U.S. v. Dumas, 99-1658

• Decision Date: 03 November 1999
• Docket Number: No. 99-1658,99-1658
• Citation: 207 F.3d 11
• Parties: (1st Cir. 2000) UNITED STATES, Appellee, v. ROLAND MARSHALL DUMAS, Defendant, Appellant. Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 11

207 F.3d 11 (1st Cir. 2000)

UNITED STATES, Appellee, v. ROLAND MARSHALL DUMAS, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 99-1658

United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit

Heard November 3, 1999

Decided March 13, 2000

Gary C. Crossen, with whom Evan Georgopoulos, and Foley, Hoag & Eliot were on brief for appellant.

Geoffrey E. Hobart, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Donald K. Stern, United States Attorney, was on brief for appellee.

Before Boudin, Circuit Judge, Bownes, Senior Circuit Judge, and Lipez, Circuit Judge.

BOWNES, Senior Circuit Judge.

Appellant Roland Marshall Dumas was convicted in a jury trial of conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846 (1988). The district court (Woodlock, J.) imposed a sentence of 262 months imprisonment, and denied Dumas's Motion for New Trial and Revised Motion for New Trial based on newly discovered evidence. Dumas appeals this ruling denying his motions for a new trial.

On appeal, Dumas presents two instances in which he claims the district court abused its discretion in denying his motions for a new trial, which we address seriatim. First, he claims that the district court should have granted his motions because the government failed to disclose allegedly exculpatory documents relating to the impeachment of a government witness. This witness's lack of credibility, he claims, was vital to his entrapment defense. Second, he claims that the district court should have granted the motions for a new trial in order to remedy a violation of due process springing from the government's failure to disclose, and subsequent destruction of, notes that Dumas claims constituted exculpatory material. For the reasons discussed below, we affirm the district court's denial of the motions, finding no abuse of discretion.

I. Facts

The facts of this case are byzantine in their complexity. We recount only those facts that are essential to our decision. In the fall of 1993, Dumas was serving a sentence in federal prison in Pennsylvania. At the request of the United States Attorney's Office, the Bureau of Prisons transferred Dumas to the Plymouth County House of Corrections ("Plymouth"), a Massachusetts state prison facility. According to Dumas, the United States Attorney's Office sought this transfer in order to obtain his testimony before a federal grand jury in a public corruption case. Dumas refused to testify, and was subsequently held in contempt and remained incarcerated at Plymouth. This refusal to testify, Dumas argued at trial, set in motion the events that led to his ultimate entrapment by the government. He claimed at trial, and continues to do so on appeal, that the government entrapped him in order to gain additional leverage with which to secure his grand jury testimony.

While at Plymouth, Dumas met Christopher Coyne, who invited Dumas to share a cell with him. Coyne, unbeknownst to Dumas, was an informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency ("DEA"). Coyne's initial investigative goal did not involve Dumas; Coyne sought, unsuccessfully, to set up drug transactions involving four others, and only turned his attention to Dumas after he failed in that endeavor.

Dumas claims that during the time in which the two shared a cell at Plymouth, Coyne put extraordinary pressure on him to engage in a drug transaction. The amount of time that the two spent in a cell together was a matter of dispute, and one which Dumas felt was vital to his entrapment defense. DEA Agent Steven Story testified that the two men shared a cell for "no more than a week." Coyne, for his part, recalled that they shared a cell for approximately two weeks. Dumas, on the other hand, testified that he and Coyne shared a cell for nearly two months.

Eventually, Coyne introduced Dumas to Agent Story, who was posing as a drug dealer affiliated with Coyne. Dumas participated in three telephone conversations with Agent Story, and planned a drug transaction. Though the transaction never took place, these conversations formed the basis for Dumas's conspiracy conviction.

None of the conversations between Coyne and Dumas, which Dumas claims constituted entrapment, were recorded. Because of this, Dumas claims that Coyne's credibility was crucial to his conviction. He points, inter alia, to the closing argument of the prosecutor, who stated: "If you believe Chris Coyne, the case is very simple."

Nearly two years after entry of judgment, Dumas moved for a new trial. He did so because he had learned from a corrections officer that, during the relevant time period, Coyne had been placed on a "Q-5 suicide watch" at Plymouth. This information had not been provided to the defense, although the defense had received general information on Coyne's overall psychiatric background. The government was aware of the suicide watch, because it was documented in the notes of DEA Agent Thaddeus Blazak. Apparently, Agent Blazak had spoken with corrections officials, and had taken notes at the meeting. Blazak had learned that Coyne had been placed on the Q-5 suicide watch because of "relationship problems." In the course of investigating this new revelation, Dumas also claims to have learned definitively that he and Coyne had shared a cell for nearly two months.

Based on this information, Dumas brought a motion for a new trial. The government, not surprisingly, opposed this motion. In doing so, the government contended that Coyne had requested the suicide watch in order to be segregated from the general population because he was afraid of Dumas. The government, in support of this position, offered the testimony of Agent Story, who had spoken with another informant who was incarcerated with Coyne. The informant stated to Agent Story:

[T]hat he was aware that there had been some problems surrounding Coyne backing out of the proposed undercover transaction and that he felt because of some heat, as he put it, that the defendant Dumas . . . had placed on him, that Coyne staged this incident or staged this ruse as an attempt to get him away from the defendant and to put him in a safe position without actually having to ask or request prison officials to be moved to isolation which invariably would mean that he had the status of being a Government informant.

A-182. After he was informed that he would be testifying in a hearing on Dumas's motion for a new trial, Agent Blazak shredded certain pages from his notebook which the defense alleges contained information relating to Dumas's case. Dumas claims that Blazak did this despite knowing that he would have to produce any relevant notes at this hearing.

Some pages pertaining to Dumas remained in Agent Blazak's notebook, including those pages that documented the Q-5 suicide watch. In addition, Blazak's notes contained information that supported Dumas's contention that Dumas and Coyne had shared a prison cell for nearly two months. These notes, Dumas now asserts, could have been used to impeach both Coyne and Agent Story. In addition, Dumas claims that the government discovered during trial that Story's testimony on the length of time Coyne and Dumas shared a cell was erroneous, and failed to correct it. Finally, Dumas asserts that the shredding of pages from Blazak's notebook constituted destruction of evidence in violation of his Due Process rights.

II. Standard of Review

We review the district court's denial of a motion for a new trial only for manifest abuse of discretion. See United States v. Brimage, 115 F.3d 73, 79 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 118 S. Ct. 321 (1997). In motions brought for a new trial based upon newly discovered evidence of prosecutorial nondisclosure, we accord deference to the district court's determination of materiality. See United States v. Hahn, 17 F.3d 502, 510 (1st Cir. 1994) ("[T]he district court's determination of the materiality of newly discovered evidence in prosecutorial nondisclosure cases is ordinarily accorded deference.") (quoting United States v. Sanchez, 917 F.2d 607, 618 (1st Cir. 1990)).

III. Analysis

While Dumas states many facts, he alleges essentially two legal claims. First, he alleges that failure to disclose the contents of Agent Blazak's notes, which included information on the Q-5 suicide watch and the amount of time Coyne and Dumas shared a cell, which would constitute a Brady violation justifying a grant of a new trial. Second, he argues that the shredding of certain of Blazak's notes could be a violation of Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U.S. 51, 58-58 (1988) (holding that bad faith destruction of evidence constitutes a due process violation) and Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963) (requiring disclosure of exculpatory evidence).

A. Substantive Standards

1. Brady

As the Supreme Court has stated: "We do not . . . automatically require a new trial whenever a combing of the prosecutors' files after the trial has disclosed evidence possibly useful to the defense but not likely to have changed the verdict . . . ." Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150, 154 (1972) (internal quotation marks omitted). Instead, "[a] finding of materiality of the evidence is required under Brady." Id.

Evidence is material under Brady only when "there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different." United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 682 (1985) (opinion of Blackmun, J.); see also Kyles v. Whitney, 514 U.S. 419, 433-35 (1995) (endorsing Bagley test); United States v. Cunan, 152 F.3d 29, 34 (1st Cir. 1998) (same). This, as we stated in Cunan, does not mean that the reviewing court must be certain that a different result would obtain. See id. Rather, a defendant such as Dumas may prove a Brady violation by showing that "the favorable evidence could reasonably be taken to put the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the verdict." Kyles, 514 U.S. at 435; Cunan, 152 F.3d at 34.

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