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UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 22-4330
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
JUAN CARLOS SANDOVAL-RODRIGUEZ, a/k/a Picaro, a/k/a El Pastor, a/k/a Gasper,
Defendant – Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, at Baltimore. James K. Bredar, Senior District Judge. (1:17–cr–00589–JKB–5)
Submitted: January 17, 2025 Decided: April 14, 2025
Before DIAZ, Chief Judge, and AGEE and WYNN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished opinion. Judge Wynn wrote the opinion, in which Chief Judge Diaz and Judge Agee joined.
ON BRIEF: G. Alan DuBois, Federal Public Defender, Jennifer C. Leisten, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Jaclyn L. Tarlton, Assistant Federal Public Defender, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellant. Erek L. Barron, United States Attorney, David C. Bornstein, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate Division, Kenneth S. Clark, Assistant United States Attorney, Anatoly Smolkin, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee. USCA4 Appeal: 22-4330 Doc: 105 Filed: 04/14/2025 Pg: 2 of 14
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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WYNN, Circuit Judge:
Juan Carlos Sandoval Rodriguez 1 appeals his convictions for murder in aid of
racketeering and conspiracy to commit murder in aid of racketeering relating to his
involvement in the MS-13 killing of Jose Portillo on March 11, 2016. On appeal, Sandoval
Rodriguez raises three grounds for reversal. 2 None succeed.
I.
Sandoval Rodriguez primarily objects to the admission of a cell-phone video
purporting to show surveillance footage from a security camera. The circumstances
surrounding the creation of the video bear explanation. Portillo’s sister had seen him the
day of the murder but became worried when he did not return her phone calls the next day.
She began to search for clues in places he would frequent, including a laundromat near the
park where the murder occurred. She showed a photo of her brother to the laundromat
attendant, who let her review the facility’s security-camera footage. She located footage
appearing to show her brother and used her phone to make a recording of it. The video
shows two men, who the Government alleges are Sandoval Rodriguez and Portillo, and the
video’s timestamp indicates that it was taken after 11 P.M. on the night of the murder.
Portillo’s sister shared this video with a police detective. The laundromat’s security system
1 There is inconsistency throughout the record over whether Mr. Sandoval Rodriguez’s compound surname is hyphenated. We defer to the usage reflected in his briefing. 2 Sandoval Rodriguez’s other convictions, including other murders in aid of racketeering, assault with a dangerous weapon in aid of racketeering, and extortion, are the subjects of a different appeal. See United States v. Sandoval Rodriguez, No. 22-4324 (4th Cir. argued Jan. 30, 2025). 3 USCA4 Appeal: 22-4330 Doc: 105 Filed: 04/14/2025 Pg: 4 of 14
stores footage for only two weeks, which probably explains why the trial exhibit consists
of a video of a video and not the security footage itself.
At trial, the Government told the jury that this footage was critical. In its opening
statement, the Government emphasized that “[j]ust minutes before the murder, you will see
the defendant . . . walking towards the entrance of the park on the night of [the] murder.”
J.A. 219. 3 Sandoval Rodriguez, on the other hand, told the jury that the footage “is far from
clear.” J.A. 224. On appeal, Sandoval Rodriguez claims that the video was insufficiently
authenticated.
“To establish that evidence is authentic, a proponent need only present ‘evidence
sufficient to support a finding that the matter in question is what the proponent claims.’”
United States v. Vidacak, 553 F.3d 344, 349 (4th Cir. 2009) (quoting Fed. R. Evid. 901(a)).
“The district court’s role is to serve as gatekeeper in assessing whether the proponent has
offered a satisfactory foundation from which the jury could reasonably find that the
evidence is authentic.” Id. (first citing United States v. Branch, 970 F.2d 1368, 1371 (4th
Cir. 1992); and then citing United States v. Safavian, 435 F. Supp. 2d 36, 38 (D.D.C.
2006)). Thus, “[t]he burden to authenticate under Rule 901 is not high—only a prima facie
showing is required.” Id. Sandoval Rodriguez did not challenge the foundation for the
video at trial, so we review for plain error.
At trial, the laundromat attendant testified that the camera system was installed to
detect theft. The surveillance video “note[s] the date and time that the recording is
3 Citations to the “J.A.” and “S.J.A.” refer, respectively, to the Joint Appendix and Sealed Joint Appendix filed by the parties in this appeal. 4 USCA4 Appeal: 22-4330 Doc: 105 Filed: 04/14/2025 Pg: 5 of 14
occurring.” J.A. 286. She testified that she has used the system to look for a video from a
specific day at a specific time. Furthermore, the system “record[s] both the date and the
time,” and does so “[o]n the top of the video.” J.A. 286–87.
Portillo’s sister testified that she “saw the videos from the [day before the
murder] . . . until 11:00 o’clock the night of the 11th.” J.A. 311. She stated that she could
tell that it was her brother in the video “[b]ecause he was dressed in the same clothes, and
I recognized my brother, the way he walks and all.” J.A. 311. She later reasserted that she
“recognize[d] that it’s him.” J.A. 312. She “used [her] phone to record” a video of the
security system’s display screen. J.A. 311. Next, she “saved it on [her] phone[,] and [she]
shared it with the detective.” J.A. 313.
Later in the trial, 4 David Diaz-Alvarado, a cooperating witness, testified. On the
stand, he admitted to being involved with MS-13 and joining the group that went to the
park to kill Portillo. Yet he claimed that his participation in the murder was limited to
standing lookout and helping to move the body into a shallow grave. When shown the
laundromat footage, he stated that he recognized Sandoval Rodriguez in the video because
he was wearing a brown sweater which he “recall[ed] the defendant was wearing on the
4 Even though Diaz-Alvarado testified more than a week after the video was admitted, the Advisory Committee’s Note to Rule 901(a) makes clear that the “requirement of showing authenticity or identity falls in the category of relevancy dependent upon fulfillment of a condition of fact and is governed by the procedure set forth in Rule 104(b).” And under Federal Rule of Evidence 104(b), a court may “admit the proposed evidence on the condition that the proof be introduced later.” Thus, his testimony is capable of helping to authenticate the evidence. See, e.g., United States v. Blackwell, 694 F.2d 1325, 1331 (D.C. Cir. 1982) (“[E]ven if the photographs were not fully authenticated by the prosecution and their admission into evidence premature, any error was cured by the testimony of the defendant before the close of the trial.”). 5 USCA4 Appeal: 22-4330 Doc: 105 Filed: 04/14/2025 Pg: 6 of 14
day Jose Portillo was killed.” J.A. 939. The next day, he confirmed his testimony, again
stating that “it’s the same sweater he had on the day the murder was committed.” J.A. 1062.
Based on the aforementioned testimony, a jury could believe that the security system
was used in the ordinary course of business, that an employee had relied on the saved date
and time data in the past to locate relevant footage, that the identities of the men in the
footage are Sandoval Rodriguez and Portillo, and that the video shows the night of the
murder. It was not plainly erroneous for the district court to find adequate foundation.
But Sandoval Rodriguez appears to downplay the testimony of Diaz-Alvarado and
only acknowledges Diaz-Alvarado’s identification of him in the video by saying that “his
testimony had significant reliability concerns.” Opening Br. at 43. Yet “so long as there is
a basis for the jury to resolve the authenticity question in favor of the party offering a tape
recording, arguments on the reliability of identification go to the weight of the evidence,
not its admissibility.” United States v. Capers, 61 F.3d 1100, 1106 (4th Cir. 1995). So
concerns over the reliability of Diaz-Alvarado’s testimony “go to the weight of the
evidence, not its admissibility.” Id.
Sandoval Rodriguez argues that it was error for the district court to accept this
circumstantial evidence because the foundation for admitting a video is “generally
established” through eyewitness testimony that the video accurately depicts the scene in
question or that it was generated through a reliable process. Opening Br. at 24 (citing
United States v. Patterson, 277 F.3d 709, 713 (4th Cir. 2002)). Yet the case Sandoval
Rodriguez cites for this proposition only states that the necessary foundation “is most
commonly established through” those two means. Patterson, 277 F.3d at 713. Indeed, that
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very case next proceeds to rely on circumstantial evidence to find that the district court
properly admitted the photograph. Id. Sandoval Rodriguez’s argument would require video
evidence be authenticated through either personal knowledge (Rule 901(b)(1)) or evidence
of a reliable process (Rule 901(b)(9)). But Rule 901 also permits authentication based on
“[t]he appearance, contents, substance, . . . or other distinctive characteristics of the item,
taken together with all the circumstances.” Fed. R. Evid. 901(b)(4). And Rule 901(b)
emphasizes that the ten enumerated examples it provides are “not a complete list.”
Finally, Sandoval Rodriguez gestures toward, but does not develop, an argument
that because the footage is really a video within a video there is another source of potential
error, such that a heightened showing of authentication is required. To the extent such an
argument has not been forfeited, we determine that it would not have been plainly
erroneous for the district court to find that the testimony of Portillo’s sister was sufficient
to describe the “process” of creating the phone recording of the surveillance footage and
to “show[] that it produce[d] an accurate result” of replicating that footage. Fed. R. Evid.
901(b)(9).
II.
Next, Sandoval Rodriguez argues that the district court allowed the jury to hear
impermissible lay opinion testimony from Detective Myers, the lead detective in the
investigation into Jose Portillo’s death. As part of this investigation, he reviewed Portillo’s
Facebook account. A subpoena yielded records that Portillo had been in contact through
Facebook phone calls and messages with an individual operating another Facebook account
under the name “Gasper Rodriguez.” The Gasper Rodriguez account had been deactivated
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three days after the murder, so Myers obtained a search warrant for it. He reviewed all of
the photographs posted by the account and determined that the person in each photograph
was Sandoval Rodriguez, which strongly suggested that Sandoval Rodriguez was the
owner of the account.
Before the prosecutors played the laundromat footage at trial, Sandoval Rodriguez
objected, stating: “I am concerned that the witness is going to offer an opinion about the
pants from the video matching the pants from some of the Facebook photographs, and I
don’t think he’s qualified to do that. . . . It’s going to be taken by the jury with greater
weight, I would think, because it’s coming from the homicide detective. The jury can judge
for themselves. Unless the government has some scientific basis to make that comparison,
I don’t think it’s appropriate.” J.A. 347–48. The district court overruled this objection.
The government proceeded to ask Myers whether, during his investigation, he had
compared three of the Facebook photos to the laundromat footage. Myers answered in the
affirmative and stated that for two of the photographs, the pants and the shoes were the
same as those in the video. For the third photograph, Myers testified that the pants were
the same as in the video, but the shoes were different.
Sandoval Rodriguez is correct that such testimony is improper lay witness opinion
testimony as it was simply not helpful to the jury. Federal Rule of Evidence 701 permits
witness testimony in the form of an opinion so long as it is: (1) “rationally based on the
witness’s perception;” (2) “helpful to clearly understanding the witness’s testimony or to
determining a fact in issue; and” (3) “not based on scientific, technical, or other specialized
knowledge within the scope of Rule 702.” A jury is more than capable of comparing
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clothing seen in photographs with those seen in videos. See, e.g., United States v. LaPierre,
998 F.2d 1460, 1465 (9th Cir. 1993) (“Lay opinion testimony of the type given by [the
police-officer witness] is of dubious value. The jury, after all, was able to view the
surveillance photos of [the defendant] and make an independent determination whether it
believed that the individual pictured in the photos was in fact [the defendant].”).
The Government’s arguments to the contrary lack merit. The Government states that
Myers was familiar with the parties in the case. But this is not a case where the witness had
substantial and sustained contact with the defendant or where the defendant’s appearance
had changed before trial. E.g., United States v. Dorsey, 122 F.4th 850, 856–57 (9th Cir.
2024) (finding impermissible lay testimony from a detective who “identified [a defendant]
based on surveillance videos and still photos, evidence already in front of the jury”). In
fact, the entire basis of Myers’s knowledge—the Facebook photographs—was available to
the jury.
The Government argues that to make a credibility “determination about the
detective investigating the crime at issue, the jury had to understand the particular
investigative steps taken and why they were taken,” especially how “Detective Myers
identified the defendant as one of the individuals involved in the crime.” Response Br. at
35. Tellingly, the Government cites no case law for this proposition. To be sure, this Court
appreciates the need for parties to be able to tell a comprehensible story to the jury. And to
facilitate parties’ ability to do so, this Court recognizes “narrative integrity” as a factor to
consider while assessing a challenge under Rule 403, United States v. Miller, 61 F.4th 426,
429 (4th Cir. 2023) (quoting Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172, 183 (1997)), and in
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the past has recognized that parts of the res gestae may be heard if the jury needs evidence
of other crimes to understand the “full presentation” of the offense, United States v.
Masters, 622 F.2d 83, 86 (4th Cir. 1980) (quoting United States v. Weems, 398 F.2d 274,
275 (4th Cir. 1968)). The Rule of Completeness also permits a jury to hear the fuller story
if fairness so requires. Fed. R. Evid. 106. But this Court has never created a general
exception to the prohibition against lay-opinion testimony for occasions when the
government seeks to bolster the unchallenged credibility of one of its witnesses.
The error, however, was harmless. “[I]n order to find a district court’s error
harmless, we need only be able to say ‘with fair assurance, after pondering all that
happened without stripping the erroneous action from the whole, that the judgment was not
substantially swayed by the error.’” United States v. Johnson, 617 F.3d 286, 292 (4th Cir.
2010) (quoting United States v. Brooks, 111 F.3d 365, 371 (4th Cir. 1997)).
The erroneous testimony took up just half a page of the transcript. Its import to the
Government’s case was trivial. And there was ample other evidence on which the jury may
have relied to convict. For instance, there was the laundromat footage purportedly showing
Sandoval Rodriguez and Portillo together on the night of the murder; the Facebook
messages between Sandoval Rodriguez and Portillo up to and including the night of the
murder; the testimony of Diaz-Alvarado, the cooperating witness; the cell-tower data
showing that Portillo and Diaz-Alvarado were near the park on the night of the murder;
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and a letter recovered from Sandoval Rodriguez’s prison cell where he admits to MS-13
membership and his involvement in a murder. 5
Sandoval Rodriguez is correct that the unfair prejudice created by the testimony was
heightened because the witness bore “the imprimatur of law enforcement.” Opening Br. at
40 (quoting United States v. Walker, 32 F.4th 377, 392 (4th Cir. 2022)). But such prejudice
was ameliorated by a jury instruction that “[t]he fact that a witness may be employed by
the federal government or a state or local government as a law enforcement official does
not mean that his or her testimony is necessarily deserving of more or less consideration or
greater or lesser weight than that of an ordinary witness.” J.A. 1714.
Thus, the comparison testimony did not substantially sway the jury, and the error
was harmless.
III.
Finally, Sandoval Rodriguez contends that the trial court erred by declining to
instruct on prior non-identification and by refusing to define reasonable doubt. He
requested both instructions at trial and in written motions. Both were denied.
We review a district court’s refusal to provide a proffered jury instruction for abuse
of discretion. United States v. Gutierrez, 963 F.3d 320, 338 (4th Cir. 2020). Reversible
5 A portion of the letter reads: “They arrested me because of your f---ing mouth. Today we send you the unknown. Did you think this was just going to be left like that? You made a mistake, and now you’re going to burn in h---. We don’t make empty threats, we follow through. We buried that f---ing chavala, and now we’re on our way . . . . We’ll blast them.” J.A. 1228 (emphasis added). Chavala is a curse word used to describe a rival gang member. Diaz-Alvarado testified that on the night of the murder the group set out to “do something” about “another chavala[].” J.A. 892. 11 USCA4 Appeal: 22-4330 Doc: 105 Filed: 04/14/2025 Pg: 12 of 14
error occurs only when the proffered “instruction (1) was correct; (2) was not substantially
covered by the court’s charge to the jury; and (3) dealt with some point in the trial so
important, that failure to give the requested instruction seriously impaired the defendant’s
ability to conduct his defense.” United States v. Ravenell, 66 F.4th 472, 481 (4th Cir. 2023)
(quoting United States v. Hassan, 742 F.3d 104, 129 (4th Cir. 2014)).
Sandoval Rodriguez believes that the prior non-identification is significant as it
would undermine the credibility of Diaz-Alvarado, a critical governmental witness. Diaz-
Alvarado did not identify Sandoval Rodriguez as being involved in the murder when Diaz-
Alvarado was first interviewed by law enforcement, even though Sandoval Rodriguez’s
picture was visible to him for about forty minutes during that interview. Nor did Diaz-
Alvarado initially identify Sandoval Rodriguez in the laundromat video. Sandoval
Rodriguez raises two cases from other circuits that concluded that a prior non-identification
instruction was proper. See United States v. Brewer, 36 F.3d 266 (2d Cir. 1994); United
States v. Brink, 39 F.3d 419 (3d Cir. 1994).
His argument fails for two independent reasons. First, the instruction was
“substantially covered by the court’s charge to the jury.” Ravenell, 66 F.4th at 481. Indeed,
the jury was instructed to consider whether “the witness [was] consistent in his” testimony
and further told that “[i]nconsistencies or discrepancies in the testimony of a witness . . .
may or may not cause you to discredit such testimony.” J.A. 1713–14. The court also
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provided a special instruction related to accomplice testimony, emphasizing “that it must
be scrutinized with great care and viewed with particular caution.” J.A. 1718.
Second, failure to provide this instruction did not “seriously impair[]” the defense
as Sandoval Rodriguez thoroughly impeached Diaz-Alvarado on this prior non-
identification. Sandoval Rodriguez established that Diaz-Alvarado identified other MS-13
members from police photographs. He made Diaz-Alvarado answer at least four times that
he did not remember seeing the photograph of Sandoval Rodriguez. Diaz-Alvarado also
admitted that during the interview with police he was withholding “the full truth” to make
himself look better. J.A. 1127. Soon thereafter, he admitted to “lying to the police.” J.A.
1130. Later, the jury saw a video of Diaz-Alvarado’s interview where it was clear that the
photograph of Sandoval Rodriguez was in front of him for about forty minutes and he did
not identify him. The jury needed no instruction to doubt his credibility.
As to the reasonable-doubt instruction, Sandoval Rodriguez properly concedes that
this Court’s “longstanding rule” forecloses his argument but nevertheless preserves the
issue for possible further appeal. Opening Br. at 47 (quoting United States v. Frazer, 98
F.4th 102, 115 (4th Cir. 2024)). This Court has determined that “although the district court
may define reasonable doubt to a jury . . . the district court is not required to do so.” Frazer,
98 F.4th at 115 (quoting United States v. Walton, 207 F.3d 694, 696–97 (4th Cir. 2000) (en
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banc)). Thus, the district court did not abuse its discretion by declining to provide either
instruction.
IV.
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is affirmed.
AFFIRMED