United States v. Tremane D. Carthen , 906 F.3d 1315 ( 2018 )

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[PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
Nos. 16-17653; 16-17753
________________________
D.C. Docket No. 2:15-cr-00511-KKD-GMB-3
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
versus
TREMANE D. CARTHEN,
SCOTTIE JEROMA GROCE,
Defendant - Appellants.
________________________
Appeals from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Alabama
________________________
(October 25, 2018)
Before WILLIAM PRYOR, MARTIN, and BALDOCK,∗ Circuit Judges.
MARTIN, Circuit Judge:
∗
Honorable Bobby R. Baldock, Senior United States Circuit Judge for the Tenth Circuit,
sitting by designation.
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Tremane Carthen and Scottie Groce were tried and convicted by a jury on
multiple counts of federal robbery and firearm offenses. The government’s key
witness at trial was their alleged coconspirator, who agreed to testify after entering
a guilty plea. The District Court sentenced Mr. Carthen and Mr. Groce to the
mandatory minimum of fifty-seven years, plus one month in prison. In these
consolidated criminal appeals, both men challenge their convictions and sentences.
Their appeals raise claims about the sufficiency of the evidence to support the
jury’s guilty verdict, the admission and exclusion of evidence relating to the
testimony of the alleged coconspirator, and the constitutionality of their fifty-
seven-year mandatory sentence. After careful review, and having the benefit of
oral argument, we affirm the convictions and sentences of both men.
I. BACKGROUND
In November 2015, a grand jury indicted Mr. Carthen, Mr. Groce, and their
friend Kevin Martin for crimes arising out of the robbery of three Alabama gas
stations in July 2014. The indictment alleged violations of the Hobbs Act, 18
U.S.C. § 1951(a), and of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), which imposes mandatory minimum
prison sentences on any person who uses or carries a firearm in the course of a
crime of violence. 1 All three men entered not guilty pleas. Mr. Martin, however,
1
Mr. Carthen was also indicted on one count of being a felon in possession of a gun
under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). He does not appeal his conviction on this charge.
2
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later reached a plea agreement with the government and agreed to testify against
Mr. Carthen and Mr. Groce during their trial. In exchange, the government
dismissed four of the seven charges against him.
Mr. Carthen and Mr. Groce proceeded to trial, where Mr. Martin’s testimony
served as the centerpiece of the government’s case. Mr. Martin testified the three
of them robbed a Chevron gas station in north Elmore County, Alabama, on July 4,
2014; a Marathon gas station in Wetumpka, Alabama, on July 10, 2014; and a
Chevron gas station in Prattville, Alabama, on July 14, 2014. He said Mr. Groce
planned each robbery and drove the group to the target gas stations, and that each
time, Mr. Carthen wore the same black Alabama hoodie. Mr. Martin testified Mr.
Groce gave everyone gloves to wear during the robberies, and Mr. Carthen also
received a shotgun, which Groce had loaded beforehand.
According to Mr. Martin, only he and Mr. Carthen went inside the first gas
station in Elmore. Both had firearms. For the second robbery in Wetumpka,
however, all three men went inside with guns. On both occasions, at least one of
them pointed a gun at a store clerk. The group left both robberies with cash and
Newport cigarettes.
The last robbery the three men committed together was the Prattville
Chevron. Mr. Martin testified he stayed in the car while Mr. Groce and Mr.
Carthen went inside. While the robbery was underway, a customer named Marie
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Parker arrived at the station. When she entered and approached the drink cooler,
either Mr. Carthen or Mr. Groce left the back office of the station, pointed a gun
towards her, and told her to lie down on the ground.
Moments later, a police officer stopped at the Chevron the men were
robbing. Mr. Martin took off in the car once he saw the officer radio for backup.
Mr. Groce chased after Mr. Martin and convinced Martin to let him into the car.
Mr. Carthen was nowhere to be found. But both Ms. Parker and her husband,
Michael Parker, testified that they saw him moments after the robbery, when he
approached a picnic area near the Chevron station. The police had directed Ms.
Parker to wait there while they canvassed the crime scene, and her husband joined
her shortly thereafter. Mr. Carthen proceeded to engage the Parkers in a
conversation, telling them that he “had seen what was going on from a window” in
a nearby home. Mr. Parker found this assertion suspicious because there were no
residential buildings nearby. Mr. Parker eventually permitted Mr. Carthen to use
his phone to call for a ride. Mr. Martin testified he then went to pick Mr. Carthen
up.
The government called several other witnesses who were able to corroborate
Mr. Martin’s account. The jury heard testimony from the gas station clerks who
were present during the robberies, each of whom testified about their recollections
of the robberies, sometimes with the help of the gas stations’ security footage. An
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employee at the Prattville Chevron also testified the robbers took off with cash and
cigarettes.
The government also presented physical evidence, including a shotgun,
cigarette cartons, gloves, and a hoodie, all of which were discovered by officers
near the Prattville Chevron. Mr. Martin testified the gloves came from Mr. Groce,
the hoodie belonged to Mr. Carthen, and the shotgun was the one Groce had given
Carthen. Mr. Martin also reviewed photos from the gas stations’ security footage,
where he identified himself, Mr. Carthen, and Mr. Groce, as well as the various
firearms they carried. Finally, the government presented forensic evidence. An
expert witness for the government testified she had matched Mr. Carthen’s DNA to
DNA found on the gloves and the hoodie “[w]ith a high degree of confidence.”
At the close of the government’s evidence, both Mr. Groce and Mr. Carthen
moved for a judgment of acquittal, which the District Court denied. Mr. Carthen
and Mr. Groce then rested their cases without presenting any evidence.
The jury convicted Mr. Carthen and Mr. Groce on all seven counts. Mr.
Carthen filed a renewed motion for judgment of acquittal or, in the alternative, a
motion for new trial, arguing there was insufficient evidence to support a guilty
verdict. Mr. Groce filed a motion for new trial, arguing he should have been
allowed to impeach Mr. Martin’s testimony with testimony from other witnesses
who would have shown Martin previously lied under oath. The District Court
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denied both motions and sentenced Mr. Carthen and Mr. Groce to one month in
prison for the four Hobbs Act counts, plus a consecutive fifty-seven years for the
three § 924(c) counts, which is the mandatory minimum required by § 924(c)’s
penalty scheme.
II. ISSUES ON DIRECT APPEAL
Mr. Carthen’s appeal presents four issues: (1) whether he received
ineffective assistance of counsel; (2) whether the District Court erred when it
denied his motion for a judgment of acquittal; (3) whether the District Court
erroneously permitted Mr. Martin to testify about hearsay statements attributed to
Mr. Carthen and Mr. Groce; and (4) whether the District Court miscalculated the
mandatory minimum during sentencing. Mr. Groce’s appeal presents two separate
issues: first, whether the District Court properly denied his motion for a new trial;
and second, whether the mandatory minimum sentencing scheme of § 924(c), as
applied to Mr. Groce, violates the Eighth Amendment.
The record before us is not sufficiently developed to review Mr. Carthen’s
first claim for ineffective assistance of counsel. See United States v. Patterson,
595 F.3d 1324, 1328–29 (11th Cir. 2010). We therefore dismiss this claim without
prejudice to his ability to raise it again in a later motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255.
See id.We now turn to the five remaining issues presented in this appeal.
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A. MOTION FOR JUDGMENT OF ACQUITTAL
Mr. Carthen first argues the District Court should have granted his motion
for judgment of acquittal because the government failed to present sufficient
evidence to support his guilty verdict. We review de novo a district court’s denial
of a motion for judgment of acquittal. United States v. Pistone, 177 F.3d 957, 958
(11th Cir. 1999) (per curiam). We must view the evidence in the light most
favorable to the government, drawing all reasonable inferences and resolving all
credibility evaluations in favor of the jury’s verdict. United States v. Descent, 292
F.3d 703, 706 (11th Cir. 2002) (per curiam). “To uphold the denial of a [motion
for judgment of acquittal], we need only determine that a reasonable fact-finder
could conclude that the evidence established the defendant’s guilt beyond a
reasonable doubt.” Id. (quotation marks omitted).
A reasonable fact-finder could conclude the government’s evidence here
established beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Carthen conspired to commit a
robbery and voluntarily participated in the robbery with a firearm in violation of 18
U.S.C. §§ 924(c) and 1951. Mr. and Mrs. Parker were able to identify Mr. Carthen
and testified that he acted strangely when they encountered him shortly after the
robbery. According to their testimony, Mr. Carthen implausibly claimed to have
watched the robbery from a nearby house. An expert witness testified she was able
to ascertain with a high degree of confidence Mr. Carthen’s DNA on the pair of
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gloves and the hoodie recovered near the scene of the robbery. Mr. Martin
explained in detail Mr. Carthen’s involvement in Mr. Groce’s armed robbery
scheme and identified Mr. Carthen on security footage from the robbery. Given
the strength of the government’s evidence, the District Court did not err when it
denied Mr. Carthen’s motion for a judgment of acquittal.
B. EVIDENTIARY RULINGS
1. Coconspirator Testimony
Mr. Carthen next challenges for the first time the District Court’s decision to
admit various hearsay statements against him. While we normally review
evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion, arguments raised for the first time on
appeal are reviewed for plain error. United States v. Jernigan, 341 F.3d 1273, 1280
(11th Cir. 2003). Relying on United States v. Morrow, 537 F.2d 120 (5th Cir.
1976), Mr. Carthen argues Mr. Martin’s testimony about Carthen’s and Groce’s
statements was inadmissible under the coconspirator exception to hearsay because
there was insufficient independent evidence connecting Carthen to the conspiracy.
But Morrow, which concerned a 1974 trial, does not control here. See id. at 125.
Under the Federal Rules of Evidence enacted in 1975, a court need not find that a
preponderance of the evidence proves the existence of a conspiracy independently
from statements in the coconspirator’s testimony before the court can find the
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coconspirator’s exception to the hearsay rule applies. Bourjaily v. United States,
483 U.S. 171, 176–81, 107 S. Ct. 2775, 2779–82 (1987).
Also under the Federal Rules of Evidence a statement is not hearsay if it is
“offered against an opposing party” and it “was made by the party’s coconspirator
during and in furtherance of the conspiracy.” Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(2)(E). A court
may admit evidence under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) if the government “prove[s] by a
preponderance of the evidence that: (1) a conspiracy existed; (2) the conspiracy
included the declarant and the defendant against whom the statement is offered;
and (3) the statement was made during the course and in furtherance of the
conspiracy.” United States v. Harris, 886 F.3d 1120, 1130 (11th Cir. 2018)
(quotation marks omitted). When determining whether these elements have been
satisfied, “the district court may rely on information provided by the co-
conspirator’s proffered statement as well as independent external evidence.”
United States v. Miles, 290 F.3d 1341, 1351 (11th Cir. 2002) (emphasis added).
Here, the evidence confirming Mr. Martin’s testimony about the conspiracy
involving Mr. Carthen included the pattern of the robberies, the hoodie with
Carthen’s DNA that was visible on the gas stations’ security footage, and the
identification of the two witnesses placing Carthen near the last robbery soon after
it occurred. As a result, the District Court did not plainly err in finding enough
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evidence of a conspiracy under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) to admit Mr. Martin’s testimony
about Carthen’s and Groce’s statements.
2. Exclusion of Impeachment Testimony
Mr. Groce’s evidentiary argument concerns an issue that came up more than
once in the District Court. That is the admissibility of Groce’s proposed evidence
to impeach Mr. Martin’s testimony. During a pretrial hearing, Mr. Groce’s counsel
laid out a two-part trial plan to show Mr. Martin had previously lied under oath.
First, on cross-examination he would ask Mr. Martin if he had ever perjured
himself or lied under oath before. If Mr. Martin answered in the negative, Mr.
Groce’s counsel would call two witnesses to rebut Martin’s denial. One of the
proposed witnesses was a man acquitted of murder after a trial where Mr. Martin
had testified for the government. The other was a law enforcement officer who, at
a suppression hearing, had given testimony that the presiding magistrate judge
found more credible than Mr. Martin’s testimony on the same subject.
The District Court ruled Mr. Groce’s counsel could ask Mr. Martin the
perjury question, but excluded the testimony of the two witnesses under Federal
Rule of Evidence 608(b). Mr. Groce argues the District Court erred when it
excluded the evidence under Rule 608(b), because his proposed witnesses’
testimony was admissible “to show a bias and for impeachment of a witness with
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admissible and relevant evidence.” Mr. Groce further argues the District Court’s
incorrect ruling on this matter prejudiced him.
We conclude the District Court did not abuse its discretion when it denied
Mr. Groce’s two witnesses permission to testify. 2 See United States v. Wilk, 572
F.3d 1229, 1234–35 (11th Cir. 2009).
Rule 608(b) provides that extrinsic evidence other than a criminal conviction
“is not admissible to prove specific instances of a witness’s conduct in order to
attack or support the witness’s character for truthfulness.” We agree with the
District Court that Mr. Groce has not demonstrated his proposed evidence had
some purpose other than showing Mr. Martin is generally willing to lie under oath.
Though Mr. Groce invokes impeachment by specific contradiction, he admits on
appeal he wished to call his two witnesses in order to show Mr. Martin had a “bias
for lying against other defendants and in court proceedings for his own benefit,”
and “a propensity to lie in judicial proceedings.” Using past conduct to suggest a
witness has a generally dishonest character is precisely what Rule 608(b) does not
allow. For this reason, the District Court did not abuse its discretion in excluding
Mr. Groce’s proposed impeachment evidence.
2
At oral argument, the parties disagreed over whether Mr. Groce had sufficiently argued
to the District Court that his witnesses’ testimony should be admitted as evidence of Mr.
Martin’s bias. The government, maintaining Mr. Groce had not, urged us to review his bias
argument for plain error. Because Mr. Groce’s bias argument is unavailing even under an abuse
of discretion standard, we need not decide this issue.
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C. MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCING SCHEME
The last issue presented by both Mr. Carthen and Mr. Groce concerns the
application of § 924(c)’s mandatory minimum sentencing scheme in their cases.
This scheme has several basic requirements. Defendants convicted of brandishing
a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence under § 924(c) are subject to a
minimum sentence of seven years in prison on their first conviction, 18 U.S.C.
§ 924(c)(1)(A)(ii), and to a minimum sentence of twenty-five years in prison for
every conviction after that, id. § 924(c)(1)(C)(i). These sentences may not run
concurrently with each other or with any other prison sentence. Id.
§ 924(c)(1)(D)(ii). Because Mr. Carthen and Mr. Groce were each convicted of
three counts under § 924(c) for brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a Hobbs
Act robbery, 3 the District Court calculated they were subject to the following
mandatory minimum prison sentences: one sentence of seven years and two
sentences of twenty-five years, or a total of fifty-seven years, on the § 924(c)
counts. The District Court sentenced them each to this minimum.
Mr. Carthen disputes the District Court’s calculation. He correctly notes the
twenty-five-year minimum sentence only applies to “second or subsequent
conviction[s].” 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(C)(i). But he incorrectly argues he did not
3
We have previously held a Hobbs Act robbery “qualifies as a crime of violence under
§ 924(c)(3)(A)’s use-of-force clause.” United States v. St. Hubert, 883 F.3d 1319, 1328 (11th
Cir. 2018).
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receive any “second or subsequent conviction” within the meaning of the statute
because his three convictions “stem[med] from the same incident.” This argument
is foreclosed by binding precedent. See United States v. Bowers, 811 F.3d 412,
430 n.12 (11th Cir. 2016) (“This Court previously held, and the Supreme Court
later confirmed, that additional § 924(c) counts charged in the same indictment are
second and subsequent for the purposes of § 924(c)(1)(A)(ii).”). The District
Court therefore did not miscalculate the mandatory minimum sentence.
Instead of the arithmetic of his sentence under the statute, Mr. Groce
challenges the proportionality of his sentence under the Eighth Amendment. We
review de novo the constitutionality of a sentence. United States v. Flores, 572
F.3d 1254, 1268 (11th Cir. 2009) (per curiam).
The Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments
“contains a narrow proportionality principle that applies to noncapital
sentences.” United States v. Johnson, 451 F.3d 1239, 1242 (11th Cir. 2006)
(quotation marks omitted). Defendants arguing that their sentences are
constitutionally excessive must make a threshold showing of gross
disproportionality. Id. at 1243. Yet Mr. Groce does little more than contrast the
sentence he received under § 924(c) with what he says is the recommended
sentence range he would have received under the United States Sentencing
Guidelines, which is between 108 and 135 months. His actual sentence of fifty-
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seven years, or 684 months, is about five to six times greater than the guideline
range.
However, as mentioned in the government’s brief, this Court upheld in
Bowers a mandatory minimum sentence of 182 years, imposed under § 924(c), for
brandishing a firearm during eight robberies. 811 F.3d at 433. While
acknowledging the mandatory minimum was over ten times the recommended
guideline range, this Court held the mandatory minimum was not a grossly
disproportionate punishment considering the circumstances of that case. Id. at
432–33. Because Mr. Groce has not attempted to distinguish Bowers despite
having the opportunity to do so in his reply brief and at oral argument, we can only
compare this case and Bowers by looking at the ratios between the defendants’
actual sentences and their guideline ranges in each case. That comparison does not
favor Mr. Groce’s position. As a result, we conclude Mr. Groce has failed to make
a threshold showing of gross disproportionality.
AFFIRMED.
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WILLIAM PRYOR, Circuit Judge, concurring:
I join the panel’s opinion in full. I write separately to explain that our
precedents interpreting Federal Rule of Evidence 608(b) to prohibit impeachment
by contradiction are irreconcilable with the current text of that Rule.
“Impeachment by contradiction occurs when a party offers evidence to prove that a
fact to which a witness testified is not true.” 27 Charles Alan Wright et al., Federal
Practice and Procedure § 6096 (2d ed. 2007). But the current version of Rule
608(b) regulates the admission of evidence of a witness’s character for truthfulness
or untruthfulness, not impeachment by contradiction. When an appeal that requires
us to decide the issue comes before us, we should rule that the 2003 amendment to
Rule 608(b) abrogated our earlier precedents.
Our precedents have interpreted Rule 608(b) as adopting the common-law
rule that “a witness may not be impeached by producing extrinsic evidence of
‘collateral’ facts ‘contradicting’ the first witness’s assertions about those facts.” 1
McCormick on Evidence § 45 (Kenneth S. Broun ed., 7th ed. 2013). In United
States v. Edwards, 696 F.2d 1277 (11th Cir. 1983), we held that Rule 608(b)
prohibits this tactic. Id. at 1281.We affirmed a ruling excluding evidence proffered
for the purpose of “contradict[ing]” a witness’s “stated motive for working for the
DEA” and “denial of involvement in drugs.” Id. And our later decisions made clear
that the holding of Edwards—consistent with the collateral-issue rule of the
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common law—does not “stand as a bar to the admission of evidence introduced to
contradict, and which the jury might find disproves, a witness’s testimony as to a
material issue of the case.” United States v. Cardenas, 895 F.2d 1338, 1345 (11th
Cir. 1990) (quoting United States v. Opager, 589 F.2d 799, 803 (5th Cir. 1979));
see also United States v. Costa, 947 F.2d 919, 925 (11th Cir. 1991); United States
v. Cousins, 842 F.2d 1245, 1249 (11th Cir. 1988); United States v. Calle, 822 F.2d
1016, 1021 (11th Cir. 1987).
Our precedents comported with the former text of Rule 608(b), which stated
that “[s]pecific instances of conduct of a witness, for the purpose of attacking or
supporting his credibility . . . may not be proved by extrinsic evidence.” Edwards,
696 F.2d at 1281 (alterations in original) (emphasis added). This formulation of the
Rule prohibited any use of extrinsic evidence of a witness’s conduct to attack a
witness’s credibility. That prohibition arguably included evidence offered to prove
that a witness testified falsely in an earlier proceeding.
In 2003, Rule 608(b) was amended to substitute the phrase “character for
truthfulness” for the word “credibility,” so that the Rule now provides that,
“[e]xcept for a criminal conviction, . . . extrinsic evidence is not admissible to
prove specific instances of a witness’s conduct in order to attack or support the
witness’s character for truthfulness.” Fed. R. Evid. 608(b) (emphasis added). The
purpose of this amendment was “to clarify that the absolute prohibition on
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extrinsic evidence applies only when the sole reason for proffering that evidence is
to attack or support the witness’ character for truthfulness.” Fed. R. Evid. 608
advisory committee’s note to 2003 amendments. “[T]he amendment leaves the
admissibility of extrinsic evidence offered for other grounds of impeachment (such
as contradiction, prior inconsistent statement, bias and mental capacity) to Rules
402 and 403.” Id.As the committee notes suggest, the current text of Rule 608(b) provides no
general ban on impeachment by contradiction. “The literal language” of the current
version of Rule 608(b) establishes that “extrinsic evidence is inadmissible only if
offered for the purpose of proving character for truthfulness or untruthfulness.”
Wright et al., supra, § 6119. The text does not speak to related uses of the same
evidence, even those that will almost always have a collateral impact on the jury’s
assessment of a witness’s character for truthfulness, such as evidence introduced
for impeachment by contradiction.
The current rule does not reach impeachment by contradiction, which
characteristically attempts to prove that a witness lied, not that he is a liar. Reading
Rule 608(b) to exclude extrinsic proof of witness conduct to challenge a witness’s
credibility in any way, as we did in Edwards, would effectively read the words “in
order to attack or support the witness’s character for truthfulness” out of the text of
the Rule by prohibiting extrinsic evidence that affects a jury’s assessment of the
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witness’s character for truthfulness, even if the evidence was not introduced in
order to attack the witness’s character. This reading is untenable because it would
violate the surplusage canon, which “directs us to give effect to ‘every word and
every provision’ of a statute.” United States v. Obando, 891 F.3d 929, 936 (11th
Cir. 2018) (quoting Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The
Interpretation of Legal Texts § 26, at 174 (2012)).
We should follow the approach of the majority of the circuits. The
overwhelming majority of our sister circuits have held that Rule 608(b) does not
prohibit impeachment by contradiction. See, e.g., United States v. McGill, 815 F.3d
846, 907 (D.C. Cir. 2016); Morgan v. Covington Twp., 648 F.3d 172, 179 (3d Cir.
2011); United States v. Ramirez, 609 F.3d 495, 499 (2d Cir. 2010); United States v.
McGee, 408 F.3d 966, 981–82 (7th Cir. 2005); United States v. Akpan, 407 F.3d
360, 373–74 (5th Cir. 2005); United States v. Perez-Perez, 72 F.3d 224, 227 (1st
Cir. 1995); United States v. Higa, 55 F.3d 448, 451–52 (9th Cir. 1995); United
States v. Fleming, 19 F.3d 1325, 1331 (10th Cir. 1994). With the exception of the
Sixth Circuit, see United States v. Scott, 693 F.3d 715, 721–22 (6th Cir. 2012), the
only circuits that have concluded otherwise in precedential opinions did so before
the adoption of the 2003 amendment. See United States v. Goings, 313 F.3d 423,
427 (8th Cir. 2002); United States v. Smith Grading & Paving, Inc., 760 F.2d 527,
530 (4th Cir. 1985). We should recognize that the gloss on the Rule that we offered
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in Edwards is inconsistent with the text of the post-2003 Rule when the
opportunity to do so presents itself.
For related reasons, our statements that the Rule limits the use of extrinsic
evidence to “contradict[ing] . . . a witness’s testimony as to a material issue of the
case,” Cardenas, 895 F.2d at 1345 (quoting Opager, 589 F.2d at 803), are also
incompatible with the post-2003 text of Rule 608(b). The Rule does not speak to
anything other than the use of extrinsic evidence to support or attack a witness’s
character for truthfulness. And the constraint we recognized in Cardenas derives
from the collateral-issue rule of the common law. But as the Supreme Court has
explained, “[i]n principle, under the Federal Rules no common law of evidence
remains.” Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 588 (1993) (citation
and internal quotation marks omitted). “[W]hen the Federal Rules are silent about a
common-law restriction on the admission of logically relevant evidence, the Rules
impliedly abolish the restriction.” Edward J. Imwinkelried, Formalism Versus
Pragmatism in Evidence, 48 Creighton L. Rev. 213, 221 (2015).
Rule 608(b) imposes only one constraint on extrinsic evidence: that it cannot
be used to attack or support a witness’s character for truthfulness. Immateriality
does not cause evidence to fall within the ambit of this prohibition. As several of
our sister circuits have recognized, Rule 608(b) “does not apply . . . when extrinsic
evidence is used to show that a statement made . . . on direct examination is false,
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even if the statement is about a collateral issue.” Fleming, 19 F.3d at 1331; see also
Morgan, 648 F.3d at 179–80; United States v. Fonseca, 435 F.3d 369, 375 (D.C.
Cir. 2006).
Of course, that Rule 608(b) does not itself bar impeachment evidence
relevant only to a collateral issue does not mean that such evidence is always or
even presumptively admissible. Impeachment by contradiction often threatens to
“utterly destroy[]” “the purpose of Rule 608(b)” by permitting a party to mount a
de facto attack on a witness’s character for truth. Wright et al., supra, § 6119.
When this threat arises, there is a serious risk of “undue consumption of time
entailed in the presentation of the extrinsic evidence” and a “danger that the
jurors’s consideration of the extrinsic credibility evidence will distract them from
the historical merits.” Imwinkelried, Formalism Versus Pragmatism, supra, at 234.
Because of this problem, “[w]hen extrinsic evidence offered to contradict
undermines the[] purposes of Rule 608(b), that evidence becomes a strong
candidate for exclusion under Rule 403,” especially when the evidence is not
otherwise “admissible to prove facts pertinent to other issues in the case.” Wright
et al., supra, § 6119. So although Rule 608(b) does not limit the use of extrinsic
evidence in impeachment by contradiction to “material issue[s] of the case,”
Cardenas, 895 F.2d at 1345 (quoting Opager, 589 F.3d at 803), a district court
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could exclude extrinsic evidence used to impeach a witness on a collateral issue for
its risk of “confusing the issues” or “wasting time.” Fed. R. Evid. 403.
The Federal Rules of Evidence often prohibit the introduction of evidence
for one purpose while permitting the introduction of the same evidence for a
different purpose. See, e.g., Fed. R. Evid. 404(b) (prohibiting prior bad act
evidence to prove propensity, but not “for another purpose, such as proving
motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, absence of
mistake, or lack of accident”); Fed. R. Evid. 407 (prohibiting evidence of
subsequent remedial measures to prove negligence, culpable conduct, a product or
design defect, or a need for a warning or instruction, but not for other purposes).
And there is no reason why Rule 608(b) should operate differently. As the
Supreme Court has explained, “there is no rule of evidence which provides that
testimony admissible for one purpose and inadmissible for another purpose is
thereby rendered inadmissible.” United States v. Abel, 469 U.S. 45, 56 (1984). “It
would be a strange rule of law which held that relevant, competent evidence which
tended to show bias on the part of a witness was nonetheless inadmissible because
it also tended to show that the witness was a liar.” Id. Similarly, evidence that
tends to prove that a witness is not telling the truth on the stand should not be
inadmissible because it incidentally tends to prove that he is a liar.
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Case: 16-17653 Date Filed: 10/25/2018 Page: 22 of 22
Extrinsic evidence offered to prove specific instances of witness conduct
should be assessed under Rule 403 unless the evidence in question is offered to
support or attack a witness’s character for truthfulness. Rule 608(b) does not
govern the admission of extrinsic evidence for any other purpose. For the reasons
explained by the majority, this appeal does not present an opportunity for us to
adopt this reading of Rule 608(b) as our holding. But in a future appeal that
requires us to resolve the question whether our precedents interpreting Rule 608(b)
remain valid, we should recognize that our precedents interpreting the Rule to
establish a categorical prohibition on impeachment by contradiction or to impose a
materiality constraint on that tactic were abrogated by the 2003 amendment.
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