U.S. v. Meridyth, 03-2079.

• Decision Date: 13 April 2004
• Docket Number: No. 03-2079.,03-2079.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. James Earl MERIDYTH, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

Page 1181

364 F.3d 1181

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. James Earl MERIDYTH, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 03-2079.

United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.

April 13, 2004.

Submitted on the Briefs:^*

Steven A. Harrell, Albuquerque, NM, for Defendant-Appellant.

David C. Iglesias, United States Attorney and Laura Fashing, Assistant United States Attorney, Office of the United States Attorney, Albuquerque, NM, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Before HENRY, BARRETT, and TYMKOVICH, Circuit Judges.

TYMKOVICH, Circuit Judge.

Defendant-Appellant James Earl Meridyth appeals the district court's denial of his motion for mistrial. Specifically, Meridyth claims the court abused its discretion by not declaring a mistrial after a prosecution witness testified that he had moved because he felt his life was in danger. Exercising jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and finding no abuse of discretion, we affirm.

I.

Following a multi-jurisdictional sting operation in Las Cruces, New Mexico, James Meridyth was tried and convicted of three counts of violating 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 841(b)(1)(A), 841(b)(1)(C), and 846 of the federal narcotics trafficking laws. At trial, the prosecution introduced testimony from an undercover police officer and a confidential informant detailing three transactions in 1999 and 2000 in which Meridyth sold them over 600 grams of cocaine.¹ Other law enforcement officers who had conducted surveillance of the three transactions corroborated this testimony. In addition, Meridyth's brother Ronnie testified about his and his brother's drug sales in general, and particularly their participation in the August 1999 transaction.

Meridyth moved for a mistrial after a brief exchange during the government's direct examination of the confidential informant, Michael Williams. Williams had acted as an informant in approximately forty to fifty cases for a variety of law enforcement agencies. The Assistant U.S. Attorney asked Williams a series of questions about the various payments he had received for his work on those cases, eventually leading to a discussion about Williams's decision to move from Carlsbad, New Mexico, in late 1999 or early 2000. Williams testified that he was paid around $1000 by the U.S. Attorneys Office for that move. The prosecutor then asked, "Why did you leave Carlsbad?" Williams responded, "Because I felt my life was in danger, and I was being threatened at that time." Supp.App. at 334.

Defense counsel for Meridyth and his co-defendant Edward Oliver immediately objected and moved for a mistrial. The defense argued to the district court, as here, that Williams's statement could lead the jury to believe it was Meridyth or his co-defendant who had threatened Williams, a proposition for which there was no evidence in the record.² After extensively discussing the matter with counsel at a sidebar conference outside the hearing of the jury, the district court denied the motion.

The court did, however, give the following limiting instruction to the jury:

After an exhaustive discussion with counsel and my own examination of this witness out of your hearing, I have determined a couple of things.

First, it appears that the United States Attorney asked the question regarding why this witness moved to, in part, explain why the United States Government, through the United States Attorney's Office, has provided $1000 in assistance for this individual to move. You will recall that the witness said he moved because of threats made against him.

In part, an inference that you could draw from that statement was that the threats were made by Mr. Oliver and Mr. Meridyth. I am telling you now that that would be an improper inference, based on all of the information I now know. You will recall that this witness was working on at least 40 cases with the drug task force. That gives this witness ample opportunity to make a lot of enemies.

While I have no reason to doubt that — the likelihood that what motivated him to move were threats, it can't be said, based on any credible evidence now known to the Court that those threats can be connected to these defendants. And you may not infer that they do, based on the evidence we now have.

Supp.App. at 360-61. The court then proceeded with the case, and the jury returned guilty verdicts against Meridyth and his co-defendant.

II.

We review a district court's refusal to grant a mistrial for abuse of discretion. United States v. Kravchuk, 335 F.3d 1147, 1154 (10th Cir.2003). The district court has discretion to grant a mistrial only when a defendant's right to a fair and impartial trial has been impaired. Id. at 1155. See also United States v. Laymon, 621 F.2d 1051, 1053 (10th Cir.1980) ("Whether a motion for mistrial should be granted is within the discretion of the trial judge because he is in the best position to evaluate the effect of the offending evidence on the jury.") "While the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure offer little guidance on when judges should grant mistrial motions, we have focused on whether [the defendant's] right to a fair and impartial trial was impaired.... [M]otions for mistrial ... call for an examination of the prejudicial impact of an error or errors when viewed in the context of an entire case." United States v. Gabaldon, 91 F.3d 91, 93-94 (10th Cir.1996) (internal quotations and citations omitted).

Though Meridyth has not styled his complaint as one of prosecutorial misconduct, in a case such as this, where the prosecutor asked a question her witness answered in a potentially improper way, a similar analysis is appropriate. The relevant factors in this analysis include (1) whether the prosecutor acted in bad faith, (2) whether the district court limited the effect of the improper statement through its instructions to the jury, and (3) whether the improper remark was inconsequential in light of the other evidence of the defendant's guilt. See Kravchuk, 335 F.3d at 1154-55.³

Meridyth contends that the prosecutor knowingly solicited the response she got, that the court's admonition was insufficient to "remove the taint" of "the horror of drug-related violence" that Williams's statement would have planted in the minds of the jury, and that a jury with that "indelible" image on its minds could not give him a fair trial. He therefore says it was an abuse of the court's discretion not to declare a mistrial.

The government counters that the prosecutor's question was not intended to elicit improper testimony, but simply to explain why the U.S. Attorney's office had paid Williams $1000. In any case, the government says, the prosecutor did have information that Meridyth had threatened Williams, so there was nothing improper in Williams's testimony. Furthermore, the court's admonition and the other evidence should remove any worry that the jurors improperly convicted Meridyth because they thought he had threatened Williams.

As noted above, although much of the bench conference turned on whether a few statements made by Meridyth could be interpreted as threats to Williams, the government does not point us to any evidence it introduced to the jury — either before or after...