United States v. Maurice Jones

728 F.3d 763, 2013 WL 4504593, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 17728
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedAugust 26, 2013
Docket12-3859
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 728 F.3d 763 (United States v. Maurice Jones) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Maurice Jones, 728 F.3d 763, 2013 WL 4504593, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 17728 (8th Cir. 2013).

Opinion

BENTON, Circuit Judge.

A jury convicted Maurice Jones of being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(a)(2). He appeals, asserting that the district court 1 erred in restricting his cross-examination of a witness and denying his motion for a new trial (based on an alleged compromise verdict).' Having jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, this court affirms.

I.

Police responded to a report of “shots fired.” They saw 10 to 20 people on the porch of a house. Under a weight bench on the porch, an officer found a pistol. The person nearest the bench was detained but released. No one was charged that night with possessing the gun. No fingerprints were recovered from .it. Jones was on the porch.

Three days later, an officer interviewed Jones. The officer knew him from MAD DADS, an organization that mentors youth and gets guns off the street. Jones claimed a man named Gino gave him the gun that night after fleeing from gunfire. Jones said he put the gun under the weight bench. He then left town for a funeral and did not return. Before and at trial, Jones said he made up the Gino story to protect the person initially detained.

At trial, a cellmate—Scott Elkins—-testi-fied that Jones confessed he possessed the gun. The government showed a jail surveillance video (without audio) of Jones talking with Elkins and acting out the scene on the porch. Jones testified that the video was taken while they were discussing his stepson’s murder and that El-kins read his legal papers to fabricate the confession. On cross-examination, Jones’s counsel asked Elkins about his three fraud convictions, his motive to get a sentence reduction to see his family, the unlikelihood of Jones confessing to a known informant two weeks before trial, and his access to Jones’s legal papers.

Jones was not allowed to introduce a federal magistrate judge’s credibility finding from Elkins’s detention hearing. Six days earlier, Elkins had testified as an informant against another cellmate, James Youngbear, who was subsequently acquitted. Jones was not permitted to question Elkins about the timing of the Youngbear acquittal in order to show Elkins’s immediate need for another defendant to testify against;

The jury convicted Jones of possessing the gun, but not the ammunition in it. He was sentenced to 285 months’ imprisonment.

*766 II.

Jones argues that the district court abused its discretion in restricting the cross-examination of Elkins. “A trial court’s decision to limit cross-examination will not be reversed unless there has been a clear abuse of discretion and a showing of prejudice to the defendant.” United States v. Oaks, 606 F.3d 530, 540 (8th Cir.2010). Jones claims that the court should have allowed (1) further cross-examination about Elkins’s motivation for testifying, and (2) evidence of the magistrate judge’s finding about his credibility. He invokes the Confrontation Clause. “A Confrontation Clause violation is shown when a defendant demonstrates a reasonable jury might have received a significantly different impression of a witness’s credibility had counsel been allowed to pursue the proposed line of cross-examination.” Id. Confrontation Clause violations are subject to harmless-error review. Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 684, 106 S.Ct. 1431, 89 L.Ed.2d 674 (1986). Whether an error is “harmless beyond a reasonable doubt” requires considering “the importance of the witness’ testimony in the prosecution’s case, whether the testimony was cumulative, the presence or absence of evidence corroborating or contradicting the testimony of the witness on material points, the extent of cross-examination otherwise permitted, and, of course, the overall strength of the prosecution’s case.” Id.

A.

Jones wanted to question Elkins about the timing of the Youngbear acquittal to show that his motive for testifying was a sentence reduction. The court ruled that the testimony was not relevant, and risked undue prejudice under Rule 403, because an acquittal “doesn’t make Mr. Elkins a liar. It doesn’t go to his credibility.”

In the Oaks case, an officer testified that “tall shrubs or trees” obstructed his view of an object being thrown into a lake. Oaks, 606 F.3d at 540. The defendant sought to impeach him “by pointing out he had not mentioned shrubbery in his earlier description.” Id. On re-direct, the officer reviewed his written statement that the object was thrown in the direction of “weeds” and “vegetation.” Id. The court denied the defendant’s request to re-cross the officer “more extensively on these points.” Id. This court held that “further cross-examination would have been cumulative.” Id. (“Counsel’s additional questions would not have added to the testimony or detracted from [the officer’s] credibility.”), citing United States v. Beck, 557 F.3d 619, 621 (8th Cir.2009) (holding the proposed testimony was du-plicative and had little impact on the case); see United States v. Wipf, 397 F.3d 677, 683 (8th Cir.2005) (holding a restriction on the cross-examination was permissible, in part, because the court had granted leeway to cross-examine the witness and impeach his credibility); see also United States v. Polk, 715 F.3d 238, 251 (8th Cir.2013) (holding that because of extensive cross-examination, further questioning would not “have provided the jury with a significantly different view of [the defendant] or his credibility”).

Here, the district court allowed Jones (repeatedly) to cross-examine Elkins about his desire for a sentence reduction, and his need to testify against others. Jones asserts the district court mistakenly assumed he offered the evidence to show that because Youngbear was acquitted, El-kins must have lied (as some of the court’s statements intimate). Rather, Jones argues on appeal, he offered the evidence to show Elkins must be lying because he needed to testify against someone to receive a sentence reduction once Youngbear *767 was acquitted. The district court also ruled that the questioning was irrelevant. Regardless, the jury would not have received a significantly different impression of Elkins’s credibility had the testimony been allowed. See Oaks, 606 F.3d at 540. Even if the district court abused its discretion, any error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt because additional evidence would have been cumulative.

B.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
728 F.3d 763, 2013 WL 4504593, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 17728, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-maurice-jones-ca8-2013.