United States v. Anagal

── United States v. Anagal ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Date: April 22, 2026 Category: General NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS APR 22 2026 FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 24-3099 Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. 3:22-cr-08113-DJH v. MEMORANDUM* KENDALL KEVIN ANAGAL, Defendant-Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona Diane J. Humetewa, District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted September 16, 2025 Phoenix, Arizona Before: COLLINS, MENDOZA, and DESAI, Circuit Judges. Defendant-Appellant Kendall Anagal appeals his conviction, after a jury trial, for three counts of aggravated sexual abuse and one count of abusive sexual contact with a minor. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 2241(c), 2244(a)(5); see also id. § 1153 (applying these provisions to “[a]ny Indian who commits” such a crime “within the Indian country”). We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We affirm. I Anagal challenges the district court’s decision to admit the testimony of the Government’s expert, Dr. Wendy Dutton, a forensic psychologist specializing in * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. child sex abuse, under Federal Rules of Evidence 702, 401, 402, and 403. While we generally review a ruling on the admissibility of expert testimony for abuse of discretion, United States v. Velazquez, 125 F.4th 1290, 1293 (9th Cir. 2025), the Government contends that we should review for plain error because Anagal assertedly failed to properly preserve his objection for appeal. We need not decide this issue, however, because under either standard of review, the district court did not err in admitting Dutton’s testimony. Anagal argues that, because Dutton was never required to establish a clear methodology or a “potential rate of error” for her conclusions, the district court erred in qualifying her as an expert concerning certain characteristics of child sexual abuse victims, including delayed disclosure of abuse. But “the law grants a district court . . . broad latitude when it decides how to determine reliability” for purposes of Rule 702’s standards governing expert testimony. Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137, 142 (1999) (emphasis omitted). Dutton made clear that her general conclusions, including that delayed disclosure was “common,” were based on both her review of the relevant literature and the thousands of forensic interviews she had conducted over nearly 40 years working in the field. Kumho makes clear that the specific reliability factors it identifies (such as a “potential rate of error”) “do not constitute a definitive checklist or test” and that the Rule 702 “gatekeeping inquiry must be tied to the particular facts of a particular case.” Id. at 2 150 (simplified). Given the nature of Dutton’s testimony, which sought to describe certain observed phenomena in generalized terms and did not make case-specific judgments or employ precise numerical parameters, the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that Dutton’s testimony was based on sufficiently reliable methods and did not require articulation of a purported error rate. See id. at 153; United States v. Hankey, 203 F.3d 1160, 1169 (9th Cir. 2000). The district court also did not abuse its discretion in concluding that Dutton’s testimony was relevant, see FED. R. EVID. 401