State v. Felix
| Decision Date | 01 August 2014 |
| Docket Number | No. 12–248.,12–248. |
| Citation | 2014 VT 68,103 A.3d 927 |
| Court | Vermont Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE of Vermont v. Tiffanie FELIX. |
William H. Sorrell, Attorney General, and Evan Meenan, Assistant Attorney General, Montpelier, for Plaintiff–Appellee.
Matthew F. Valerio, Defender General, Rebecca Turner, Appellate Defender, Anna Saxman, Deputy Defender General, and Pamela Eaton, Law Clerk (on the Brief), Montpelier, for Defendant–Appellant.
Present: REIBER, C.J., DOOLEY, SKOGLUND and ROBINSON, JJ., and CRAWFORD, Supr. J., Specially Assigned.
¶ 1. Defendant Tiffanie Felix appeals her conviction for the sale or delivery of 200 milligrams or more of heroin following a jury trial in the Rutland Superior Court, Criminal Division. Defendant argues that the court erred in refusing to allow her to impeach the credibility of the State's key witness in various ways, depriving defendant of a fair trial. We reverse and remand for a new trial.
¶ 2. Two sets of events are relevant to this appeal. First, in July 2010, the State's key witness, who was facing charges for aiding in the commission of a felony and aiding in the concealment of stolen property, entered into a cooperation agreement with the Vermont Drug Task Force (VDTF) to work as a confidential informant. The terms of the confidential-informant agreement provided that the informant's cooperation with VDTF was to be made known to the prosecutor handling her underlying charges, who would consider her cooperation in recommending a sentence to the court. In the agreement, the informant agreed to cooperate with the investigation of three targets, conduct controlled buys, wear audio-surveillance devices, and testify truthfully at any hearing or trial regarding any case in which she cooperated. The informant's principal contact at VDTF was Detective David LaChance.
¶ 3. On July 27, 2010, Detective LaChance gave the informant $150 to purchase heroin in a controlled buy at defendant's apartment. Before the informant entered defendant's apartment,
Detective LaChance did a pat-down search to ensure she was not carrying any drugs with her into the apartment. He did not perform a cavity search. The informant was not wearing a recording device during the controlled buy.
¶ 4. Detective LaChance or another officer with whom he was in radio contact observed the informant from the time she left Detective LaChance's car until she entered the apartment, and again after she exited and returned to Detective LaChance. The informant was the only witness to testify about what happened in defendant's apartment. She testified that she entered defendant's apartment and purchased $150 worth of heroin from defendant. She testified that she subsequently went upstairs to the bathroom, but that she did not get any heroin there, or use or tamper with the heroin she had just purchased from defendant. The informant testified that when she came downstairs from the bathroom, she saw that a man she did not know had entered the apartment. She testified that she did not get any drugs from him. An officer who was watching the apartment confirmed in his own testimony that an unidentified man entered the apartment while the informant was there. Detective LaChance testified that the informant returned from the controlled buy with ten bags of heroin. Upon her return, he performed another pat-down search of the informant's clothing and confirmed that she had no other heroin or money on her person. He also testified that, based on his training and experience, the bags of heroin the informant provided after the buy did not appear to have been stored in a body cavity. This evidence was the basis for defendant's conviction.
¶ 5. The second set of alleged events that is central to the issues on appeal of defendant's conviction involves a traffic stop of the informant's vehicle a month later, and the impact of the events at that traffic stop on Detective LaChance's cooperating-informant agreement with her. Detective LaChance's “Statement of Termination” of the informant's cooperation agreement includes the following account:1
Evidence proffered in connection with pretrial motions suggests that Detective LaChanceexpressly acknowledged that he terminated the informant's cooperation agreement “for untruthfulness.” After termination of her cooperation agreement with VDTF, the informant pled to the underlying charge against her, securing a deferred-sentence agreement that required her to cooperate in testifying at defendant's trial.
¶ 6. At the heart of this appeal is the defendant's desire for the jury to know that prior to trial the State's lead investigator stopped working with the State's own star witness (the informant)—on whose credibility the State's case was entirely dependent—because,
as a result of the traffic stop incident, he lost confidence in her truthfulness. The State tried at every juncture to make sure that the jury would not be privy to this information. This conflict played itself out through pretrial motions, evidentiary rulings at trial, and post-trial motions.
¶ 7. Before trial, the State filed a motion in limine with respect to information concerning VDTF's termination of its cooperation agreement with the informant. The State argued that defendant could ask when and why the informant was terminated only during cross-examination of her, and for the sole purpose of inquiring into her character for truthfulness, but could not introduce extrinsic evidence concerning her termination or inquire into it “for any other purpose or in any other manner.” Defendant could not, the State argued, introduce extrinsic evidence concerning the informant's termination due to the limitations in V.R.E. 608(b). The State further argued that the informant's termination was not relevant to her motive for testifying against defendant and thus the defense could not base an inquiry on V.R.E. 404(b).
¶ 8. Defendant, on the other hand, filed a pretrial notice of intent to offer evidence that the informant was stopped in August 2010 and lied to the trooper by telling him she was in the middle of a controlled buy for VDTF at the time of the traffic stop. Defendant sought to introduce this information to show that the informant's cooperation agreement was terminated as a result of this incident. Defendant's notice cited V.R.E. 404(b), 608 and 609. In arguing against the State's motion, defendant indicated that she sought to introduce evidence that the lead investigating officer in the case terminated the informant for untruthfulness stemming from the traffic stop incident. Defendant argued that the evidence showed “the context of her relationship with the drug task force and police officers.” The VDTF's agreement with the informant was not, in fact, the agreement pursuant to which the informant was testifying; the informant's cooperation agreement had been terminated, and she was now testifying pursuant to the requirements of her deferred sentence in the underlying charge. Defendant argued that the jury was entitled to understand that.
¶ 9. After a hearing, the court ruled that defendant could ask the informant about the traffic stop incident on cross-examination, but deferred ruling on the other questions raised by the parties' pleadings until the evidence was further developed at trial, assuming a timely objection.
¶ 10. At trial, defendant made numerous attempts to elicit information about the termination of the informant's cooperation agreement. During cross-examination of Detective LaChance, defendant offered the informant's “packet,” containing her cooperation agreement, Detective LaChance's termination statement, and various other documents, as evidence. The court declined to admit the termination statement on the ground that it contained hearsay in the form of the police officer's statements regarding the traffic stop. Later in the cross-examination, the court reminded defendant to limit her questioning about Detective LaChance's reasons for terminating the informant's cooperation agreement. The court explained that she could ask the detective if the informant had been terminated, but if the reason was based on hearsay, defendant could not ask about the reason.
¶ 11. Defendant was able to confirm, through Detective LaChance's testimony, that the informant's cooperation agreement had been terminated. Detective LaChance testified that he had attempted to contact the informant to notify her that she had been terminated but that he was unable to reach her. He further confirmed that he advised the prosecutor in the informant's case that her cooperation agreement had been terminated. After defendant twice attempted to ask Detective LaChance if the informant was terminated “due to an incident,” both of which were interrupted by the State's objection, the following sidebar occurred:
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
State v. Bergquist
...under Rule 804a was a discretionary one, which we review deferentially and would reverse only upon finding abuse of discretion. State v. Felix, 2014 VT 68, ¶ 19, 197 Vt. 230, 103 A.3d 927. The determination of trustworthiness under Rule 804a(a)(4) is a factual finding, which this Court will......
-
State v. Bergquist
...under Rule 804a was a discretionary one, which we review deferentially and would reverse only upon finding abuse of discretion. State v. Felix, 2014 VT 68, ¶ 19, 197 Vt. 230, 103 A.3d 927. The determination of trustworthiness under Rule 804a(a)(4) is a factual finding, which this Court will......
- State v. Porter
-
State v. Boule
...court's evidentiary rulings deferentially and reverse only when there has been an abuse of discretion that resulted in prejudice." State v. Felix, 2014 VT 68, ¶ 19, 197 Vt. 230 (quotation omitted). The court did not abuse its discretion here. To the extent defendant sought to admit the inte......