Trigueras
United States v. Trigueras
Opinion
Lead Opinion
MEMORANDUM *
Defendant-Appellant Efrain Trigueras was convicted by a jury of knowingly and intentionally importing, and attempting to import, more than 100 kilograms of marijuana, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 952 (a). He was sentenced to seventy-eight months’ incarceration and four years’ supervised release. Trigueras now appeals his conviction, claiming that the district court abused its discretion in allowing portions of his trial testimony to be read back to the jury, and that it also erred in not issuing a limiting instruction along with the readback.
Because Trigueras did not object to the readback at trial, we review for plain error only. Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(b); United States v. Kessi, 868 F.2d 1097, 1107 (9th Cir.1989). In light of the “particular facts and circumstances of [this] case,” United States v. Binder, 769 F.2d 595, 600 (9th Cir.1985), overruled in part on other grounds by United States v. Morales, 108 F.3d 1031 (9th Cir.1997), and the other evidence against Trigueras, we cannot conclude that the readback resulted in the jury’s placing undue emphasis on the testimony they reheard — particularly in light of the fact that the testimony was Trigueras’s own.