United States v. Rivas, No. 13-3526 (7th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CasePolice executed a search warrant on a storage unit that Miranda rented, where Miranda and Rivas worked on cars. The owner said that he saw Rivas at that unit “just about every day.” The officers found drugs, drug paraphernalia, two loaded guns, Rivas’s student handbook, invoices from Rivas’s mechanic business, and a Western Union receipt tied to him. Miranda was arrested. He called Rivas from jail and, in a recorded call, told Rivas the police were looking for him, but that he would not say anything about Rivas to the police. Rivas was arrested. A fingerprint examiner testified at trial that he was certain the partial fingerprint found on a handgun belonged to Rivas. Rivas wanted to question the examiner about an unrelated case in which the FBI used the same method to erroneously conclude that the fingerprint of an Oregon lawyer was on a bag containing detonating devices used in terrorist bombings. The district court ruled the defense could not refer to that case. The Seventh Circuit affirmed Rivas’s conviction. The examiner was not involved in the other case, and the cases were wholly unrelated. Rivas’s counsel was not prevented from questioning the examiner on the reliability of the fingerprint identification method. Counsel pursued multiple lines of cross‐examination. Rivas’s Sixth Amendment right to confrontation was not violated.
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