United States v. Garcia-Morales, No. 17-50323 (9th Cir. 2019)
Annotate this CaseThe Ninth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction for attempted transport of aliens and rejected his claim of prosecutorial misconduct. Specifically, defendant alleged that the prosecution committed misconduct by introducing evidence of, and commenting on, his post-arrest silence at trial. However, the panel held that defendant was not silent in response to an agent's questioning on the topic of his coconspirators, and it was not error for the prosecution to introduce evidence of, and comment on, that part of the interrogation including argument characterizing defendant as being evasive about other people involved in smuggling. Therefore, the prosecution properly relied on admissible evidence to rebut the theory that defendant had always intended to turn aliens he picked up over to border patrol.
Court Description: Criminal Law The panel affirmed a conviction for attempted transport of aliens in a case in which the defendant alleged that the prosecution committed misconduct at trial by introducing evidence of, and commenting on, the defendant’s post-arrest silence in violation of due process under Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610 (1976). Upon review of the record, the panel concluded that the defendant was not silent in response to a border patrol agent’s questioning on the topic of his co-conspirators – and that, at most, the exchange demonstrated that the defendant did not want to discuss his co-conspirators on video tape but was willing to continue talking about the subject later. The panel wrote that the prosecution’s characterization of the defendant as being evasive about other people involved in alien smuggling was supported by, and tied to, evidence in the record. The panel concluded that the prosecution therefore did not err, or commit misconduct, by characterizing the defendant as being evasive about the other people involved in alien smuggling, but properly relied on admissible evidence to rebut the theory that the defendant had always intended to turn aliens he picked up over to border patrol. Dissenting, Judge Bea wrote that it cannot be that the defendant’s refusal to name his co-conspirators was not UNITED STATES V. GARCIA-MORALES 3 silence, and that this determination allowed the prosecution at trial to characterize his non-silence as silence for purposes of proving his guilt. Judge Bea wrote that the prosecution’s reference to the defendant’s silence as evidence of his guilt in this context was a Doyle violation, and plain error that warrants reversal and remand for further proceedings.
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