Appellate Law

CA1: flip-flopping District Court judge leads to reversal

By S. COTUS

US v. Mala, Nos. 06-1887, 06-1888.  Tom Lincoln, a friend of the blog wins one.  The big issue is whether a confession should have been admitted.  The District Court seems to have had some doubts about the quality of the policework, but issued an ambiguous ruling.  Strangely, at trial, the judge claimed that the docket said that the confession could come in for impeachment purposes.  But, neither the government nor the court can find it!  The First makes two points:

• Carrasco's Sixth Amendment right to conduct his defense was hobbled by the district court's eleventh-hour decision to admit his confession. Carrasco had already testified when the district court ruled the statements admissible. We are aware that suppression of a confession, even when the defendant testifies inconsistently, might appear to be a license to commit perjury in one's own defense. But that does not justify surprising the defendant, after his testimony, with words previously ruled inadmissible.
• The district court is usually expected to abide by its own evidentiary rulings. Should a district court wish to reconsider a ruling, it may do so, although it should account for reliance on the previous ruling. But that is not what happened here. The district court misremembered its own ruling. Trial judges, like appellate judges, are fallible human beings. Errors are therefore to be expected. But allowing such an error to go uncorrected even though it may well have meant the difference between conviction and acquittal would certainly erode public confidence in the integrity of judicial proceedings

Full post as published by Appellate Law and Practice on August 28, 2008 (boomark / email).