U.S. v. Eagle

• Decision Date: 21 August 2007
• Docket Number: No. 07-1045.,07-1045.
• Citation: 498 F.3d 885
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Chance Lee Wade EAGLE, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

498 F.3d 885

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Chance Lee Wade EAGLE, Appellant.

No. 07-1045.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: June 12, 2007.

Filed: August 21, 2007.

As Corrected August 29, 2007.

William D. Schmidt, argued, Orell D. Schmitz, on the brief, Bismarck, ND, for appellant.

Rick L. Volk, AUSA, argued, of Bismarck, ND, for appellee.

Before LOKEN, Chief Judge, COLLOTON and ARNOLD, Circuit Judges.

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

After Chance Eagle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Indian country, see 18 U.S.C. §§ 1112, 1153, he appealed, raising a plethora of evidentiary issues. We affirm.

I.

Mr. Eagle and three teenage women were in his vehicle when it collided with another vehicle, killing its driver. At trial, the government maintained that Mr. Eagle was driving his vehicle while intoxicated when the accident occurred; Mr. Eagle sought to prove that one of the teenagers was driving. Mr. Eagle contends that the district court should have allowed him to impeach two government witnesses with extrinsic evidence of their out-of-court statements that one of the teenagers was driving.

At trial, Don Grey Day (an employee at the Prairie Knights Casino Quik Mart where Mr. Eagle and the teenagers stopped at least twice before the accident) testified that Mr. Eagle was driving the vehicle shortly before the collision. Katrina Donahue, one of the teenagers in Mr. Eagle's vehicle, testified that Mr. Eagle was driving when the accident occurred. Mr. Eagle sought to show that both of these statements were inconsistent with out-of-court statements that the witnesses had made.

Mr. Eagle maintains that on the day of the accident Mr. Grey Day told Linda Eagle (Mr. Grey Day's co-worker and Mr. Eagle's aunt) that he saw one of the teenagers driving Mr. Eagle's vehicle. Mr. Eagle also asserts that Jay Soft overheard Ms. Donahue tell her mother that one of the other teenagers was driving. Upon questioning from Mr. Eagle's counsel, both Mr. Grey Day and Ms. Donahue denied making the prior inconsistent statements. Mr. Eagle then sought to impeach these witnesses by having Ms. Eagle and Ms. Soft testify that the witnesses had, in fact, made the inconsistent statements. The trial court ruled, however, that the evidence was inadmissible hearsay.

The Federal Rules of Evidence define hearsay as an out-of-court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. Fed.R.Evid. 801(c). Since Mr. Eagle offered the testimony of Ms. Eagle and Ms. Soft to impeach the government witnesses by showing that they had made statements contrary to their trial testimony, not to establish the truth of those prior inconsistent statements, the excluded evidence was not hearsay. And although Federal Rule of Evidence 613(b) permits the admission of extrinsic evidence of prior inconsistent statements only where the witness is "afforded an opportunity to explain or deny" the statement and "the opposite party is afforded an opportunity to interrogate the witness," these preconditions were satisfied here. We do not see, moreover, any basis for concluding that the probative value of the evidence was outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice or the other considerations that are set out in Federal Rule of Evidence 403.

The government argues that the court properly excluded the evidence because it was admissible only for impeachment purposes and Mr. Eagle was really seeking to introduce it as substantive evidence on the question of who was driving the vehicle. But this argument is based on pure conjecture. Furthermore, the government does not direct us to any case that holds that a party's subjective motive for introducing this kind of evidence is relevant to the question of its admissibility, and we do not see how it can be. The trial court therefore erred in excluding the extrinsic evidence.

A mere showing of error does not, of course, entitle Mr. Eagle to a new trial; he must also establish that the error harmed him. An error is harmless if we conclude that "no substantial rights of the defendant were affected and that the error did not influence or had only a very slight influence on the verdict." United States v. Wilcox, 50 F.3d 600, 603 (8th Cir.1995).

Had the evidence been admitted, the government would have been entitled to an instruction that the jury could use the evidence only in judging the witnesses' credibility and not as substantive evidence of who was driving the vehicle. In addition, the value of Ms. Eagle's impeachment testimony would itself have been diminished by evidence that brought her own credibility into question. Ms. Eagle would have testified that Mr. Grey Day made his statement to her during a third visit that the defendant and the teenagers made to the Quik Mart. But none of the other witnesses testified that there was a third visit and the surveillance video from Quik Mart, which the government played for the jury, does not reveal any such visit.

Even if the evidence would have affected the jury's view of the credibility of Mr. Grey Day and Ms. Donahue, neither of these witnesses was essential to the government's case. Mr. Grey Day did not address the key issue before the jury, namely whether Mr. Eagle was driving at the time of the collision; he testified that he saw Mr. Eagle driving the car at the Quik Mart fifteen miles from the crash site. And the two other teenagers in Mr. Eagle's car corroborated Ms. Donahue's testimony that the defendant was driving at the time of the accident. In addition, the government offered testimony from another witness, Margaret Gates, from which the jury could infer that Mr. Eagle was the driver immediately prior to the collision. We therefore conclude that excluding the evidence was harmless.

Mr. Eagle also argues that we should reverse the district court's judgment because the court's errors violated his constitutional right under the fifth and sixth amendments to present witnesses in his defense. See United States v. Turning Bear, 357 F.3d 730, 741 (8th Cir.2004). Assuming without deciding that a constitutional violation did occur, we are satisfied that the errors were "harmless beyond a reasonable doubt." See Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). Because, as we have already said, the evidence of Mr. Eagle's guilt was strong and the probative weight of the excluded evidence was relatively weak, we are confident that the "error[s] complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained." See id.

II.

Mr. Eagle maintains that the trial court erred in excluding evidence that his brother was acquitted of a criminal offense in a prior trial. He contends that his sixth amendment right to confront witnesses was violated when he was prevented from using this evidence to cross-examine the two teenagers who, along with Ms. Donahue, were riding in Mr. Eagle's vehicle and testified that he was driving. He also argues that the court's ruling violated Rule 613, which allows defendants to impeach adverse witnesses based on their bias. See United States v. Abel, 469 U.S. 45, 51, 105 S.Ct. 465, 83 L.Ed.2d 450 (1984).

The confrontation clause guarantees defendants an opportunity to show the bias of the witnesses against them, see Abel, 469 U.S. at 50, 105 S.Ct. 465, and Mr. Eagle contends that he was prevented from showing that the two teenagers had a motive to implicate him in a crime. One of the teenagers had previously accused Mr. Eagle's brother, Shiloh, of sexual assault, and both of them had testified against Shiloh at the trial in which he was acquitted of the charge. Mr. Eagle argues that he should have been permitted to cross-examine the two teenagers about the acquittal to support an inference that they were angry about Shiloh being acquitted and therefore wanted to punish him by falsely testifying against his brother. Mr. Eagle also argues that Shiloh's acquittal could have created a wholly different inference, i.e., that the teenagers had falsely testified against Shiloh, who was innocent, and that they might therefore be likely to do so against his brother, Mr. Eagle, because they might have a bias against the whole family.

The court permitted Mr. Eagle to question the teenagers about any grudge that they harbored because of the alleged sexual assault. He was also able to elicit facts on cross-examination to support his theory that the teenagers testified falsely in his trial to exact revenge against his brother. On cross-examination, Mr. Eagle brought out the nature of the supposed offense, the fact that one of the teenagers was the accuser, and the fact that the other teenager had testified against Shiloh at trial. As Mr. Eagle notes in his brief, one of the teenagers also "acknowledged" during cross-examination that she and the other teenager had "discussed the complaint against Shiloh" the night before.

In excluding the acquittal, the district court stated that counsel had "gone far enough if your purpose is to show a potential for bias." Mr. Eagle argues that evidence of the acquittal would have provided additional support for his argument that the teenagers had a motive to testify against him. But the teenagers had a motive to do so from the supposed crime itself regardless of the outcome of Shiloh's trial: Even if Shiloh had been convicted, the teenagers could still have been upset about the crime or about Shiloh's punishment. Evidence of Shiloh's acquittal would have added very little of substance to Mr. Eagle's attempt to show that his accusers wanted to punish him.

As to any inference that the teenagers committed perjury at Shiloh's trial, Mr. Eagle himself admits on appeal that that is hardly the only inference that the acquittal would support. The jury might have been in a merciful mood or the verdict might have reflected the instructions given to the jury. The truth is that there is simply no way to know why the jury acquitted Shiloh. See United States v. Beal, 430 F.3d 950,...