with the government.2 See Burrows, 36 F.3d at 881. We review de novo
restrictions on a defendant’s testimony, Jones v. Davis, 8 F.4th 1027, 1036 (9th Cir.
2021), and Confrontation Clause challenges, United States v. Larson, 495 F.3d 1094,
1101 (9th Cir. 2007) (en banc). We review for abuse of discretion other evidentiary
claims, including challenges to cross-examination on nonconstitutional grounds.
Ibid. The district court did not err in its rulings concerning this defense.
First, the court did not improperly limit Bounds’s testimony. “[R]estrictions
of a defendant’s right to testify may not be arbitrary or disproportionate to the
purposes they are designed to serve.” Rock v. Arkansas, 483 U.S. 44, 55–56 (1987).
A restriction is arbitrary if it “serves no legitimate purpose in the case at hand,” and
it is disproportionate “when it infringes excessively on a defendant’s right to ‘tell his
own story.’” Jones, 8 F.4th at 1036 (citation omitted). The restrictions on Bounds’s
testimony were not arbitrary, because permitting him to testify about his belief that
he was a DEA informant risked misleading the jury into considering his public-
authority defense. See Holmes v. South Carolina, 547 U.S. 319, 326–27 (2006).
They were not disproportionate, because the court permitted Bounds to testify that
2
Bounds does not challenge that he lacked the mental state to commit the
three firearms offenses of which he was convicted.
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his intent was “to turn [evidence and drugs] all over to law enforcement,” and that
his “intention was to gather intelligence and firearms.” Even though the court did
not permit him to say that he believed he was cooperating with “the government,”
Bounds adequately presented his theory that he lacked culpable intent.
Second, the limitations on the scope of cross-examination of some prosecution
witnesses neither violated Bounds’s Confrontation Clause rights nor constituted an
abuse of discretion. See Larson, 495 F.3d at 1101. Although some of the excluded
evidence could have been relevant to Bounds’s defense, the Confrontation Clause is
not violated if “other legitimate interests outweigh[ed] the defendant’s interest in
presenting the evidence” and the jury received “sufficient information” to assess the
witnesses’ credibility. United States v. Beardslee, 197 F.3d 378, 383 (9th Cir. 1999).
Additional evidence about Bounds’s beliefs would not have impacted the credibility
of the government’s law-enforcement witnesses. The jury also received sufficient
information to evaluate the credibility of the other prosecution witnesses, such as
Alisha Bellavance and Edgar Perez. Both were allowed to testify about their
cooperation agreements with prosecutors and their perception that Bounds acted
carelessly when concealing activities from law enforcement, and Perez was further
cross-examined about whether he believed Bounds was an informant. Moreover,
since cross-examination about Bounds’s belief that he was cooperating with the
DEA could have risked misleading the jury as to the availability of the public-
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authority defense, the district court had legitimate reasons to exclude that evidence
and did not otherwise abuse its discretion in barring it. See Fed. R. Evid. 403.
Third, the court’s decision implicating Federal Rule of Evidence 106—its
admission of the redacted arrest video—was not an abuse of discretion. See United
States v. Vallejos, 742 F.3d 902, 905 (9th Cir. 2014). Rule 106 is designed to avoid
the partial introduction of a written or recorded statement that results in
“misunderstanding or distortion.” Beech Aircraft Corp. v. Rainey, 488 U.S. 153, 172
(1988). Bounds’s statements in the unredacted video risked giving the jury the
misapprehension that he was asserting a public-authority defense, and the redacted
version did not either mislead the jury about the admitted portion of the video or
create the misimpression that he was forgoing a defense related to his lack of
criminal intent.
For these reasons, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
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