United States v. Magana

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT

No. 96-2182

UNITED STATES,

Appellee,

v.

ADOLFO MAGANA,

Defendant - Appellant.

No. 96-2183

UNITED STATES,

Appellee,

v.

ANA MARIA MEDA-SANTOS,

Defendant - Appellant.

APPEALS FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF MAINE

[Hon. D. Brock Hornby, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Stahl and Lynch, Circuit Judges,

and O'Toole, Jr., District Judge.

Of the District of Massachusetts, sitting by designation.

Thomas J. Connolly
, by appointment of the court, for appellant
Adolfo Magana.
Bruce
M.
Merrill, by appointment of the court, with whom
Merrill & Merrill, P.A.
, was on brief for appellant Ana Maria Meda-
Santos.
F. Mark Terison, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom
Jay
P.
McCloskey, United States Attorney, and Donald
E.
Clark,
Assistant United States Attorney, were on brief for appellee.

September 16, 1997

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O'TOOLE,
District Judge
. Adolfo Magana was convicted by

a jury of entering into a sham marriage to evade the immigration

laws, in violation of 18 U.S.C. S 1325(b). His codefendant Ana

Maria Meda-Santos was convicted of aiding and abetting Magana's

crime. 18 U.S.C. S 2. Both defendants were also convicted of

conspiracy to defraud the United States. 18 U.S.C. S 371.

They appeal from their convictions, asserting that the

district court erred in the way it dealt with the government's

violation of a witness sequestration order. The defendants

criticize the district court's handling of the violation in three

respects. First, both defendants contend that the court erred in

denying their motions for a mistrial. In addition, Meda-Santos

argues that the court abused its discretion in striking the

redirect and Magana's recross-examination of the witness involved,

thereby depriving her of the opportunity for any recross-

examination of the witness. Finally, Meda-Santos objects to the

district court's denial of her pretrial severance motion, and she

points to the codefendants' disagreement as to how the court should

respond to the sequestration violation as evidence of prejudice to

her from the refusal to sever. The defendants further contend that

the court erred in denying them a pretrial opportunity for

discovery concerning their allegations of selective prosecution and

later in denying their motion for a new trial when events at trial

added support to the allegations.

For the reasons that follow, we find no error and affirm

the convictions.

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I.

Magana is a native and citizen of El Salvador who came to

the United States seeking asylum. He was granted leave to remain

in the country on a nonpermanent basis and to work while his

application for asylum pended. Magana and Meda-Santos were friends

who spent a substantial amount of time together. They both were

employed by the same company in Portland, Maine, as were two other

persons involved in relevant events, Tina Ferrante and Ronda

Cunningham.

Magana's legal status in this country was only temporary,

and if his application for asylum were to be rejected, he faced the

prospect of losing his right to remain legally within the United

States. In March 1995, his friend Meda-Santos approached her co-

worker Ferrante, a citizen, to see if she would agree to marry

Magana so he could become a permanent resident. Ferrante declined,

but she suggested her friend Cunningham for the scheme. On July

14, 1995, Magana, Meda-Santos, Ferrante, and Cunningham all met at

Magana's apartment and worked out the plan. Cunningham agreed to

marry Magana in exchange for $2,000.

A week later, Magana and Cunningham were married by a

justice of the peace at Magana's apartment in the presence of Meda-

Santos and Ferrante. That evening Cunningham received a partial

payment of the agreed price for her participation. There was

evidence that despite their marriage, Magana and Cunningham did not

live together as husband and wife.

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In late August, Magana and Cunningham completed and

submitted the forms required by the Immigration and Naturalization

Service ("INS") for an adjustment of Magana's status to permit him

permanent residence by reason of his marriage to a United States

citizen. In accordance with INS practice, after the forms had been

reviewed Magana and Cunningham were summoned to an interview at the

local INS office. In separate interviews, they gave inconsistent

information about their circumstances and living arrangements.

Each appeared to know little personal information about the other.

When Cunningham was confronted by the interviewer with the fact of

the inconsistencies, she confessed her participation in the scheme.

She was eventually given immunity in exchange for her cooperation

with the prosecution, and she was a key witness at the trial of the

defendants.

Both defendants filed pretrial motions to sever their

trials, which were denied by a magistrate judge for the reason that

neither had shown any likely prejudice from a joint trial. The

defendants also sought pretrial discovery from the government to

support their claim that these defendants, Spanish-speaking non-

citizens, were victims of selective prosecution because of their

ethnicity and national origin. The district court refused to order

the requested discovery.

Ferrante also cooperated with the prosecution and was not
charged, although it does not appear that she was granted immunity.

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At the commencement of the trial, counsel for Magana

moved orally for the sequestration of witnesses. The court granted

the motion, saying, "Yes, and I'll rely on all counsel to watch the

courtroom to let me know whether there's anyone in who should not

be present." Trial Transcript ("Tr.") at 3. Nothing further was

said about any specific terms of the sequestration order.

The first trial day ended with the important government

witness Cunningham on the stand. She had given extensive testimony

on direct examination and had been cross-examined at length by

counsel for both defendants. The prosecutor indicated that he

would have some redirect examination when the trial resumed the

next day.

After redirect examination that lasted just over fifteen

minutes, counsel for Magana conducted recross-examination, in the

course of which the witness disclosed, in answer to a question,

that she had talked to the prosecutor about her testimony during

the overnight recess.

Defense counsel immediately protested that there had been

a violation of the witness sequestration order, and they moved for

a mistrial. The court denied the motions. Although the court

found that the prosecutor had violated the sequestration order, it

also concluded that there was no prejudice to the defendants from

the violation. The court said, "[T]he redirect, although competent

redirect, certainly, did not significantly impair whatever value

The district court was moved to observe, twice, that the
questioning had become repetitive. Tr. at 228, 261.

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there was in the cross-examination that took place yesterday."

Tr. at 266. Moreover, the court found that the violation of the

sequestration order had been unintentional, the result of a

misunderstanding by the prosecutor of the scope of the order.

After denying the mistrial motions, the court extended to

defense counsel the option of continuing the recross in front of

the jury or of conducting a
voir dire
, outside the presence of the

jury, to determine the discussions that had occurred between the

witness and the prosecutor. The court said: "I certainly will

permit cross-examination about the nature of the meeting this

morning, what was said or suggested, and the only issue is whether

you request to do that now before doing it in front of the jury, or

whether you would rather do it once with the witness present in

front of the jury." Tr. at 267. After conferring, counsel elected

to conduct a voir dire.

In the voir dire, Cunningham testified that she had met

for fifteen to twenty minutes that morning with the Assistant

United States Attorney and an INS Special Agent. She testified

that the prosecutor went over the questions he intended to ask her

in the course of redirect examination, identifying the particular

parts of the cross-examination that the questions were intended to

address. She testified that she was not told how she should answer

the questions that would be asked.

Counsel for both defendants asked that Cunningham's

testimony that day be stricken. Tr. at 264. One of them

summarized the testimony as indicating that "the U.S. Attorney's

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Office essentially did a practice run of the redirect examination

today." Tr. at 285. Counsel argued that the rehearsal gave the

prosecution an unfair advantage that it would have lacked if the

sequestration order had been obeyed.

After a short recess to consider the matter, the district

court confirmed its denial of the defense motions for a mistrial,

and further said:

Counsel, I am considering striking the
testimony for reasons I'll describe in a
moment, but before I do that, I want to be
sure that the defendants' lawyers fully
appreciate and understand what they're
doing on this score. I've denied the
motion for mistrial. If I strike the
testimony, Ms. Cunningham will not take
the stand any further, she will be done as
a witness.

That means that the cross-examination that
took place this morning as well as the
direct will all come out, as well as the
Defendant's Exhibit 9 that was admitted,
the Government's Exhibit 200, the
cooperation agreement. That may be able to
come in in some other fashion, and
therefore, the defendants are choosing not
to explore any further credibility issues
or reliability issues concerning Ms.
Cunningham.

I want to be sure that's being done
carefully and intentionally because if I
grant the motion to strike the testimony
this morning, what I'll be instructing the
jury to do is to consider only the
testimony of Ms. Cunningham that was given
yesterday on direct and cross.

There is no doubt that the court meant "recross-examination" and
"redirect."

Exhibit 9 was a receipt from INS for money paid to it by
Cunningham.

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Tr. at 288-89.

At this point defense counsel requested disparate relief.

Counsel for Magana asked that the testimony be stricken; counsel

for Meda-Santos, who unlike Magana's counsel had yet to ask any

questions on recross, withdrew his motion to strike the testimony

and insisted on the opportunity to conduct recross-examination.

The court struck the testimony, both redirect and

recross, and instructed the jury that they should disregard it and

consider only the testimony the witness had given the day before.

Neither party objected to the instruction given to the jury.

The court also told counsel:

Now I'm cognizant of [Meda-Santos'
counsel's] argument that there's certain
things he would like to get out of this
witness, possibly he will want to call her
on his direct case, that's entirely up to
[him].

Tr. at 291. Counsel for Meda-Santos asked that Cunningham be

advised to remain "on call" for further testimony, but he did not

later call Cunningham as a witness.

II.

A.

The sequestration of trial witnesses is a practice of

long standing, and it may take various forms. "The judge's power to

control the progress and, within the limits of the adversary

system, the shape of the trial includes broad power to sequester

witnesses before, during, and after their testimony." Geders v.

United States, 425 U.S. 80, 87 (1976). Until the adoption of the

Federal Rules of Evidence, however, there was no positive rule

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governing the practice generally in the federal courts, except that

the matter was committed to the sound discretion of the trial

court. See
Holder v.
United States
, 150 U.S. 91, 92 (1893). Rule

615 now requires the court, upon a party's request, to "order

witnesses excluded so that they cannot hear the testimony of other

witnesses." Fed. R. Evid. 615. See
United States
v.
Sepulveda, 15

F.3d 1161, 1175-76 (1st Cir. 1993);
United States
v.
Arias-Santana,

964 F.2d 1262, 1266 (1st Cir. 1992).

Apart from this "heartland" of courtroom sequestration

mandated by Rule 615, the court retains discretion to add other

restrictions or not, as it judges appropriate. Sepulveda, 15 F.3d

at 1176 ("Outside of the heartland, the district court may make

whatever provisions it deems necessary to manage trials in the

interests of justice."). The regulation of witness conduct outside

the courtroom is thus left to the district judge's discretion.
Id.

The court may, for example, order that witnesses not converse with

each other about the case. See Arias-Santana, 964 F.2d at 1266.

Further, the court has the discretion to prohibit counsel from

conferring with a witness during the witness's testimony, including

during any recesses in the trial. See Geders, 425 U.S. at 87-88.

In this case the court granted Magana's oral motion for

sequestration of witnesses without elaborating the terms of the

order. It appears that the court assumed counsel's familiarity with

a long-standing custom in the district that precluded counsel from

conferring with a witness until the witness had been excused from

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the stand. As it happened, the prosecutor had only recently

relocated to the district and was not familiar with the local

practice. Indeed, the judge noted that this was the prosecutor's

first trial before him. Nevertheless, it was not unreasonable for

the court to presume that an Assistant United States Attorney would

be familiar not only with the written rules of local practice, but

also with those unwritten rules that had, by repeated application

over time, become established as a "custom" of practice in the

court. It is plain that the district court regarded the

prohibition against conferring with a testifying witness as such an

established custom, and we have no reason to question that

assessment.

The district court concluded that the prosecutor's

transgression had been inadvertent, "based on a misunderstanding of

the rule." Tr. at 290. The defendants do not quarrel with that

conclusion, and the record gives us no reason to doubt it. Because

the violation was inadvertent, there was no need for any punitive

sanction, and the focus of the court's response was properly on

The district judge announced that he found the prosecutor's
meeting with the witness to be "a clear violation of the practices
of the court," and added, "I can't at the moment remember whether
it's specified in the local rules or whether it's simply a custom
that has been so long assumed that it's not present there." Tr. at
266. See also
Tr. at 262. In fact, the district's local rules do
not address the matter. See Local Rules of the United States
District Court for the District of Maine. To avoid the problem
that arose in this case, a district court may find it advisable to
promulgate, by local rule or otherwise, standard terms for witness
sequestration orders.

-11-

what needed to be done to prevent any prejudice to the defendants

from the violation.

-12-

As the district court has discretion in fashioning

sequestration orders, it likewise has discretion in enforcing them.

Arias-Santana, 964 F.2d at 1266 ("[T]he sanction determination is

committed to the sound discretion of the trial court."). See also

United States
v.
Rossetti, 768 F.2d 12, 16 (1st Cir. 1985);
United

States v.
Arruda, 715 F.2d 671, 684 (1st Cir. 1983). We review the

district court's action only to see if there was an abuse of that

discretion. Arias-Santana, 964 F.2d at 1265;
Rossetti, 768 F.2d at

16. There was not.

We have recommended the course a district court should

follow to deal with a situation in which evidence somehow improper

is put before the jury: the court should strike the offending

evidence and promptly instruct the jury to disregard it.

Sepulveda, 15 F.3d at 1184. "[W]ithin wide margins, the potential

for prejudice stemming from improper testimony . . . can be

satisfactorily dispelled by appropriate curative instructions."

Id. Jurors are presumed to follow such instructions, except in

extreme cases. Id. at 1185.

The district judge took exactly those steps. He responded

promptly to the problem. "Swiftness in judicial response is an

important element in alleviating prejudice once the jury has been

exposed to improper testimony." Id. He permitted counsel to

examine the witness about her conversation with the prosecutor and

gave the defendants the choice to do that either in the presence of

the jury or on voir
dire. After the voir
dire, he carefully

evaluated the possibility of prejudice to the defendants before

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determining to strike the testimony, and even after making the

tentative decision, he took steps to assure that counsel had

considered fully what impact striking the testimony might have on

the state of the evidence.

The circumstances did not call for more extreme action.

"Declaring a mistrial is a last resort, only to be implemented if

the taint is ineradicable, that is, only if the trial judge

believes that the jury's exposure to the evidence is likely to

prove beyond realistic hope of repair." Id. at 1184.

The significance of the evidence that was stricken was

not great in the context of Cunningham's entire testimony. There

had been extended cross-examination by both defendants the day

before. The redirect itself was relatively brief, and the court

found that it "did not significantly impair whatever value there

was" in the previous cross-examination. Tr. at 266. Because of the

relative brevity of the redirect, and because it was clearly

separated from the balance of the witness's testimony by the

overnight recess, the court concluded that the jury could

realistically follow the instruction to put it out of their minds

and to consider only the previous day's testimony by the witness.

Accordingly, the court decided that striking the testimony and

giving an appropriate instruction was a sufficient remedy. Our

review of the record gives us no basis to say that that judgment

was clearly wrong.

An abuse of discretion might be shown if the district court has
made "a clear error of judgment." United States v. Hastings, 847

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Meda-Santos further contends that striking the testimony

deprived her of the opportunity, which Magana briefly had, to

conduct recross-examination of the witness. The court should have

left the tainted testimony alone, she says, and let her take

advantage of it on recross. To the extent that this argument

amounts to an assertion that the redirect examination was so potent

that the jury could not realistically be expected to follow the

instruction to disregard the testimony, we reject it for the

reasons just stated. To the extent it is an objection that the

defendant was deprived of a tactical weapon she might have had in

the forensic battle, it is insubstantial. She had conducted a full

cross-examination of the witness the day before, and in these

circumstances any suggestion that the loss of an opportunity for

recross amounted to a substantial infringement of her rights under

the Confrontation Clause borders on the frivolous. See United

States v. Mulinelli-Navas, 111 F.3d 983, 987 (1st Cir. 1997).

Besides, the premise of the objection is infirm. Meda-

Santos was not foreclosed from any further inquiry, as she claims.

The court made clear that she could recall Cunningham to the stand

as part of her case. She now says that it is unlikely that the

court, having stricken the redirect, would have permitted her to

question Cunningham about her meeting with the prosecutor, but the

accuracy of that proposition is by no means clear. Meda-Santos

never took up the opportunity opened to her to recall Cunningham,

and how the district court would have responded to an attempt to

F.2d 920, 924 (1st Cir. 1988).

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inquire into the meeting with the prosecutor is a matter for

speculation. We cannot find an abuse of discretion just because

the appellant suggests that one of the district court's potential

responses might have prejudiced her were it to have occurred.

Finally, Meda-Santos claims that the district court's

handling of the violation of the sequestration order demonstrates

why it was an error for the court to have denied her pretrial

motion to sever her trial from Magana's. The pretrial motion to

sever was based on Bruton grounds. Meda-Santos does not now

contend that it was error to have denied the motion on those

grounds. Rather, she asserts a more general conflict that became

evident when, faced with inconsistent requests for action from the

codefendants, the court necessarily had to choose one and reject

the other. If Meda-Santos had been tried separately, that

conflict would not have arisen, and she could have gotten the

ruling she wanted, instead of having to live with the ruling Magana

wanted.

Meda-Santos did not request severance when she and Magana

sought different remedies for the violation of the sequestration

order. Her failure to have made the argument to the trial court

precludes her from raising it for the first time in this appeal.

Accordingly, we review the point only for plain error, United

States v.
Mitchell, 85 F.3d 800, 807 (1st Cir. 1996), and there was

none.

Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123 (1968).

-16-

There are obvious advantages in judicial economy to the

joint trial of defendants accused of the joint commission of

crimes. See Zafiro v. United
States, 506 U.S. 534, 537 (1993);

United
States v.
O'Bryant, 998 F.2d 21, 25 (1st Cir. 1993). See

also Fed. R. Crim. P. 8. Like other important trial management

decisions, the judgment whether to sever is largely left to the

sound discretion of the trial court. United
States v. Flores-

Rivera, 56 F.3d 319, 325 (1st Cir. 1995). The exercise of that

discretion will be condemned only where it deprives a defendant of

a fair trial, resulting in a miscarriage of justice.
United States

v.
McLaughlin, 957 F.2d 12, 18 (1st Cir. 1992);
Arruda, 715 F.2d at

679. There was nothing approaching that degree of prejudice to

Meda-Santos, if there was any recognizable prejudice at all, from

denial of the severance motion.

Evidence is often admitted against one defendant but not

another in a joint trial, with limiting instructions being given

the jury. Sometimes evidence is conditionally admitted, subject to

its being stricken if the subsequent predicate does not materialize

as anticipated. It is not at all an uncommon event that the

strategies of defense counsel or the nuances of the rules of

evidence will lead codefendants to differ as to the admission of

evidence in a joint trial. Each time that happens is not an

occasion for severance. See McLaughlin, 957 F.2d at 18.

All in all, the trial court's handling of the

government's violation of the witness sequestration order was not

only acceptable, but admirable. There was no abuse of discretion.

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B.

Prior to trial, the defendants sought discovery from the

government to try to substantiate their claim that they were the

victims of selective prosecution because of their ethnicity and/or

national origin. In support of their motion, they pointed to press

accounts of INS enforcement actions aimed at Spanish-speaking

persons. The motion was denied on the ground that the defendants

had not made a sufficient showing of the likelihood of selective

prosecution to warrant the extraordinary discovery they were

seeking. After their convictions, the defendants moved for a new

trial, relying on the selective prosecution claim. In support of

the latter motion, they added to their prior presentation the

assertion that the trial itself had demonstrated that the

government had chosen to prosecute only the Spanish-speaking

defendants while choosing not to prosecute the other participants

in the relevant events -- Cunningham and Ferrante -- who were not

Spanish-speaking. The new trial motion was denied.

Because a selective prosecution claim "asks a court to

exercise judicial power over a 'special province' of the

Executive," United
States v. Armstrong, 116 S. Ct. 1480, 1486

(1996), courts have consistently demanded "clear evidence," id.

(quoting United
States v. Chemical
Found., 272 U.S. 1, 14-15

(1926)), that a prosecutorial decision "had a discriminatory

effect and that it was motivated by a discriminatory purpose."

Armstrong, 116 S. Ct. at 1487 (quoting
Wayte v.
United States
, 470

U.S. 598, 608 (1985)). The prosecutor is presumed to have acted

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"in good faith for reasons of sound governmental policy," United

States v. Saade, 652 F.2d 1126, 1135 (1st Cir. 1981), unless the

defendant can demonstrate both that she has been singled out for

prosecution when others similarly situated have not been prosecuted

and that the prosecutor's reasons for doing so were impermissible.

United States
v.
Penagaricano-Soler, 911 F.2d 833, 837-38 (1st Cir.

1990).

Discovery concerning decisions to prosecute imposes

substantial costs on the prosecutor. It intrudes on "the

performance of a core executive constitutional function."

Armstrong, 116 S. Ct. at 1486. It may "divert prosecutors'

resources and may disclose the Government's prosecutorial

strategy." Id. at 1488. For these reasons, "[t]he justifications

for a rigorous standard for the elements of a selective-prosection

claim thus require a correspondingly rigorous standard for

discovery in aid of such a claim." Id.

The defendants did not make a sufficient prima facie

showing of either discriminatory effect or discriminatory intent to

justify the discovery they requested. Their pretrial motions

relied only on a newspaper article about the arrest by the INS of

four "illegal aliens" from El Salvador and Guatemala, the videotape

of the INS interview of Magana and Cunningham (which displayed,

according to the defendants, ethnic prejudice by the INS agent),

and an unsworn statement that there were seventeen Spanish-

speaking persons in INS custody in the local county jail. The

district court properly determined that this showing fell short of

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what the cases require. At most, these facts, viewed favorably to

the defendants, established that Spanish-speaking persons were

being prosecuted by the INS. The materials contained no

information about INS prosecutions, or the absence of them, of non-

Spanish-speaking persons. The information presented thus addressed

only one half of the critical proposition. In order to be

permitted discovery in this area, the defendants were required to

make a threshold showing that there were similarly situated persons

who were not prosecuted. Armstrong, 116 S. Ct. at 1489. Their

proffer failed to do that.

When they renewed their attack on this front in their

motions for a new trial, the defendants added to the pretrial

proffer the assertion that their trial itself showed the different

treatment of non-Spanish-speaking persons, because Cunningham and

Ferrante, both of whom participated in the same criminal events as

the defendants, were not charged. That contention merits closer

attention than the pretrial effort, but it nonetheless falls short

of meeting the "rigorous standard" established by the cases. At

most, the circumstance that Cunningham and Ferrante were not

charged raises the question of selective prosecution; it does not

make the prima facie showing required.
See
Penagaricano-Soler, 911

F.2d at 837.

There are many factors that affect a decision to

prosecute a particular person, including "the strength of the case,

the prosecution's general deterrence value, the Government's

enforcement priorities, and the case's relationship to the

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Government's overall enforcement plan." Wayte, 470 U.S. at 607.

There are readily apparent nondiscriminatory reasons why Cunningham

and Ferrante were not charged. When the sham marriage scheme was

detected, Cunningham promptly confessed her role and agreed to

cooperate with officials, and the consequence of her cooperation

was freedom from prosecution. Her cooperation was a justifiable

reason for the prosecutor's decision not to charge her. Ferrante

had played a less central role in events. In fact, she had refused

a leading role. The prosecutor might well have estimated that

proving her criminal culpability was more problematic than it was

for the others. She also apparently cooperated with the Government

at the trial, and that again was a legitimate consideration for the

prosecutor to take into account. Neither the denial of the

pretrial motions for discovery nor the denial of the new trial

motions constituted an abuse of its discretion by the trial court.

III.

The claims of error brought to us by the defendants are

without merit. The judgments of conviction, and the denial of the

defendants' new trial motions, are affirmed.

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