Federal Criminal Lawyer Blog

We handle lots of federal criminal cases. The various rules governing these cases are the same here in Georgia, they are the same when we take cases in Florida or Alabama, and we work under the same rules whenever we take cases in other parts of the country. Every so often, there are proposals to change the rules, and these amendments need to be first approved by the United States Supreme Court before they can be sent to Congress for ratification. Several weeks ago, the Supreme Court approved a series of rule changes that federal court practitioners need to keep up with in order to do the best job possible for their clients. Two of the bigger changes are discussed below.

One of the biggest rule changes concerns criminal cases involving immigration crimes or clients who are not U.S. Citizens Recall that under the landmark case of Padilla v. Kentucky, it is ineffective assistance of counsel if the lawyer does not tell his alien client that a guilty plea can have ramifications on the defendant's immigration status. Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure discusses what happens when anybody pleads guilty to a crime in federal court. The Supreme Court approved a change which requires the judge, before accepting a guilty plea, to ensure that the defendant understands “that, if convicted, a defendant who is not a United States citizen may be removed from the United States, denied citizenship, and denied admission to the United States in the future.” The rule change seems to provide protection to both defendants (who will be told about what might happen) and prosecutors (who can argue on appeal or habeas that any failure by defense counsel to provide the advice required by Padilla was harmless because the court gave the defendant the required notice).

Another significant amendment concerns changes to the Federal Rules of Evidence. These are the rules that control what can, and cannot, be introduced by one side or the other during a federal trial. Many readers will be aware of a series of cases over the past decade in which Justice Scalia has breathed new life into the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause. These cases held that criminal defendants have the right to see, confront and cross-examine any witness whose statement is used for an evidentiary purpose by the prosecution. The Supreme Court has approved changes to Rule 803 of the Rules of Evidence to allow, in a criminal case, admission of a government official’s certification of the absence of a public record if the prosecution gives the defendant notice of its intent to introduce the document fourteen days before trial and the defendant does not object within seven days before the trial. This revision seems to be a reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, which said that certain kinds of documentary evidence (such as a crime lab report indicating that a substance is cocaine) violates a criminal defendant’s rights under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment if admitted into evidence without the document’s author being put on the stand to testify as to its contents. The new version of Rule 803 contains a procedure under which a defendant will waive that constitutional right – at least with respect to a certification testifying to the absence of a public record – if he does not object to its admission after receiving notice prior to trial.

Again, practitioners need to keep up with these changes to protect their client's rights. We will continue to look for changes and updates so we can do our best for our clients.

One of the few bright spots in the Supreme Court's criminal law cases over the past few years has been the resurgence in emphasis on the protections afforded by the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause. However, yesterday in a badly fractured 5-4 decision, the High Court took a step backwards, or maybe even sideways. The case is Williams v. Illinois.

Recall that a couple of years ago the Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors cannot use crime lab reports in criminal trials unless the analysts responsible for creating the report came to court and gave live testimony. Last year that rule was reaffirmed and deepened when the Court said the Confrontation Clause was violated if the prosecutor called a colleague or supervisor of the analyst who did the work.

Into this background came the case of Sandy Williams. A sexual assault occurred in Illinois in 2000, and biological material recovered by the police was sent for analysis to Cellmark Diagnostics Laboratory in Maryland. Williams was later arrested on other charges, and his DNA was sent to the Illinois State Police Crime Lab. Eventually, a prosecution expert witness compared the DNA from the Illinois lab with the material analyzed in the Maryland lab, opining that they came from the same person. The prosecutor never called anyone from the Maryland lab nor even offered the reports authored by the Cellmark Diagnostics analyst.

As noted above, the case is a mess, with 4 Justices signing on to the majority opinion written by Justice Alito. According to Justice Alito, there was no Confrontation Clause problem, for two reasons.

First, Justice Alito said that while the prosecution's expert did discuss the report written by the Cellmark analyst, this discussion was not offered to prove that what was in it was true. Even more troubling is that Justice Alito and three others believe that the report itself was not the sort of evidence to which the confrontation clause applies because it was made “for the purpose of finding a rapist who was on the loose.” In other words, the Constitution's protections seem to be elastic, stretching very thin when a violent or unsolved crime is at issue.

Justice Alito gave a second reason for affirming the conviction. Williams elected to have a bench trial, which seemed important to Justice Alito. The fact that the trial judge was so impressed by the analyst's testimony somehow, for Justice Alito and the other three, showed there was no Confrontation Clause problem.

The crucial fifth vote came from Justice Thomas, who wrote an opinion that no other member of the Court would join. He suggested “a reading of the Confrontation Clause that respects its historically limited application to a narrow class of statements bearing indicia of solemnity.” According to Justice Thomas, the Cellmark report was not within that class.

Justice Kagan issued a spirited dissent joined by three others. First, she noted that the Cellmark analyst who was not called had, in an earlier trial, admitted to having made an egregious mistake when comparing DNA. The confrontation clause, Justice Kagan wrote, is “a mechanism for catching such errors,” demonstrating “the genius of an 18th-century device as applied to 21st-century evidence.” She also noted that under the two recent confrontation clause precedents “this is an open-and-shut case.” But the decision issued on Monday, she said, had turned a clear rule into a murky one. She urged lower courts to continue to follow the recent rulings on crime lab evidence “until a majority of this court reverses or confines those decisions.”

Our beloved Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, just down the street here in Atlanta, recently refused to join the ever-growing chorus of other courts that permit expert witness testimony to illuminate the real shortcomings in eyewitness identifications. A 30-year old ruling in the 11th Circuit said that the Court of Appeals can never overrule a trial judge who won't allow a party to bring in an expert to explain to jurors the many problems with witness identification testimony. A criminal defendant recently asked the entire court to overturn this old decision, but the judges refused to take the case. Judge Rosemary Barkett issued a scathing dissent, which is worth reading. The case is US v. Owens, and can be found here

Judge Barkett first notes her amazement that the 11th Circuit wouldn't join the majority of courts that allow such testimony. She sets out that all other federal courts of appeal, and 42 out of 50 states permit such testimony.

The many problems with eyewitness identification testimony, and recent social science research in this area, both call out for a new view, according to Judge Barkett. In the 30 years since the 11th Circuit outlawed such expert testimony, there have been over 2000 studies concerning the unreliability of eyewitness identification testimony. Judge Barkett quoted from a decision of another federal appellate court demonstrating that “the conclusions of the psychological studies are largely counter-intuitive, and serve to ‘explode common myths about an individual’s capacity for perception.’”

The many studies in this area reveal truly disturbing aspects of identification testimony. First, it appears that eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of false convictions in this country. Studies in both experiments and real-world settings show that eyewitnesses get it wrong about 1/4 to 1/2 of the time. Second, there is a very high consensus among researchers in this arena that the procedures used by the police can improperly impact what an eyewitness "remembers". A major study conducted by the New Jersey Supreme Court essentially said that the police always influence witnesses during lineup and other procedures during which a potential suspect is displayed to the eyewitness. However, when the policeman conducting the process does not know if the suspect is even in the lineup (which is called a "blind" method), the rate of accuracy doubles! As Judge Barkett notes, jurors need to hear from experts who know about this research because the average person is unaware that “even the best-intentioned non-blind administrator can act in a way that inadvertently sways an eyewitness.”

Judge Barkett also outlined the process of "confirmatory feedback" discussed in the many studies of eyewitness identification testimony. In this processs, the witness first makes a tentative identification, the suspect is arrested, and the witness sees the suspect at the defense table or in pictures. By the time of trial the eyewitness's identification is "confirmed" in his or her mind, not because he or she is more certain, but because the more they see the defendant in court the more likely they are to believe that the defendant is the person who committed the crime.

The literature in this area also describes another counter-intuitive aspect of eyewitness identification: the higher the stress in a situation, the less likely a person will make an accurate identification. Most people tend to believe that a victim of a crime will "never forget the face" of the perpetrator. Studies show just the opposite, that in such high-stress situations victims rarely focus on or accurately remember the facial features of the person who is committing the crime.

Judge Barkett concludes her dissent by explaining that simply cross-examining an eyewitness is insufficient. "In short, scientific research reveals that, in particular circumstances, an eyewitness’s testimony suffers from intrinsic flaws that are unknown to most jurors and undetectable through the typical modes of examining lay witnesses".

It is sad that our local appellate court continues to stick its head in the sand in this area. We hope that lawyers and judges continue to press ahead in helping jurors understand some of the counter-intuitive aspects of eyewitness identifications.

Last week the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued its decision in United States v. Mateos, a Medicare fraud case in which the Court held that exclusion of an exculpatory videotape was harmless error. This case is an important reminder to all trial lawyers to remain as well-versed as possible in the law of evidence to best represent our clients.

The defendants were employees of a clinic that purported to treat HIV patients. The clinic’s two doctors saw 70 patients per week, each of which was paid to complain about bleeding disorders. Every patient received either saline or a diluted dose of an expensive and medically unnecessary drug, and then the clinic billed Medicare for full treatments. The clinic received more than $8 million from Medicare during the five months that it was open.

Doctor Alvarez’s defense at trial was that she had not known about the fraud. She tried to introduce a video in which a member of the conspiracy assured her that the clinic was not involved in fraud to show that she had not been aware, but the video was excluded as inadmissible hearsay. The Eleventh Circuit held that the video was not hearsay because it was offered for a purpose other than the truth of the matter asserted. However, the Court held that the error was harmless because the defense had elicited the exculpatory content of the video through testimony.

The Court also upheld an upward departure in sentencing, noting that, under the new healthcare laws, the sentence would have been within the guidelines range had the fraud been committed today. Because sentences within the guidelines are presumptively reasonable and because the sentencing judge named numerous reasons for its upward departure, the Court held that a 30-year sentence was not an abuse of discretion, despite sentencing disparities.

The full opinion is available here.

Yesterday, the Eleventh Circuit, which hears appeals from federal cases here in Atlanta, held in U.S. v. Phaknikone that profile photographs from the criminal defendant’s Myspace account were inadmissible evidence of character. The government argued that the photos demonstrated modus operandi: the defendant’s gangsta style as shown in the photographs identified the defendant because he robbed banks “like a gangster.” The Court saw through the argument, but held that admitting the photos was harmless error, due to the “overwhelming” evidence of Phaknikone’s guilt.

The relevant photograph in this case showed Phaknikone in the driver’s seat of a car. A tattoo is visible on his neck, as well as a large tattoo on his left arm, and he is holding a handgun in his right hand. A passenger is handing something to a child in the back seat of the car. The Court held that this photograph “proves only that Phaknikone, on an earlier occasion, possessed a handgun in the presence of a child. Although the photograph may portray a ‘gangster-type personality,’ the photograph does not evidence the modus operandi of a bank robber who commits his crimes with a signature trait.”

Phaknikone was convicted on fifteen counts stemming from seven bank robberies in late 2006 and early 2007 in Northeast Georgia. He was captured fleeing one robbery and confessed to three more. Evidence regarding clothing and shoes worn by the robbers, eyewitness accounts of his tattoos, and behavior during the robberies was introduced by the government, as well. The Court held that the evidence was overwhelming, viewed in its totality, so the admission of the photographs was harmless error.

The Court’s opinion is available here.

View larger version of image here.