## Facts

- A shipment of birds worth more than $100 was sent from Virginia to a pet shop in Somerville, Massachusetts via Delta Airlines and arrived at the Delta air freight terminal at Logan Airport.
- John T. Brown was at the pet shop when a Delta call reported that the bird shipment had arrived; Brown was positioned to hear the message and the clerk’s repeat call to the store owner.
- Later that night, evidence placed Brown at the Delta freight terminal under circumstances consistent with retrieving the shipment.
- The shipment disappeared from the terminal; the government contended Brown and Jerome Proulx obtained the birds by posing as authorized to pick them up.
- Evidence included post-theft conduct and admissions, including testimony that Brown reacted negatively when told the parrot had been turned over to the FBI.
- At trial, Proulx was called by the government but was evasive, hesitant, and incoherent; the district court declared him hostile and permitted leading questions under Federal Rule of Evidence 611(c).
- A jury convicted Brown of theft from an interstate shipment and aiding and abetting, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 659 and 18 U.S.C. § 2.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence was insufficient as a matter of law, requiring acquittal on the theft-from-interstate-shipment and aiding-and-abetting counts.
2. Whether the district court abused its discretion by declaring a government witness hostile and allowing leading questions under Federal Rule of Evidence 611(c).

## Decision

- The court of appeals affirmed the conviction.
- The court held the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the government, permitted a rational jury to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
- The court held the district court acted within its discretion in treating Proulx as hostile and permitting leading questions to develop and clarify his testimony.

## Legal Principles

- In reviewing denial of a motion for judgment of acquittal, an appellate court considers the entire record and reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to the government and asks whether a rational juror could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
- Proof may be wholly circumstantial; jurors may draw legitimate inferences from the evidence.
- Under Federal Rule of Evidence 611(c), leading questions on direct may be permitted when necessary to develop the witness’s testimony, including when the witness is hostile.
- A witness may be deemed hostile based on demonstrated reluctance, evasiveness, confusion, or uncooperative demeanor; the trial judge has broad discretion to control the mode of interrogation.
- Permitting leading questions to a properly designated hostile witness is not, by itself, improper, so long as the court supervises the examination and the defense can cross-examine.

## Conclusion

The First Circuit upheld Brown’s conviction because the circumstantial and testimonial evidence supported the jury’s finding of theft from an interstate shipment, and the trial court permissibly used Rule 611(c) to manage a reluctant witness by allowing leading questions after finding the witness hostile.


United States v. Brown, 603 F.2d 1022 (1st Cir. 1979)