Page 80 - TPA Police Officers Guide 2021

ment needs to tell counsel.”

The case proceeded to a four-day jury trial. At trial, law enforcement officers testified about their investigation into
Cruz-Ortiz’s suspected methamphetamine distribution and their surveillance of Cruz-Ortiz and Jones. This testi-
mony included multiple references to tips and other information received from the confidential informant. Jones
objected to this testimony on hearsay grounds. The district court sustained some objections, but determined that
other references to the confidential informant were admissible to explain the officers’ actions rather than for the
truth of the matter asserted in the statements.

Over Jones’s continued objection, the district court also admitted evidence of Jones’s prior judgment of convic-
tion. The district court instructed the jury that it could not consider the prior conviction as proof of the crimes
charged, except as to the charge for being a felon in possession of a firearm. The district court further instructed
the jury that, if it found beyond a reasonable doubt from other evidence that Jones committed the acts charged in
the indictment, it could consider evidence of similar acts allegedly committed on other occasions to determine in-
tent, motive, opportunity, plan, or absence of mistake.
The district court denied Jones’s motion for a judgment of acquittal, and the jury found Jones guilty on all four
counts. The district court later denied a post-trial motion for judgment of acquittal or, alternatively, a new trial. Jones
was sentenced to a total of 300 months’ imprisonment, the mandatory minimum for his offenses. At the same sen-
tencing hearing, the district court found that Jones violated his supervised release on the 2010 federal conviction
because of his new criminal conviction in this case. The district court sentenced Jones to 18 months’ imprisonment
on the revocation, to run consecutively to his 300 month term.

Jones now appeals his convictions and the revocation of his supervised release. He argues that (1) the district court
erred by admitting evidence of his prior conviction, (2) testimony regarding the confidential informant violated his
rights under the Confrontation Clause, (3) the district court erred by not ordering disclosure of the identity of the
confidential informant, and (4) the evidence was insufficient to support the jury’s verdict on any of the four counts.
Jones further contends that his revocation judgment must be vacated because it was predicated on an invalid con-
viction. We address each argument in turn.

………

We turn next to Jones’s challenge under the Confrontation Clause. The Sixth Amendment provides a criminal de-
fendant with the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” U.S. Const. Amend. VI. “[T]his bedrock
procedural guarantee” protects against convictions based on out-of-court accusations that the defendant cannot test
“in the crucible of cross-examination.” Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 42, 61 (2004). To satisfy the Con-
frontation Clause, “[t]estimonial statements of witnesses absent from trial” may be “admitted only where the de-
clarant is unavailable, and only where the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine.”

Prior to and during trial, Jones made multiple objections to the government’s use of information from its confi-
dential informant. We focus our Confrontation Clause analysis on the following series of exchanges with Agent
Clayborne. The first occurred on direct examination:
Prosecutor: [B]ased on the information you’d received, Coy Jones had received a large amount of methampheta-
mine?
Defense: Objection. Hearsay.
Prosecutor: I’ll withdraw the question.
The Court: That objection is overruled.
Prosecutor: I’ll withdraw the question, your Honor. The Court: All right.
Prosecutor: Why did you follow Coy Jones as opposed to the other guy?
Agent Clayborne: Well, we knew that Coy Jones had just received a large amount of methamphetamine.
Prosecutor: And once you knew that he had received that methamphetamine, what did you do?
Agent Clayborne: We were coordinating a traffic stop of the vehicle driven by Coy Jones, which is the white truck.

A Peace Officer’s Guide to Texas Law 74 2021 Edition