U.S. v. Young
| Decision Date | 18 July 2008 |
| Docket Number | No. 06-5664.,06-5664. |
| Citation | 533 F.3d 453 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Donnell YOUNG, aka Lil Peso, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
ARGUED: Sunny A.M. Koshy, Assistant United States Attorney, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Thomas F. Bloom, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Sunny A.M. Koshy, Assistant United States Attorney, Nashville, Tennessee, Elliot Williams, United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Thomas F. Bloom, Nashville, Tennessee, Richard Kammen, Gilroy, Kammen & Hill, Indianapolis, Indiana, for Appellee.
Before: COLE and COOK, Circuit Judges; MILLS, District Judge.*
COOK, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which MILLS, D.J., joined. COLE, J. (pp. 466-72), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.
After voir dire began in Donnell Young's capital murder case, the government located nineteen new witnesses and sought to add those names to the list of more than 100 already provided to the defense. One of the nineteen, a new eyewitness who saw Young leaving the murder scene, came to light through trial preparation interviews of crime-scene bystanders. Another trial preparation interview turned up information about a related violent assault Young committed. Through pursuit of that lead, the government located the other eighteen individuals as persons having knowledge of that assault.
When Young objected to the introduction of any evidence from the nineteen witnesses, the district court sua sponte invoked 18 U.S.C. § 3432, which requires the government to provide a capital defendant with a witness list at least three days before the start of trial, as grounds for excluding the witnesses. We find an abuse of discretion in the court's choice to exclude relevant testimony on the ground that the government failed to conduct a reasonably diligent investigation. We therefore vacate the district court's order and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
A seven-year federal investigation targeting the Los Angeles-based Rollin' 90s Crips street gang in connection with a nationwide drug-distribution conspiracy and widespread acts of violence resulted in federal charges of murder, drug trafficking, money laundering, and firearm possession, as well as others, against more than twenty-five defendants. After a grand jury indicted Crips-member Donnell Young, a/k/a "Lil' Peso," on a drug-conspiracy charge, the government transferred him from an Oklahoma City jail, where he was being held in connection with the murder of Woody Pilcher, to the Middle District of Tennessee. The Fifth Superseding Indictment charges Young with numerous drug and weapons offenses and three counts related to Pilcher's death—(1) killing Pilcher in furtherance of a continuing criminal enterprise and drug conspiracy, 21 U.S.C. § 848(e)(1)(A); (2) killing Pilcher to eliminate a potential witness, 18 U.S.C. § 1512(a)(1); and (3) causing Pilcher's death by the use and carrying of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence or a drug-trafficking crime, id. § 924(c)(1), (j). The government seeks the death penalty.
The district court severed Young's trial from other defendants' and granted his motion to empanel two juries (the first selected for the guilt phase and the second selected for the potential sentencing phase). United States v. Young, 376 F.Supp.2d 787, 800 (M.D.Tenn.2005). After we vacated the district court's bifurcated-jury decision, United States v. Young, 424 F.3d 499 (6th Cir.2005), jury selection began on October 24, 2005. When the government supplemented its pretrial witness list, Young moved to "preclude the new witnesses." On January 6 and 27, 2006, the district court ordered the newly discovered witnesses excluded.1 On February 2, 2006 (three-and-a-half months later), voir dire ended. This interlocutory appeal prompted the court to postpone final jury selection. 18 U.S.C. § 3731.
Though the appellate issue concerns the district court's choice of remedy for the government's late-noticed witnesses, we first discuss the government's proposed proof as background that informed the district court's exercise of discretion. In presenting its case-in-chief, the government planned to link Pilcher's murder to Young's involvement in the Rollin' 90s Crips drug-distribution conspiracy and his enforcer role therein by showing that, in addition to killing Pilcher, Young used violence to collect drug debts, including restraining Lawrence Washington and burning him with a butter knife, dismembering Wallace Davis's dog, and beating and sodomizing Troy Rogers. According to the government, one of the newly discovered witnesses, Mary Roschelle Walker, can testify to seeing Young leave the murder scene. The other eighteen new witnesses can provide evidence relating to the assault on Rogers. The district court understood that, through this new evidence, the government hoped to bolster its proof of Young's involvement in the drug-distribution conspiracy and Pilcher's death, rebut any claim of duress, and establish as a non-statutory aggravating factor Young's future dangerousness.
The government alerted the district court that it planned to introduce the following evidence at trial: Young (1) anticipated receiving either a kilogram of cocaine or $20,000 for killing Pilcher, (2) went to an Oklahoma City drug house run by Wallace Davis for that purpose, and (3) killed Pilcher by tying him up, stabbing him, and shooting him. Government's Br. at 7.
Cornelius Humphrey, Coy Baird, and Lawrence Washington were present at the shooting. After the shooting, police questioned numerous bystanders who reported hearing gunshots and seeing two people (later identified as Humphrey and Baird) leave the scene. Police arrested Humphrey and Baird, who both then identified Young as the shooter. Humphrey and Baird are now government witnesses. Federal officials did not independently question the bystanders during their later investigation, however, thinking that, because none had reported seeing Young leave the scene, their testimony would only provide context for Humphrey's and Baird's more specific recollections.
A few weeks later, police arrested Young in Los Angeles on an Oklahoma murder warrant. While in state custody, he allegedly confessed to another inmate that he killed Pilcher, and also that he had previously tortured Lawrence Washington by burning him with a butter knife and dismembered Wallace Davis's dog to collect on a drug debt. A grand jury eventually indicted Young on the federal charges, and the government transferred him to the Middle District of Tennessee.
On October 9, 2005, the prosecution, as required by 18 U.S.C. § 3432, provided Young with a list of the names and addresses of 151 potential trial witnesses. During final trial preparations, federal prosecutors and Los Angeles police detective George Leiker (who was heavily involved in the Rollin' 90s investigation) traveled from Nashville to Oklahoma City to serve trial subpoenas and prepare the bystanders to testify. During these final interviews, two previously questioned bystanders disclosed information that pointed the government to a new eyewitness. On October 8, bystander Mary Judy said someone—perhaps named "Rosalyn"—told her that she saw the shooter flee the murder scene.2 Then, on October 18, bystander Dianne Jenkins said that someone told her "Rochelle" had seen the killer leave the crime scene. Jenkins said she knew Rochelle because she had previously helped her treat Lawrence Washington's burns (after Young allegedly tortured him). Jenkins added that Rochelle was related to a "Richardson" family and had been married to "Walter Walker." The next day, Jenkins identified a picture of Mary Roschelle Walker.
On October 28, the prosecutors and Leiker returned to Oklahoma City, found Mary Walker days later, and interviewed her. Confirming what Judy and Jenkins had said, Walker told them she was with her husband, Walter Walker,3 in a car on the day of the shooting when they heard gunshots and saw Young walking away from the house. She recognized Young because of their repeated contact at a drug house that Young paid her to clean. She also confirmed that she had helped treat Washington's injuries. The next day, on October 31, the government provided Young with a supplemental witness list that included Mary Walker.
Also during final trial preparation, the government met with Cornelius Humphrey to go over his testimony. By now—October 19, 2005—Humphrey had been interviewed four previous times, had testified before the grand jury, and had been told to reveal everything he knew about the Rollin' 90s Crips drug conspiracy. Nevertheless, at this fifth interview he disclosed for the first time that in Oklahoma City he had seen Young and others severely beat a man, known to him only as "Mr. T," and sodomize him with a broom handle.
Armed with that new information, the government contacted local police, but no one at the department could identify Mr. T. When the prosecutors and Leiker returned to Oklahoma City on October 28, however, they reviewed police records showing that Troy Rogers, a/k/a Mr. T, reported being the victim of an assault and named "Lil' Peso" as his assailant. The prosecution team found and interviewed Rogers the next day, and he confirmed that Young had severely beaten him for a drug debt. The prosecution located police photographs and hospital records documenting Rogers's injuries, and, from the police file on Rogers's assault, discovered seventeen new witnesses, including hospital staff.
The government's October 31, 2005, supplemental list included Rogers and the other new witnesses, many of whom had not yet...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
United States v. DeLeon
......Bhalla, LLC, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Attorneys for Defendant Carlos Herrera. Justine Fox-Young, Albuquerque, New Mexico --and-- Ryan J. Villa, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Attorneys for Defendant Rudy Perez. Lisa Torraco, Albuquerque, New Mexico ... See United States v. Summers , 414 F.3d at 1300 (concluding that a defendant’s question -- "How did you guys find us so fast?" -- was an implicit assertion of "both guilt and wonderment at the ability of the police to apprehend the perpetrators of the crime so ......
-
United States v. DeLeon
...presented list with' Jaramillo's name after trial began." April 23 MOO at 69, 2019 WL 1780092, at *30 (quoting United States v. Young, 533 F.3d 453, 462 (6th Cir. 2008)). The Court concluded that excluding Jaramillo's testimony is not an appropriate remedy, and instead the Court decided to ......
-
U.S.A v. Pritchard, 08-4402
...... 2 that Defendant has as supposedly being sexually interested in the mother-daughter relationship, not about being sexually interested in a young or prepubescent daughter. Dr. Orlando further testified, upon questioning from the court, that Defendant allegedly showed he was concerned about the ...A general sense of deference to district courts on sentencing leads us to affirm sentences where the district judge has failed to fully explain the reason for the sentence. See, e.g., Petrus, 588 F.3d at 356 ......
-
U.S. v. Young
......In Brillon, the Supreme Court stated that “institutional problems” and other “[d]elay resulting from a systemic breakdown .. could be charged to the State.” Brillon, 129 S.Ct. at 1292–93 (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). Young asks us to hold that the district court's dilatory actions, the prosecutor's “failure timely to file responses and other documents,” and the length of time it took this court to decide the second interlocutory appeal comprise “institutional problems” and “systemic breakdowns” that render the ......