United States v. Jones

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 10-2363
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
DAQUAWN JONES,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. William G. Young, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Lynch, Chief Judge,
Boudin and Lipez, Circuit Judges.
Rheba Rutkowski, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Federal
Defender Office, for appellant.
Cynthia A. Young, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom
Carmen M. Ortiz, United States Attorney, was on brief for appellee.
July 27, 2012
BOUDIN, Circuit Judge. In the spring of 2008, federal,
state and local agents began an investigation of drug activity in
the Green Street area of Brockton, Massachusetts. Late in the
afternoon of June 19, 2008, Massachusetts State Trooper David
Patterson, working undercover, sought to purchase drugs at the
corner of Lexington and Green Streets. After placing a phone call
requesting two $40 bags of crack cocaine, Patterson waited for
delivery of the drugs, sitting in a truck equipped with concealed
audio/video recording equipment.
From his vantage across the street, Patterson could see
a group of people congregated around the driveway of 249 Green
Street. Eventually, a man unknown to Patterson emerged from the
group and began walking towards Patterson's truck. Patterson later
recalled that the man was wearing white sneakers, a black hat on
backwards, a white Adidas shirt and gray sweatpants. Patterson
watched the man's approach with care, wanting to be sure that he
was unarmed.
As the man started to cross the street and move toward
the truck, a Dodge truck that Patterson had earlier seen circling
the area drove slowly by Patterson's truck. On the video recording
of the events, Patterson's concern about the identity and
intentions of the Dodge's driver are readily apparent. Patterson
later explained that his concern was that the driver might be a
police officer unaware of the operation or someone pretending to be
-2-
a police officer but aiming to rob or attack Patterson. The man
advancing from the driveway also appeared to notice the truck and
slowed his approach and lowered his head while waiting for the
truck to pass.
After the Dodge had passed, the man who had been
approaching from the driveway arrived at Patterson's vehicle,
coming within 5 to 10 feet of the car, and asked "What do you
want?" Patterson responded that he had $80 and wanted two $40 bags
of crack cocaine. The man then went back to 249 Green Street where
he conferred with the group in the driveway; he then got into a
nearby car and drove away.
Shortly thereafter, a second unidentified man left the
group in the driveway and walked up to Patterson's car, saying:
"You want two 40's, right? Right. Two 40's. You got 80?"
Patterson agreed and then exchanged the money for a bag that proved
to contain crack cocaine. Patterson drove to the Brockton police
station where he gave the drugs to Trooper Erik Telford and briefly
gave his account of the day's events. The next day, Patterson
turned over to Telford a DVD containing the video recording of the
drug buy described above.
Telford was familiar with the drug trade in the area,
patrolled there regularly and knew or could recognize many of the
participants. In the video recording, the face of the first
unidentified man is out of focus and blurry while the face of the
-3-
second unidentified man in the video can be seen quite clearly.
Nevertheless, Telford (as he later testified) had no difficulty
recognizing the first man as Daquawn Jones and the second as Johnny
Richmond. Telford secured booking photos of the two men, showed
them separately to Patterson and asked Patterson if he could
identify them.
Patterson identified the photo of Jones as depicting the
man who had first approached the vehicle to take the order and the
photo of Richmond as the man who delivered the drugs. Patterson,
of course, was not being asked to match the photos to the video but
to his memory of the two men as he saw them at the time of the
transaction: each had approached his truck and each had carried on
a brief conversation with Patterson. It appears that neither then
nor later did Patterson express any doubt or uncertainty about his
identification.
Both Jones and Richmond were arrested and indicted. They
were charged with conspiring to distribute cocaine base, 21 U.S.C.
§ 846 (2006), and with distribution (or abetting distribution, 18
U.S.C. § 2) of cocaine base within 1,000 feet of a school, 21
U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 860. While Richmond pled guilty, Jones chose
to go to trial. Thereafter the district court was presented with
two pretrial motions to suppress or exclude evidence--one from each
side--the dispositions of which are the centerpiece of Jones'
present appeal.
-4-
First, Jones moved to suppress Patterson's out-of-court
identification of Jones when he first identified the booking photo
to Telford at the police station on the ground that it had been
secured by an unduly suggestive process and was unreliable. Jones'
request for suppression extended to any future in-court
identification by Patterson as irrevocably tainted by the improper
procedures used initially. Patterson testified at the suppression
hearing describing the events recounted above.
The district court ultimately denied the motion to
suppress, concluding that the identification process had been
"impermissibly suggestive" (legal jargon explained below) but that
the government had shown that the identification was reliable. The
arguments of the parties and the district court's reasoning are
described more fully in the merits discussion but at trial centered
around Telford's use of a single photograph rather than an array
and on the conditions of Patterson's initial look at Jones during
the buy.
Also prior to trial, the government moved to exclude a
proposed defense expert, Dr. Steven Penrod, from testifying.
Penrod holds both Ph.D and J.D. degrees and proposed to testify
about a host of issues related to eyewitness identification: the
effect of stress on identification; the decreased accuracy of
cross-racial compared to same-race identification (Patterson and
Telford are white; Jones is black); the lack of correlation between
-5-
witness confidence and accurate identification; and the influence
of suggestive identification practices.
The government's position was that identification of
individuals was within the common experience of the jury, that such
evidence was unnecessary and potentially misleading, and that
courts commonly, although not always, reject such expert testimony.
Jones' position was that the information Penrod hoped to provide
defied in some respects the common knowledge of jurors and would be
helpful to the jury in evaluating the weight to be given to
Patterson's identification; further, Jones said, mis-identification
was a critical element of his defense.
The district court granted the motion to bar the expert
from testifying but its position was more nuanced than the
government's.1 In a nutshell, the court agreed that some aspects
of Penrod's general concerns about stress, cross-racial
identification, suggestive procedures and witness confidence would
be useful information for a jury; but, the court held, these
cautions were more efficiently, and with less risk of confusion,
conveyed by the court's intended jury instructions, whose content
and circumstances are discussed hereafter. United States v. Jones,
762 F. Supp. 2d 270, 277-78 (D. Mass. 2010).
1
Before and during trial, the court explained its denial of
the motion orally; it repeated the explanation, elaborating to a
limited extent, in a written memorandum six weeks after Jones'
sentencing. United States v. Jones, 762 F. Supp. 2d 270, 271-79
(D. Mass. 2010).
-6-
At trial, the government rested heavily on Patterson's
eyewitness testimony but in addition Telford testified to his
identification of Jones from the video; the jurors themselves saw
the video; Brockton Police Detective George Almeida testified to
Jones' regular presence in the area of the transaction in the first
half of 2008, including on June 17, 2008 (two days before the
transaction), when he was seen with Johnny Richmond; and the
government introduced an arguably incriminating recorded telephone
conversation (discussed in more detail below).
Acting on his promise, the district judge did, at Jones'
request, issue relatively extensive jury instructions touching on
the subjects of Penrod's proposed testimony. The most relevant
part of the instructions provided that, in evaluating the
identification:
You may take into account the strength
of the later identification and the
circumstances under which the later
identification was made. Was the
identification by a witness influenced by the
circumstances under which the identification
was made. If you think it was you should
examine that identification with great care.
You want to consider the length of time or the
relative shortness of the time between the
first, the first observation of the person and
the later identification. Was the
photographic identification procedure
conducted afterwards suggestive in any way.
For example, an identification made when a
witness chooses a photo from a group of photos
tends to be more reliable than an
identification made from a single photograph.
It is not forbidden by the law to identify
from a single photograph. But you heard the
-7-
stipulation about we don't treat police
officers any different, or at least there's
nothing in the manuals that say treat police
officers any different. And I do tell you
that it's generally believed that an
identification of a person made from a group
of photographs tends to be more reliable than
one made from a single photograph. Now, you
may rely upon this. That's left to you. I
don't say anything about it. But you should
understand that.
Consider these other things. You may
consider these other things. What was the
witness's state of mind at the time of the
observation. There are studies that show that
if a witness is afraid, distracted, under
stress, then the witness's capacity to
perceive what he says he perceives and
remember it, that's reduced. Were the
witness, the eyewitness witness and the person
he's identifying, were they of different
races. There are studies that tend to show
that when a witness and the person he is
identifying are of different races the
identification tends to be less reliable than
if both persons are of the same race. These
studies reveal that even people with no
prejudice against other races and people who
have substantial contact with persons of other
races will experience some difficulty in
accurately identifying members of a different
race. And quite often people don't recognize
this difficulty in themselves.
Lastly, or last on this list, you can
also consider that studies show that the
reliability of an identification doesn't
really depend upon how positive the person is.
The reliability depends on all the
circumstances.
Now, I make mention of studies, and
fine, there are these studies and they show
what I've said they show. But studies are of
groups of people, a statistically significant
group of people generally. They're not the
people in this case. No study has been done
-8-
or could be conducted about the people in this
case. And you see that's what's left to the
jury. It's up to you to decide. I need you
to understand the parameters, the strengths
and the concerns of eyewitness testimony, but
how that applies in this case is left to you
under your oath as jurors.
Jones was convicted by the jury on both counts and
sentenced as a career offender to 120 months' imprisonment. After
Jones' appeal, we granted a partial remand of Jones' case to the
district court for resentencing in light of United States v.
McGhee, 651 F.3d 153 (1st Cir. 2011). The district court,
withdrawing the career offender designation, imposed a new sentence
of 33 months, mooting sentencing claims that Jones had originally
sought to raise on the appeal.
On this appeal, Jones does not challenge the adequacy of
the evidence but argues that the district court erred in refusing
to suppress Patterson's identification of Jones as the participant
in the drug transaction and in excluding Jones' proffered expert
witness, Dr. Penrod. The first issue is fact-specific and need not
detain us long; the second involves a matter of continuing
importance. The standard of review depends, as usual, on the
precise issue or issues and not on the general topic.
With respect to the suppression motion, it should be made
clear at the outset that evidence is not normally suppressed
because it is debatable or arguably unreliable--much testimony at
trial is of this character--and customarily cross-examination is
-9-
the means of testing the strength of such evidence. See Perry v.
New Hampshire, 132 S. Ct. 716, 723 (2012). But eyewitness
identification evidence is subject to special limitations where, at
a first step, the opponent establishes that it was developed in an
unnecessarily suggestive manner.
It is one thing to squeeze out of the lemon whatever
juice it may provide; it is another when the government itself
developed the evidence and failed to take sensible and
straightforward steps to ensure its reliability. Thus, where a
court finds that the identification procedure used was
unnecessarily suggestive, suppression is appropriate unless the
government carries the burden of showing, under the totality of the
circumstances, that the identification was still reliable. Manson
v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 109-14 (1977); United States v. Rivera-
Rivera 555 F.3d 277, 283 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 130 S. Ct. 344(2009).
Here, the district court agreed with Jones that the
method used to identify him was unnecessarily suggestive and that
it would have imposed little if any additional burden on the police
to have shown Patterson several different photographs including one
of Jones. The issue on appeal is whether the judge erred in
concluding that the circumstances surrounding the identification
established that it was nevertheless reasonably reliable.
-10-
It is customary to say that we review the district
court's findings of fact for clear error and its conclusions of law
de novo, United States v. Fernandez, 600 F.3d 56, 58 (1st Cir.
2010), but the legal rules here are not in dispute and the factual
circumstances are pretty well established on the record. The
phrase "abuse of discretion" is often used in such cases, United
States v. Brown, 510 F.3d 57, 66 (1st Cir. 2007), entailing
reasonable latitude for case-specific decisions, see United States
v. Bater, 594 F.3d 51, 54 n.1 (1st Cir. 2010).
Here, the district court's ruling was assuredly
reasonable. Factors that courts emphasize in assessing an
eyewitness' reliability include the opportunity to view the suspect
at the time of the crime; the witness' degree of attention; the
accuracy of the description of the defendant prior to
identification; confidence at the time of identification; and the
length of time elapsed between the crime and the identification.
Manson, 432 U.S. at 114; Rivera, 555 F.3d at 284.
All appear to be matters of common sense, although one--
the next to last--needs rephrasing to make it so, for the witness'
lack of confidence is certainly a reliable warning sign, while the
presence of confidence is probably closer to a neutral factor.
Anyway, anything that rationally bears on reliability is fair grist
for argument; and the multiplicity of factors and variety of fact
-11-
patterns is why it makes sense to defer in some measure to the
trial judge who is closest to the circumstances.
Here, the district judge noted that the transaction
occurred in full daylight and that Patterson had about ten or
fifteen seconds to get a good look at Jones. The judge also
concluded that Patterson's degree of attention would have been high
because he was a trained law enforcement officer whose job was to
identify the people who sold him drugs. Concerning the Dodge
truck, the district judge inferred that Patterson's concern would
"heighten his attention" rather than distract him, as Jones argued.
Finally, the identification was made the day after the event and
not on some remote later occasion. Jones, 762 F. Supp. 2d at 273.
Jones says that Patterson had only seconds to view the
suspect who kept his head down when the Dodge appeared, and could
not recall identifying features about the suspect beyond his
clothing. The judge's conclusion regarding the truck is debatable,
of course, and depended in some measure on how he understood and
evaluated Patterson's testimony; but the other points surely
support the judge.
This leaves Jones with arguments, such as those his
expert was prepared to develop, that Jones did in fact present to
the judge and can as readily make to us without any need for the
expert: that stress can hinder identification, that cross-racial
identifications are often more difficult, and that a witness can be
-12-
highly confident but wrong. But in the end Paterson saw Jones face
on and not far away, identified him from a photograph the next day,
and his identification is clearly reliable enough to avoid
exclusion under Manson and Rivera.
The standard being applied is meant to screen out only
evidence that is clearly unreliable and not to supplant the jury's
ordinary function of weighing what the witness says and choosing
the weight to accord it. It is for this reason that "it is only in
extraordinary cases that identification evidence should be withheld
from the jury." United States v. de Jesus-Rios, 990 F.2d 672, 677
(1st Cir. 1993) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
Whether the jury was given the right tools to assess the evidence
is a separate question.
Penrod's testimony is urged by Jones to be one of those
tools, and at the outset we note that the government did not
challenge Penrod's qualifications or the reliability of the
information that he sought to offer, see Fed. R. Evid. 702; Daubert
v. Merrell Dow Pharms., Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 597 (1993), but instead
focused on whether his proposed testimony was within the common
understanding of the jury and had the potential to confuse or
mislead the jury, see Fed. R. Evid. 403, 702.
Relevant lay testimony, unless it fails the tests of Rule
403, is presumptively admissible; but expert testimony is another
story. The expert is rarely a percipient witness to the events,
-13-
and sometimes (as here) expert testimony is at best helpful rather
than essential; jurors cannot perform DNA analyses in the jury box
but can usually make reasonable judgments about eyewitness
identifications. And there can be close cases in determining the
need for or importance of expert advice. See, e.g., United States
v. Shay, 57 F.3d 126, 133-34 (1st Cir. 1995).
The use of experts creates costs of its own: distraction,
multiplication of cost, and the loss of valuable time in stand-offs
of dueling experts operating at a high level of generality. See
United States v. Brien, 59 F.3d 274, 277 (1st Cir.), cert. denied,
516 U.S. 953 (1995). Understandably, trial judges tend to be
cautious about opening the door to "identification" experts who, if
allowed without adequate justification, would likely lead both
sides to seek expert testimony in every case involving
identification issues.
Still, it is untenable to argue that expert
identification evidence is always and in every situation
superfluous. The threshold for potential expert testimony is
merely whether expert evidence can help the jury, Fed. R. Evid.
702, and while several of Penrod's basic points could be made by
counsel in argument (e.g., the effects of stress), this might not
be true of all. Anyway, there is obviously a difference between an
attorney's appeal to common experience in closing argument and a
blow-by-blow presentation by an impressive expert.
-14-
The question whether such expert evidence should be
admitted has become a recurring one;2 and, as circumstances vary
from case to case, this court has declined to lay down a general
rule. Brien, 59 F.3d at 277. The importance of the identification
matters (it may be central, cumulative, or somewhere in between);
so, too, the nature of the proposed expert testimony; and, as the
district court noted, the possibilities include alternative means
of providing helpful information to the jury, including the use of
jury instructions.
In this instance, we agree that the identification by
Patterson was of central importance; that his opportunity to see
the first visitor to the car was brief and attended by some
distraction and perhaps anxiety; and that information bearing on
the effects of stress, witness confidence and cross-racial
identification would be helpful to the jury in the present case (if
supported by the relevant studies, as the district judge believed
to be true). Indeed, the district judge had little hesitation in
concluding that the jury would be helped by the information.
2
Compare cases upholding the exclusion of expert testimony,
both in this circuit, Brien, 59 F.3d at 277; United States v.
Rodríguez-Berríos, 573 F.3d 55, 70-72 (1st Cir. 2009), cert.
denied, 130 S. Ct. 1300 (2010), and others, e.g., United States v.
Bartlett, 567 F.3d 901, 905-07 (7th Cir. 2009), cert. denied, 130
S. Ct. 1137 (2010); United States v. Lumpkin, 192 F.3d 280, 288-89
(2d Cir. 1999), with cases reversing such exclusion, e.g., United
States v. Brownlee, 454 F.3d 131, 140-44 (3d Cir. 2006); State v.
Clopten, 223 P.3d 1103, 1106-18 (Utah 2009).
-15-
However, it was within the district court's province to
provide this information through instructions rather than through
dueling experts. Penrod's proposed testimony aimed at providing
background information--not an opinion about facts at issue here
like the identification of a particular fingerprint or firearm.
The judge was fully entitled to conclude that this general
information could be more reliably and efficiently conveyed by
instructions rather than through dueling experts.
Such instructions have become more common in this
evolving area. E.g., American Bar Association Policy 104D: Cross-
Racial Identification, 37 Sw. U. L. Rev. 917, 921-22 (2008). True,
in some cases--say, identifying specific fingerprints or matching
a bullet to a gun barrel--there is no substitute for testifying
experts if the parties are at odds; but the kinds of general
observations about weaknesses in eyewitness testimony such as those
Penrod proposed to develop in this case can be provided through
instructions while avoiding certain of the risks and costs of
dueling experts.
Jones also contends that the exclusion of Penrod's
testimony deprived him of his constitutional rights to present a
meaningful defense and to present witnesses in support thereof.
See Washington v. Texas, 388 U.S. 14, 17-19 (1967); Brown v. Ruane,
630 F.3d 62, 71-72 (1st Cir. 2011). But this adds little to the
analysis, for converting the evidentiary claim into a
-16-
constitutional claim does not ensure admissibility of the evidence;
"the right to present a defense does not trump valid rules of
evidence." United States v. Pires, 642 F.3d 1, 13 (1st Cir. 2011).
While we agree that the district judge properly handled
the matter in this case, the suitability of this particular set of
instructions raises a separate issue. At trial, the government
raised terse questions about the substance of certain of the
individual instructions. Being satisfied with the outcome of the
trial, however, the government on appeal has not identified
individual passages in the instructions with which it may disagree
and we have no occasion to consider any objections or endorse
particular language.
The government was forewarned by the district court when
the court excluded the defense expert that the court would deal
with the subject in instructions; but while Jones tendered
instructions somewhat along the lines of the instructions
ultimately given, the government proposed only bland and familiar
language virtually unrelated to the cautions sought by the
defendant. And, at the charge conference, the government did
little to help the judge tailor or soften the content. It is free
in the future to argue for, and provide supporting information, in
favor of different language.
Jones' final issue on appeal is his objection to the
district court's decision to allow the government to introduce a
-17-
portion of a recorded telephone call between Jones and a friend
that occurred on May 2, 2010, while Jones was in jail (the jury was
not told of the location). The essence of the phone call is as
follows:
Jones: One of my co-d's is rattin', too, dog,
that shit's got me hot.
Friend: Yeah, hmmm.
Jones: No doubt. When I found out . . . it's
like, he's like my brother, dog. Now he's
ratting.
Friend: Oh, yeah?
Jones: Yeah, he's a rat.
Jones objected to admission of the phone call, arguing
that at the time of the call, he did not know that Richmond had
pled guilty or what he had said in his plea colloquy; this had
occurred roughly three weeks before the phone call but not in
Jones' presence. He also argued that the phone call was highly
prejudicial, Fed. R. Evid. 403, was not an admission, Fed. R. Evid.
801(d)(2), and that it would be even more prejudicial if Richmond
refused to testify (which is what then occurred).
An admission is anything a party said out of court when
offered against him by an adversary, Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(2), so
the only pertinent objections are relevance and undue prejudice.
Relevance is obvious: the statements do not compel, but clearly
permit, an inference that Jones is talking about Richmond even if
it is uncertain how Jones learned of the possibility or even
-18-
whether he was mistaken. Yes, Jones could be talking about a
different rat and different crime; but his counsel was free to, and
did in fact, argue weaknesses or alternative interpretations to the
jury.
As to undue prejudice, his "street language" might, as
Jones argues, displease the jury; but it is fairly tame, the
inference of guilt is important because Jones' defense was mistaken
identity, and the Rule 403 standard is weighted toward
admissibility since prejudice must "substantially" outweigh
probative value. Additionally, this is a classic exercise of
trial-judge discretion which is "subject to great deference,"
United States v. Bayard, 642 F.3d 59, 63 (1st Cir.) (citation and
internal quotation marks omitted), cert. denied, 131 S. Ct. 2944(2011), and was not here abused.
Affirmed.
-19-