## Facts

- Deon Love was federally charged with (1) being a felon and drug user in possession of a firearm and (2) selling a stolen firearm.
- A jury acquitted Love of selling a stolen firearm but convicted him of the possession offense; it was undisputed he had a prior felony conviction.
- The government’s possession theory depended primarily on testimony about events on or around April 27, 2001.
- William Craig Thomas was the only witness who testified that he personally saw Love with firearms, describing a “rifle” or “shotgun” and a “little revolver,” and stating Love offered to sell them because he could not legally possess them.
- Love sought to cross-examine Thomas about documented short- and long-term memory impairment and a mental disability, arguing the evidence bore on Thomas’s ability to accurately recall and recount events more than a year later.
- The district court sustained the government’s objection and barred inquiry into Thomas’s mental disability and memory impairment.
- Love was sentenced to 120 months’ imprisonment and appealed, arguing the restrictions on cross-examination violated the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause (with emphasis on Thomas’s memory impairment).

## Issues

1. Whether barring cross-examination of the government’s key eyewitness regarding documented memory impairment probatively related to the events at issue violated the Sixth Amendment right to confrontation.
2. If a Confrontation Clause violation occurred, whether the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

## Decision

- The Eighth Circuit reversed the conviction and remanded for a new trial.
- The court held the district court violated the Confrontation Clause by completely prohibiting cross-examination about Thomas’s memory impairment.
- The court held the error was not harmless because the excluded impeachment could have led the jury to view Thomas’s credibility materially differently.

## Legal Principles

- The Sixth Amendment guarantees an opportunity for effective cross-examination, though trial courts have wide latitude to impose reasonable limits for concerns such as prejudice, confusion, harassment, safety, repetition, or marginal relevance.
- A Confrontation Clause violation is established when a defendant shows a reasonable jury might have received a significantly different impression of a witness’s credibility had the proposed cross-examination been permitted.
- A defendant may impeach with competent, relevant evidence of a witness’s mental defect or treatment at a time probatively related to the testimony when it shows impairment in the ability to perceive, remember, or correctly relate facts.
- Complete exclusion of impeachment bearing directly on the credibility of a crucial adverse witness exceeds permissible limits on cross-examination.

## Conclusion

Because the government’s only direct evidence of Love’s firearm possession came from Thomas, and Thomas’s documented memory impairment bore directly on his ability to accurately recall the central events, the categorical bar on that line of cross-examination violated the Confrontation Clause and required reversal and a new trial.


United States v. Love, 329 F.3d 981 (8th Cir. 2003)