Facts detailed by a plea deal are not hearsay, and cannot be excluded from trial, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal ruled April 16. The decision overturned the conviction of a Victorville inmate.
The case comes out of Federal Correctional Institution, Victorville, where two inmates got in a fight with guards on Aug. 19, 2017.
One inmate had set off a metal detector, and was being searched by a guard. He threw the first punch. The other inmate ran back from a hallway to join in the fight that then broke out between the inmate and guards.
Gabriel Mirabal and Erik Rojo were the inmates involved in the fight, but testimonies differ on which man was the one who threw the first punch, and which was the man who ran back to join the fight.
In an Aug. 15, 2019, plea deal, Rojo pleaded guilty to one count of assaulting a federal officer. The plea deal identified Rojo as the one who joined the fight.
That identification continued in court documents throughout Mirabal’s trial. Mirabal based his legal defense on claims of self-defense, saying that the officer had raised his arm, and Mirabal thought he was going to be struck.
To support his claim, Mirabal wanted to establish, by reading the plea deal into the record, that he was the one searched.
Prosecutors filed a motion to exclude the plea deal from entering evidence. They argued that the fact of a plea of a non-testifying co-defendant is inadmissible, and that the identification of Rojo was a mistaken personal opinion of the former prosecutor. The government also argued that the plea deal was an out-of-court admission by Rojo.
California Central District Judge Michael Fitzgerald granted the motion to exclude, finding that the plea deal was hearsay.
During closing argument, the government suggested that the jury could convict Mirabal regardless of his role in the fight.
The jury convicted Mirabal on two counts of assault resulting in bodily injury. He was sentenced to 57 months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay $8,983 for the guard’s lost wages.
The Ninth Circuit found that the plea deal should not have been excluded, because it was made by the government’s agent on a matter within the scope of their relationship to Mirabal. This grants an exception to the hearsay rule.
“The logic of our decision in (the 1989 case U.S. v. Van Griffin) comfortably encompasses formal, signed statements made by a government attorney in filings before a court, such as plea agreements and sentencing memoranda. We therefore hold that when a criminal defendant seeks to introduce such statements at trial, they fall within Rule 801(d)(2)’s hearsay exclusion for statements made by an opposing party,” the ruling said.
The decision continued to say that the exclusion of the plea deal played a significant role in Mirabal’s conviction.
“Had Mirabal had the opportunity to present Rojo’s original factual basis, his argument that he (was the one searched) would have had considerably more support. As the district court noted, ‘who was who could make a difference here,’ because the (searched) individual had a stronger self-defense claim than did the (other) individual, who joined the altercation after it had begun. The focus of the government’s evidence at trial was demonstrating that Rojo, not Mirabal, (was searched),” the ruling said.
Case information
Case No. 5:18-cr-00335
Appellate Case No. 22-50217
Ninth Circuit Judge Holly Thomas wrote the opinion, joined by Ninth Circuit Judge Roopali Desai and Arizona District Judge James Soto.
Read the ruling here.
