Diaz-Morales v. Cruz-Velez et al

Filing 197

OPINION AND ORDER granting in part 162 Motion in Limine. Signed by Judge Juan M. Perez-Gimenez on 7/8/2016. (PMA)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE
DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
ROBERT ANEL DIAZ-MORALES,
Plaintiff,
v.

CIV. NO. 13-1360(PG)

SERGIO RUBIO-PAREDES, ET ALS.,
Defendants.

OPINION AND ORDER
Before

the

court

is

co-defendants

Limaris

Cruz-Velez,

Sergio

Rubio-Paredes and Emilio Arill-Garcia’s motion in limine (Docket No. 162). For
the reasons set forth below, the court GRANTS IN PART the co-defendants’
motion.
I. BACKGROUND
On May 5, 2016, co-defendants police officer Limaris Cruz-Velez (“CruzVelez”),

prosecutor

Sergio

Rubio-Paredes

(“Rubio-Paredes”),

supervising

district attorney Emilio Arill-Garcia (“Arill-Garcia”) filed a motion in
limine seeking two evidentiary rulings prior to the scheduled jury trial:
(1) that the court not allow plaintiff Robert Anel Diaz-Morales (hereinafter
“Plaintiff” or “Diaz-Morales”) to use the content of the Puerto Rico Supreme
Court’s (PRSC) sentence of acquittal, namely, Pueblo v. Robert Anel Diaz
Morales, CC-2006-532 (PRSC May 9, 2012), for purposes of establishing that the
defendants lacked probable cause to prosecute him or that government witness
Jose Luis Delgado (“Delgado”) was mendacious; (2) that the court preclude the
Plaintiff from using the complaints contained in Puerto Rico Police Department
(PRPD) administrative files against co-defendant Cruz-Velez because it is
inadmissible character evidence. See Docket No. 162.
During a hearing held on June 14, 2016, Plaintiff opposed the defendants’
motion. In short, it argued that the PRSC sentence of acquittal established
that Delgado’s testimony deserved no credibility, a fact that this court
should take notice of here. The Plaintiff also claimed that, as stated in its
portion of the joint proposed Pre-Trial Order, he only foresees using CruzVelez’s PRPD employee file for impeachment purposes, see Docket No. 149 at

CIV. NO. 13-1360(PG)

Page 2

pages 99-100, and defendants cannot be allowed to curtail his right to
potentially impeach Cruz-Velez by means of a motion in limine.
During the hearing, the court reserved its holding on the motion. See
Docket No. 196.
II. DISCUSSION
A. Judicial Notice
In our Opinion and Order of March 21, 2016, the undersigned took judicial
notice of the PRSC’s acquittal of plaintiff Diaz-Morales on May 9, 2012
pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 201. See Docket No. 145 at FN 2. In their
motion, however, the defendants seek that this court refrain from presenting
the content of the sentence of acquittal to the jury. The main ground for
exclusion is Fed. R. Evid. 403, which states that “[t]he court may exclude
relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially outweighed by a
danger of one or more of the following: unfair prejudice, confusing the
issues, misleading
presenting

the jury, undue delay, wasting time, or needlessly

cumulative

evidence.”

Fed.

R.

Evid.

403.

According

to

the

defendants, admitting the judgment of acquittal into evidence may confuse the
jury and induce it to error given the different standard of proof that applies
in

criminal

cases

and

the

undue

influence

a

determination

from

the

Commonwealth’s highest court may have in the mind of the jury. See Docket
No. 162.
In his oral argument in opposition, the Plaintiff relied on Olsen v.
Correiro, 189 F.3d 52 (1st Cir. 1999), for the proposition that the sentence
of acquittal shall in fact be provided to the jury to establish the fact that
Delgado’s testimony lacked any credibility whatsoever. However, a perfunctory
reading of the caselaw relied on shows that the discussion therein is
inapposite to the case at hand. The court in Olsen is faced with the
determination of whether or not to bar the admission of a conviction imposed
pursuant to a plea of nolo contendere, for which different rules of exclusion
apply.

See id.

In the case at hand, taking judicial notice that the Plaintiff was
eventually acquitted is relevant and central to his claim of malicious
prosecution. This is so because one of the elements of such a claim is
establishing that the criminal proceedings in question terminated in the
plaintiff’s favor. See Hernandez–Cuevas v. Taylor, 723 F.3d 91, 101 (1st
Cir.2013). However, exposing the jury to the content of the sentence of
acquittal is out of the question. The reasoning behind this holding is best

CIV. NO. 13-1360(PG)

Page 3

set forth in a persuasive opinion by our sister court of the District of
Columbia in Moore v. Hartman, 102 F. Supp. 3d 35, 143 (D.D.C. 2015), where the
district court barred plaintiff from presenting a prior judicial opinion
dismissing criminal charges against him in a later Bivens1 suit for retaliatory
inducement to prosecution against postal inspectors. In Moore, the prior
judicial opinion that was excluded contained several comments that were
critical of the prosecution’s case. There, the plaintiff “hoped to leverage
these statements into his case in order to ‘demonstrate[ ] that [the]
government’s evidence was abysmally weak’ and because a jury could infer a
retaliatory motive from such a weak criminal case.” Moore, 102 F. Supp. 3d at
143. But pursuant to the tenets of Rule 403, the court found that “[a]llowing
the plaintiff to exploit and present the [prior judicial] Opinion to the jury
would have resulted in unfair prejudice to the defendants … .” Id. at 144.
First, the Moore court feared that allowing the use of the prior judicial
opinion posed the significant risk that the jury would give undue weight to
the judicial findings contained therein. Citing the First Circuit Court of
Appeals, the district court stated that “‘[a] lay jury is quite likely to give
special

weight

to

judicial

findings

merely

because

they

are

judicial

findings.’” Moore, 102 F. Supp. 3d at 144 (citing Faigin v. Kelly, 184 F.3d
67, 80 (1st Cir.1999); Nipper v. Snipes, 7 F.3d 415, 418 (4th Cir.1993)
(noting that “judicial findings of fact present a rare case where, by virtue
of their having been made by a judge, they would likely be given undue weight
by the jury”)). The admission of such a document in evidence may be unfairly
prejudicial to defendants if the jurors accord “more weight to the analysis
of the evidence laid out in the [prior judicial] Opinion than to their own
perceptions of the evidence simply because the opinion was authored by a
judge.” Moore, 102 F. Supp. 3d at 144.
Second, the Moore court noted the confusion that may ensue from the
different legal standard a juror must apply to the evidence in a criminal case
versus the matter at hand. Whereas the evidence in a criminal case needs to
show guilt beyond a reasonable doubt for a conviction, a jury here must
examine the evidence available to them in light of the probable cause
standard. The Moore court adequately noted that “[t]he impressions of the
evidence contained in the [prior judicial] Opinion, however, might have
colored the jurors’ evaluation and led them to conclude improperly that the
1
Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d
619 (1971).

CIV. NO. 13-1360(PG)

Page 4

evidence was insufficient to show probable cause because the same evidence was
insufficient to withstand a motion for judgment of acquittal.” Id. at 144. The
court thus concluded that even a “cautionary instruction would not overcome
the unfair prejudice of admitting the prior judicial opinion because of both
the nature of the evidence and its judicial source.” Id. at 145.
“Rule 403 ‘requires the trial court to exclude the evidence if its
probative

value

is

substantially

outweighed

by

‘the

danger

of

unfair

prejudice.’” United States v. Peake, 804 F.3d 81, 96 (1st Cir. 2015) (citing
United States v. Varoudakis, 233 F.3d 113, 121 (1st Cir.2000)). “[T]he
district court has wide discretion in steadying the Rule 403 seesaw.” Lund v.
Henderson, 807 F.3d 6, 11 (1st Cir. 2015) (citing

Onujiogu v. United States,

817 F.2d 3, 6 (1st Cir.1987)). “This ‘balancing act … is a quintessentially
fact-sensitive enterprise’ which the district court is in the best position
to make.” United States v. Soto, 799 F.3d 68, 91 (1st Cir.2015) (citing United
States v. Joubert, 778 F.3d 247, 255 (1st Cir.2015)).
Persuaded by our sister court in Moore given the similar factual
circumstances under which its decision was reached, we hereby GRANT the codefendants’ motion in limine and take judicial notice of the PRSC’s sentence
for the limited purpose of establishing that the criminal proceedings against
the Plaintiff eventually resulted in his acquittal. However, the court finds
it would be improperly prejudicial to provide a copy to or read it before the
jury for the same reasons stated in Moore.
B. Cruz-Velez’s employee record with the PRPD
The defendants also seek to preclude the Plaintiff from using CruzVelez’s file as an employee of the PRPD during the jury trial. They contend
that it constitutes impermissible character evidence under Federal Rule of
Evidence 404(b). See Docket No. 162 at pages 6-9. In response, the Plaintiff
argued it may only use it for impeachment purposes, not to establish evidence
of her character or a particular character trait.
Rule 404(b)(1) states that “[e]vidence of a crime, wrong, or other act
is not admissible to prove a person’s character in order to show that on a
particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character.” Fed.
R. Evid. 404(b)(1). Nevertheless, “[t]his evidence may be admissible for
another purpose, such as proving motive, opportunity, intent, preparation,
plan, knowledge, identity, absence of mistake, or lack of accident.” Fed. R.
Evid. 404(b)(2). “By its very terms, Rule 404(b) prohibits the admission of
a prior bad act to prove the character of a person in order to show conformity

CIV. NO. 13-1360(PG)

Page 5

therewith.” United States v. Bayard, 642 F.3d 59, 62 (1st Cir. 2011)
(citations and quotation marks omitted). “But, past bad acts which are also
relevant

in

any

other

way

which

does

not

involve

character

are

not

automatically excluded from evidence and will be admitted unless substantially
outweighed by the risks of prejudice, confusion or waste of time.” United
States v. Mateos-Sanchez, 864 F.2d 232, 235 (1st Cir. 1988).
While evidence may be deemed inadmissible on that basis, the court must
be

mindful

of

Rule

cross-examination

404’s

only,

interplay

inquiry

into

with

Rule

specific

608,

which

instances

of

allows,

on

conduct

if

“probative of truthfulness or untruthfulness.” United States v. Cudlitz, 72
F.3d 992, 996 (1st Cir. 1996) (citing Fed. R. Evid. Rule 608(b)). In addition,
impeachment by contradiction may be a legitimate basis to justify a certain
line of questioning under limited circumstances. See id. (citing United States
v. Perez–Perez, 72 F.3d 224, 227 (1st Cir.1995)).
As part of the test to determine if evidence of prior bad acts should be
admitted during the trial of a case, “the trial court must perform a Rule 403
balancing test to determine whether the probative value of the evidence
substantially outweighs the danger of unfair prejudice.” United States v.
Paniagua-Ramos, 182 F.R.D. 376, 377 (D.P.R. 1998) (citing United States v.
Trenkler, 61 F.3d 45, 52 (1st Cir.1995); United States v. Aguilar–Aranceta,
58 F.3d 796, 798 (1st Cir.1995); United States v. Lynn, 856 F.2d 430, 434 (1st
Cir.1988)). At this time, however, the court is unable to exercise our
discretion in that respect as we are not privy to the content of Cruz-Velez’s
record with the PRPD, nor can we anticipate the content of her testimony at
trial. As a result, the controversy is not ripe for adjudication and, if
necessary, the court will revisit the matter of whether these records are
admissible during the course of the trial keeping the foregoing discussion in
mind. The defendants’ request is thus HELD IN ABEYANCE.
III. CONCLUSION
For the reasons stated above, the co-defendants’ motion in limine (Docket
No. 162) is GRANTED IN PART.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
In San Juan, Puerto Rico, July 8, 2016.
S/ JUAN M. PEREZ-GIMENEZ
JUAN M. PEREZ-GIMENEZ
SENIOR U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE