Over at the EvidenceProf Blog, Collin Miller
posts about the recent Fifth Circuit case, UnitedStates v. Alaniz. In this money
laundering case, one of the codefendants, Magana, claimed that she did not
realize she was helping her brother engage in criminal conduct. To support this claim, Magana sought to admit
evidence of a coworker who would testify that Magana was a naïve and gullible
person. The district court ruled against
the admission of this evidence, concluding that even if Magana was naïve, she
still could have acted knowingly or willingly in the money laundering
scheme. The Fifth Circuit affirmed this
ruling, adding that the coworker’s testimony about Magana’s naïveté would have only
incrementally supported her claim that she was not aware of the overall scheme.
Miller does not hold back in expressing his
opinion on this ruling. Miller labels
the Fifth Circuit’s discussion of the naïveté evidence as “some of the worst
analysis that I have ever seen by a federal appellate court.” He also deems “Ridiculous” the conclusion
that the coworker’s testimony would have only incrementally added to Magana’s
defense, and argues that because this is the only evidence mentioned by the
court that supports Magana’s naïveté claim, this evidence would have been the
“centerpiece” of her defense.
I am in agreement with Miller that the district
court’s reasoning for excluding the evidence was lacking. If the reasoning of its decision were adopted
universally, character evidence would become largely inadmissible, since people
are always capable of acting in a manner inconsistent with their character.
On the other hand, I am not so sure that the
Fifth Circuit’s analysis is as terrible as Miller argues. The Circuit begins by noting that the
district court has a great deal of discretion in making decisions regarding the
admission of evidence. This is worth
mentioning because the lower court may have concluded that the coworker’s
friendship with Magana may have indicated bias and therefore decreased the
probative value of the testimony.
Alternatively, the coworker would probably not have been able to testify
about Magana’s gullibility when it came to organizing her finances – making the
character evidence less probative regarding the central issue of the case. While the district court did not engage in
any of this analysis, it was probably worth mentioning that the court had the
discretion it did.
Moreover, I think that Miller overstates the
argument against the Fifth Circuit’s analysis of the incremental nature of the
coworker’s testimony. While Magana’s
claim of naïveté may have been her full defense, it is worth noting the volume
of evidence against. Over the course of
the money laundering scheme, Magana received $220,000 in wire transfers into
eleven bank accounts that she controlled.
Money was also wired out of these accounts to other individuals involved
in the scheme. Magana was aware that her
brother was using a false name, and three cars were purchased in Magana’s name over
the course of the scheme. Even if the
coworker’s testimony about Magana’s naïve character would have been the bulk of
her defense, I think the Fifth Circuit would probably be right to conclude that
any error in excluding this testimony was harmless beyond a reasonable
doubt. Even though the coworker’s
testimony was Magana’s full defense, that doesn’t change the fact that the
defense would have almost certainly failed to exonerate her.
That said, the court should have been more explicit
in stating why the coworker’s testimony would have failed to make a
difference. Moreover, I think that this
analysis is better suited to a harmless error discussion, and I do not think
that it is proper for the court to lump all of the discussion together in the
context of why the court acted within its discretion. Here, the relative probative value of
evidence was better suited for a discussion of harmless error – not for
analysis over whether error had occurred in the first place.
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