United States v. Cisneros-Gutierrez
75 Fed. R. Serv. 871, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 3155, 517 F.3d 751 (2008)
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Rule of Law:
A witness's factual resume, affirmed as true under oath during a guilty plea hearing, is admissible as non-hearsay substantive evidence under Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(1)(A) if the witness's subsequent trial testimony is inconsistent with that statement.
Facts:
- Edgardo Gutierrez was under surveillance by law enforcement for drug dealing at his home in DeSoto, Texas.
- A cooperating individual, Rondy Booth, informed officers that Edgardo was expecting a large methamphetamine shipment from California.
- Shortly after midnight, Edgardo’s brother, Osvaldo Cisneros-Gutierrez (Defendant), and their cousin, Rene Cisneros-Gomez, arrived at Edgardo’s home after driving from California.
- The following morning, law enforcement executed a search warrant on Edgardo's house, discovering guns, approximately $47,000 in cash, and thirteen pounds of methamphetamine inside an ice chest shell.
- A fingerprint belonging to Cisneros-Gomez was found on the ice chest shell; no fingerprints from Cisneros-Gutierrez were found, but the items had been washed.
- Rental car and phone records indicated Cisneros-Gutierrez had made at least two other one-way trips from California to Texas, with frequent phone contact with Edgardo during the drives.
- Following his arrest, Edgardo implicated Cisneros-Gutierrez in the drug conspiracy during interviews with a DEA agent.
- During his own guilty plea hearing, Edgardo signed a factual resume stating that Cisneros-Gutierrez had delivered the methamphetamine, and Edgardo affirmed under oath that the contents of the resume were true.
Procedural Posture:
- Osvaldo Cisneros-Gutierrez was charged in a superseding indictment in a federal district court with one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine.
- The defendant's brother, Edgardo Gutierrez, previously pled guilty to related charges and signed a factual resume implicating the defendant.
- At Cisneros-Gutierrez's jury trial, the government called Edgardo as a witness, who then gave testimony inconsistent with his factual resume.
- The government moved to admit a redacted version of Edgardo's factual resume as substantive evidence, which the district court ultimately allowed over the defendant's objection.
- The jury returned a guilty verdict.
- The district court sentenced Cisneros-Gutierrez to 292 months' imprisonment.
- Cisneros-Gutierrez (Appellant) appealed his conviction and sentence to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, challenging the district court's evidentiary rulings.
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Issue:
Does a witness's factual resume, which the witness affirmed under oath was true during their own plea hearing, qualify as a prior inconsistent statement 'given under oath subject to the penalty of perjury at a ... hearing, or other proceeding' under Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(1)(A), allowing it to be admitted as substantive evidence?
Opinions:
Majority - Higginbotham, J.
Yes. A statement in a factual resume is admissible as substantive evidence under Rule 801(d)(1)(A) when the witness affirms its truth under oath at a plea hearing, as this constitutes a prior inconsistent statement given under oath at a proceeding. The court found that a plea hearing qualifies as an 'other proceeding' under the rule. Edgardo's trial testimony, which included feigned memory loss and direct contradiction of the resume, was deemed inconsistent. Crucially, the court held that although the government drafted the factual resume, Edgardo 'adopted' the statement as his own by reviewing it, signing it, and testifying under oath at his plea hearing that its contents were 'true and correct in every respect.' This sworn affirmation is sufficient to treat the statement as his own sworn testimony, distinguishing it from unsworn statements in police reports that are generally inadmissible under this rule.
Analysis:
This decision solidifies the scope of Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(1)(A) by establishing that a guilty plea hearing is an 'other proceeding' and that a witness's sworn adoption of a government-drafted factual resume renders it admissible as substantive evidence. This provides prosecutors with a powerful tool to counter 'turncoat' witnesses in conspiracy cases who recant or claim memory loss at trial. The ruling's functional approach, which treats a sworn affirmation of a document as equivalent to direct testimony, sets a precedent that could broaden the use of prior sworn statements from various pre-trial proceedings.
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