will focus primarily on two issues st the expert testimony john carrillo which is discussed in point one of our brave and secondly the court's exclusion of impeachment evidence that government witness john and the c knocked his girlfriend's teeth  out after learning that mr castello he supposedly had had been dating her time permitting i also want to touch briefly on the very important issue concerning the sufficiency of evidence with regard to the mill fraud conviction regarding a m alleged no show job this court your honor has has repeatedly told the government what it can and cannot do in the context of expert testimony it's perfectly acceptable to introduce evidence concerning structure of organized crime groups or jargon that's used that the average german not understand or describing membership rules like what's not fit the enterprise typically commits the very crimes that the defendant is alleged to have committed on behalf of the enterprise it's not fair game for the expert to bolster the fact testimony of the government's lay witnesses and the government's theory o prosecution and it's not fair game for the expert to rely in part worn whole on hearsay that's gleaned from debriefing cooperating witnesses in violation of the confrontation clause and it's not fair game for the government to argue in summation that the experts testimony corroborate the testimony of it's not an expert witnesses well there's a lot there i guess no one has question but one of the st things that is unfair  activities prostitution that's not fair game i don't think it's fair game when what the government does is when asked whether or not or how made members make money the expert rattles off not at all coincidentally the specific crimes that mr castello he was charged with committed gambling which he said was the backbone of organized crime extortion and no show jobs i don't think that the jury requires an expert to tell multi ton quantities of cocaine and smaller quantities of aaron that would be not proper well st i don't think it would be proper but and in such a case i am certain that the government would have numerous witnesses lay witnesses fact witnesses who would say that i don't think that that the a a lay jury cannot understand without an expert's help and after all in the rule seven o two that's the test whether or not organized crime may be engaged in gambling but it's important to understand that in this case your honor they went far further than that because what they also said what mr carrillo also said was that was that these crimes were essentially enterprise using the term repeatedly enterprises some ten times which even more closely linked their commission to the government's theory of the case here that's not that's not fructify the investigator carrillo also went governor was required to show mung other things was that the alleged racketeering acts were linked or were to were committed in furtherance of the charged enterprise which was the lucchese crime family so so now you have karylle of the so called expert explaining not only that they typically commit the very with but then also showing that there's a link between those crimes and the enterprise itself he went further though  when when asked about when asked about gambling in particular he testified regarding government exhibit four o five which is reproduced the page thirty five of our brief your honor and your honors and you may recall that what that shows  schematic diagram of what the government termed a typical bookmaking operation which put above the bookmaker the organized crime member now surely mr carrillo didn't have to name mr he didn't have to name the lucchese family but quite clearly the implication was there namely that that he was making clear to this jury that it was a true case the crime family and mr castello that was at the top of this  chart if the if the improper purpose of this testimony wasn't already crystal clear here's what the government said on summation at page seven hundred and twenty dollars you remember this chart and mean it meanwhile they're putting up the photos of these people on to the chart your member this short this is the chart that special agent carrillo used to illustrate a typical bookmaking operation this is exactly how it played out here this is exactly how it played out here and then he goes on and on top is the defendant taking his cut threatening people and bossing them around but not doing much else so what the government successfully did was it's expert is precisely by the way what caused the the reversal in united states versus chrystia where what this court says what that was that the government summation relied on expert testimony that drug dealers force buyers at gunpoint to use drugs to conclude defendant possessed the gun during the undercover buy and for a similar reason this court also reverse the conviction in includes would you remind me of something i should remember this but you can among me whether at that point with the photographs whether that was objected to or whether that's your own plane or you know that that particular part of the testimony was not objected to the the court will recall that this issue briefings of some fifty cooperating witnesses he also set in on the debriefing of something the government's witnesses so obviously was privy to it is well i'd like to i'm a skeptic i just very quickly i'll give you some time to get to the other point know and i'm not and i'm not your honor because a pump and dump i believe is that it is a rather complicated rise of security and dumping it in various ways i don't think that the average person understands that i do think that the average person understands however your honor that they are that organized crime they pin fall in gambling or store shit so so you can't just you can't generalize in that matter there are some things that the average sure can understand some things that the average that that mr penny's he was convicted of manslaughter when he killed them his his power more after learning that she supposedly had been unfaithful the nd though your honor was very directly related to this case because he not the teeth out of another girlfriend upon believing or coming to believe that she had slept with mr castello it's it's one thing for defense attorney or the government to be able to elicit from this witness that yes he was very mad but he had gotten over it and harbored no ill will which is what his testimony was in this case so it didn't really matter and then it's another thing entirely for the jury to know that he was so angry at what the two had done what castello and his girlfriend had done that he knocked her teeth out and a reasonable inference from that would have been since been easy would knock his girlfriend's teeth out for sleeping with mr costello goodness knows what he would be doing castello the court reason for excluding the cross his anger at the lady is anger at the lady she's not the witness but that misses the point since the conduct in fact reflected the very depths of police's hatred of got over it it's not affecting me at this point in time where the jury was entitle to assess the truthfulness of that statement against the fact that he was so angry at the time that he knocked his girlfriend's teeth out and easy remember was a key witness in this case  testified on direct over a period of some eighty pages testified to conversations he had with castelli regarding illegal conduct including proposed drug dealing and also obtaining a no show job and of course the no show job was court to to record hearing act a dishonorable employee to an ac d m employee asking to have a walk through on the job to resolve some outstanding issues at absolutely zero to do with castelli he had nothing to do with any of this this is three related gambling racketeering acts but in order to prove the gambling racketeering acts they had to do more than just prove the gambling that was in count one they had to prove that those gambling racketeering acts were comprised a pattern of  racketeering activity and also that that they were related to the lucchese crime family which were greatly debated during the trial this court has said repeatedly as the th circuit has said that in such circumstances the court should not nd guess settlement for the united states i represented the government at trial and on this appeal of focus on the issues that appellant's council focused on st the district court did not care and its evidence sherry ruling admitting expert testimony to lay some groundwork much of castello his argument is targeted towards the general unnecessary nature of expert testimony with respect to organized crime but this court has said time and time again that expert law enforcement testimony about the mafia and its terminology composition and structure and practices is proper expert testimony that's well established it's also well established if that special agent carrillo is qualified as such an expert and his testimony is properly admit this court has said that specifically asked a special agent pirlo several times as have a number of district courts how can i ask you a question that the special agent acted as both an expert witness and a fact witness in this case that's correct i just was wondering it may be perfectly all should courting trouble when you do that i mean is it necessary you can't find another expert witness anywhere that can can do that without confusing perhaps confusing the judge and the ruling as to how to handle that which is to call special agent carrillo twice separated by one of more other witnesses and specially generalists back testimony was very limited it was limited to submitting some surveillance out most clearly the limits on on this testimony in the case the expert witness testified to specific murder and specific travel across state lines that is what i guess what i'm just wondering is it possible that an expert witness is actually involved in this particular investigation right actually be testifying about the particular case but as long as you state that in the right a generality that's what makes it ok case and only on that basis provides an expert opinion about specialized knowledge there are maybe complexities there but in this case especially to carrillo has decades of experience  hundreds of investigations thousands of surveillance is listening to wiretaps to grieving informants which as jeff sullivan noted there's nothing improper about part of an expert's expertise being  specific areas of knowledge to be able to opine on that question simply relaying a fact that a that a single confidential informant or cooperating witness had told the expert and then restating it to the jury without the expert actually adopting it and being able to offer it as an expert fact that he knows to be true could insert certain circumstances be improper channel low rephrase that for the government to offer a whole body of testimony about crimes that are not in issue at the kid in the case could be radically be improper certainly it's not wrong for   the government summation is precisely what attorney argument at the end of the trial is for the expert provided general testimony about how illegal gambling operations typically work and  then the government is free to argument summation that the general practices that have been articulated by the experts were in fact what happened in this case so the defense defense counsel is essentially arguing that the facts of the case were too too accurate too general compared to what the special what the special agent really is testimony what's so so there's nothing improper about you're i think you would look to the experts stated basis for his expertise and for is testimony which can certainly be raised in pretrial motion as it was in this case and the judge can make a determination as to whether what the expert is offering to say is in fact based on specialized knowledge and expertise i think the jury also had the ability to test the reliability of the experts statements against what the expert testified to as the basis of his opinions so special agent carrillo testifying about the career underlying is knowledge in this case  probative components of these two maddux should be admitted as the government conceded and excluded only the most inflammatory and prejudicial components that had little or the conviction and that it was for manslaughter and the judge properly concluded that there was little to no additional probative value with respect to credibility and that it risked inflaming the jury  nd and unrelated act which is the alleged domestic violence right because the manslaughter conviction was from thirty years earlier and did not relate to stelly or the woman in the more recent past so with respect to those domestic violence allegations i do take defense counsel's argument to be that it has to do with the intensity of his buttocks but on that point castelli was allowed to elicit that there was intimate partner and had little to no additional relevance beyond the testimony that was already illicit and he didn't quite articulate it that way well i think i think he did i think he said when he said the anger against the woman his anger against the woman what he was saying is you cannot necessarily infer that an individual who believes he's been cheated on being angry at his intimate partner translates to equivalent or more intense anger at the person who slept with his partner those are those are two different things and on top of that you have the clearly inflammatory nature of the allegation the defense counsels having emphasis in the brief and in argument of knocking this woman's teeth out underscores the inflammatory nature of the test not care in excluding that that allegation of domestic violence and and again that escape conclusion that this court and others routinely uphold with respect to the prejudicial nature of domestic violence i and i think that that probably it would be a good thing for the government to have clarity i think there is clarity but apparently it needs to be reinforced with regard to this just very briefly what with this court said in mahila was it is a little too convenient that the government has found an individual who is expert on precisely those facts that the government must prove to secure a guilty verdict even more so when that expert happens to be one of the government's own investigators karylle of course was one of the government's investigators and the fact concerned the typical commission by organized crime of the very specific crimes with which he was charged and then in cruise this court said we reaffirm here the principle that the credibility of a fact witness may not be bolstered by arguing that the witnesses version of events i consistent with an expert's description of patterns of criminal acts of criminal conduct that's precisely what happened when the government filled in the blanks in the in the chart in in  five with mr castello photo and this court also said in crews that the prosecutor was thus able to argue that the experts testimony about how drug operations are run in this or area is precisely what the facts witnesses described that defendant was doing so over and over again this court has said that the government through its experts may not do precisely what the government did in this case