U.S.A. v. Wright & Watts, s. 99-1684

• Citation: 218 F.3d 812
• Decision Date: 07 July 2000
• Docket Number: 99-3642,Nos. 99-1684,s. 99-1684
• Parties: (7th Cir. 2000) United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, Cross-Appellant, v. Stanley WRIGHT, Defendant-Appellant and Deniese Watts, Defendant-Appellant, Cross-Appellee. & 99-3767
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit)

Page 812

218 F.3d 812 (7th Cir. 2000)

United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, Cross-Appellant, v. Stanley WRIGHT, Defendant-Appellant and Deniese Watts, Defendant-Appellant, Cross-Appellee.

Nos. 99-1684, 99-3642 & 99-3767

In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Argued June 5, 2000

Decided July 7, 2000

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 96 CR 290--Ann Claire Williams, Judge.

Before Easterbrook, Diane P. Wood, and Evans, Circuit Judges.

Easterbrook, Circuit Judge.

Of sixteen defendants indicted for smuggling and distributing heroin, twelve pleaded guilty and four were tried and convicted. Two of these four (Stanley Wright and Deniese Watts) have appealed, and the United States has taken a cross-appeal concerning Watts's sentence. Defendants' arguments do not require extended discussion. For example, Wright contends that the evidence against him is insufficient because the prosecution's witnesses were liars. But such an argument is pointless on appeal, for the jury determines credibility. The testimony at issue, though from the mouths of confessed law-breakers, did not conflict with other evidence too reliable to disregard, so the jury could accept it. Watts's principal claim, that the prosecutor violated the requirements of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), by withholding favorable evidence, founders on the fact that the prosecutor orally alerted defense counsel before trial to the exculpatory evidence. That defense counsel did not follow up by obtaining more details can't be treated as a constitutional violation by the prosecutor. (Counsel's shortcomings might be grounds for relief if the totality of the representation fell below the constitutional floor, see Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), but Watts's appellate lawyer sensibly reserved that issue for potential proceedings under 28 U.S.C. sec.2255.)

Only one of defendants' contentions requires additional comment. Marquis Jones testified that Deniese Watts's ex-husband Troy introduced Stanley Wright as his "enforcer, and he told me-- not in front of Stan, but he had told me that, you know, he had a couple of murders . . . and like that on his record." The district judge immediately told the jury to disregard this prejudicial statement. At a side bar conversation, the district judge learned that in 1973 Wright had been convicted of murder, but that this conviction had been reversed, after which Wright pleaded guilty to manslaughter. The judge also learned that before trial Jones had been instructed not to refer to this conviction.

The judge then stated in open court:

We're ready to proceed, ladies and gentlemen, and I told you you should disregard the last remark, and in addition I wanted to advise you that Stanley Wright has not been convicted for any murder, so you should totally disregard it.

Wright contends that he is entitled to a new trial because the jurors were bound to ignore this instruction.

Whatever weaknesses limiting instructions may have, Wright's problem is that this was not a "limiting" instruction at all. The judge did not tell the jurors to consider the murder for one purpose but forget about it for other purposes, nor did she tell them to put Wright's criminal record out of mind. Instead the judge told the jury that Jones's testimony was false--that Wright did not have "a couple of murders . . . and like that on his record." Jurors told that a witness's statement is untrue need not engage in mental struggle to disregard a fact that they deem important but the law asks them to ignore. The judge's actual instruction would be problematic only if some jurors were tempted to believe one criminal's statement to another over the word of a federal judge. But why would a juror do that? Perhaps a juror could think that the witness and the judge were using terms differently--that the judge was discussing convictions, while Troy Watts (and thus Marquis Jones) meant by "record" Wright's actual deeds. But Wright does not make such an argument and did not ask the judge to clarify matters further. All things considered, the episode did more to help Wright than to harm him, because it could have planted seeds of doubt in jurors' minds. If Jones testified falsely about Wright's criminal record, jurors might ask themselves, how many other tall tales did Jones tell? Listeners often judge the veracity of their interlocutors by what is verifiable. If Jones lied about something that could be verified (Wright's criminal record), maybe he was inventing the rest of his story too. What matters on appeal, however, is that a "falsity instruction" is more powerful than a limiting instruction, see United States v. Smith, 995 F.2d 662, 676 (7th Cir. 1993), and sufficed to prevent the jury from thinking Wright a murderer.

Watts's offense level under the Sentencing Guidelines was 38, which with her clean criminal record produced a presumptive range of 235 to 293 months' imprisonment. But the district court sentenced Watts to only 170 months, departing downward on account of what the judge called "extraordinary family circumstances." The judge recognized that "[f]amily ties and responsibilities . . . are not ordinarily relevant in determining whether a sentence should be outside the applicable guideline range." U.S.S.G. sec.5H1.6; see also 28 U.S.C. sec.994(e). But "ordinarily" is not "never," see Koon v. United States, 518 U.S. 81, 95-96 (1996), and the judge believed that Watts's circumstances were extraordinary. A clinical psychologist submitted a report that Joshua Watts, the seven- year-old son...