United States v. Domingo Marines, 697 F. App'x 336

Domingo Marines appealed the revocation of his supervised release following allegations he sold and possessed heroin.
At the revocation hearing, the district court admitted written statements from a confidential informant without an explicit on-the-record finding of good cause for denying confrontation; Marines did not object below.
Other evidence at the hearing included a police report, a police officer’s testimony about a controlled heroin purchase, recovery of heroin during search/arrest warrants, and Marines’s post-arrest admission that he sometimes sold heroin to friends.
Marines argued he was denied the right to confront an adverse witness (the confidential informant) and that the Government failed to prove the substances were heroin because no lab report was introduced.
The Fifth Circuit reviewed the confrontation claim for plain error and the sufficiency claim for abuse of discretion, assessing whether a preponderance of the evidence supported revocation.
The Fifth Circuit affirmed: any confrontation error did not affect Marines’s substantial rights given the other evidence, and the evidence (circumstantial evidence permitted) supported that the substances were heroin.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Right to confront adverse witnesses in revocation proceedings	Marines: admission of confidential informant’s written statements denied his confrontation right	Government/District Court: admission occurred; no on-the-record good-cause finding; no contemporaneous objection	Court: Reviewed for plain error; even assuming error, other independent evidence meant Marines couldn’t show substantial-rights prejudice; no reversible error; affirmed
Sufficiency of evidence identifying controlled substance as heroin	Marines: Government needed lab testing/report to prove the substance was heroin	Government: Circumstantial and testimonial evidence (purchase, recovery, officer testimony, defendant’s statement) sufficiently identified the drug	Court: Preponderance of the evidence supported that substances were heroin based on circumstantial evidence; revocation not an abuse of discretion; affirmed

Puckett v. United States, 556 U.S. 129 (plain-error standard for forfeited objections)
United States v. Grandlund, 71 F.3d 507 (5th Cir. 1996) (qualified confrontation right at revocation absent good-cause finding)
United States v. Hughes, [citation="237 F. App'x 980"] (5th Cir. 2007) (confrontation error harmless where other evidence supports revocation)
United States v. McCormick, 54 F.3d 214 (5th Cir. 1995) (standard of review for revocation: preponderance of evidence)
United States v. Osgood, 794 F.2d 1087 (5th Cir. 1986) (circumstantial evidence may identify controlled substances)
United States v. Alaniz-Alaniz, 38 F.3d 788 (5th Cir. 1994) (viewing evidence in light most favorable to the government)