The Fourth Circuit recently decided United States v. Ramos-Cruz, a case involving an MS-13 member who was convicted of assorted federal crimes, all generally tied to his gang membership and activity. The defendant appealed, inter alia, “the district court’s decision to permit two witnesses to testify against him without revealing their names or other identifying information.” I thought it was an interesting issue, so I looked into it a bit. The two witnesses in question were police officers from El Salvador. The Government sought permission for them “to testify under pseudonyms and without revealing their dates and places of birth and home and work addresses,” arguing that the officers and their families would be endangered if it were known that they had testified. The Government submitted affidavits from the witnesses regarding the danger, and it “disclosed . . . in advance the substance of their proposed testimony,” which concerned MS-13 generally, not the defendant’s conduct specifically. The district court held an ex parte hearing and granted the Government’s motion. It also ruled that there was no Giglio impeachment information for the Government to disclose. On appeal, the defendant argued that the trial court’s “ruling violated his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation, arguing that without the withheld information, he was not able to conduct independent research about the witnesses’ veracity.” The Fourth Circuit agreed that normally, “the Confrontation Clause guarantees a defendant the right to question an adverse witness about identifying information, including his full name and address,” citing Smith v. Illinois, [...]
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