Title: The People v. Nasin Arafet

State: new-york

Issuer: New York Appellate Court

Document:

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This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before
publication in the New York Reports.
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No. 142  
The People &c., 
            Respondent, 
        v. 
Nasin Arafet, 
            Appellant.
Cynthia Feathers, for appellant.
Philip W. Mueller, for respondent.
SMITH, J.:
Defendant, convicted of stealing a trailer containing a
million dollars worth of merchandise, claims that his rights
under People v Molineux (168 NY 264 [1901]) were violated when
evidence of four other criminal incidents was admitted at his
trial.  As to three of the incidents, we hold that there was no
error.  The evidence relating to the fourth incident should not
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have been admitted, but the error was harmless.
I
The trailer that defendant was charged with stealing
disappeared from a parking lot in Rotterdam, New York, near Exit
25A of the New York State Thruway, around 9:30 A.M. on July 26,
2003.  The trailer, emptied of its contents and attached to a
tractor, was found abandoned two days later on a highway in New
Jersey, some 20 miles from where defendant lived.  The evidence
linking defendant to the crime, though entirely circumstantial,
was compelling.  
Records of calls made on defendant's cellular telephone
showed that he traveled northward from his New Jersey home early
on the morning of July 26, arriving before the time of the theft
in the general area where the theft occurred.  They also showed
that, beginning around the time of the theft, defendant traveled
southward, back toward New Jersey.  The fastest route from the
parking lot of Exit 25A to the area of northern New Jersey where
defendant lived and where the trailer was found leaves the
thruway at Exit 15, about 120 miles south of Exit 25A.  Records
of the New York Thruway Authority showed that a Class 5 vehicle -
- a tractor-trailer -- entered through Exit 25A at 9:35 A.M. on
the day of the theft, and left the thruway at Exit 15 an hour and
38 minutes later.  No other tractor-trailer that had entered at
Exit 25A left the thruway at Exit 15 between 10:15 A.M. and 1:30
P.M. on that day.  A toll ticket issued to the one tractor-
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trailer that did travel that route in the hours immediately after
the theft bore defendant's fingerprint. 
In addition, the cell phone records identified the
recipients of calls that defendant made while on his southward
journey.  Three of the calls were to a business at 530 Duncan
Avenue in Jersey City operated by Jose Gotay, who rented several
truck bays there.  A fourth call was to Florida, to a cell phone
belonging to Nelson Quintanilla.  Quintanilla's phone bills
showed that, on July 27, the day after the theft, he began a
journey northward from Florida, arriving in New Jersey on July
28, shortly before the abandoned tractor-trailer was found.  
Of the four uncharged crimes at issue in this case,
three involved the recipients of defendant's phone calls.  Two
were offered by the People to prove that Gotay's truck bays at
530 Duncan Avenue were used as part of a fencing operation. 
Thus, the People proved that cargo stolen from trailers had been
received at Gotay's facility in December 2000, and again in
December 2003 (some five months after the crime with which
defendant was charged); there was no evidence connecting
defendant to either of these two incidents.  The People also
proved that, in 1996, Quintanilla had been defendant's accomplice
in the theft of another trailer.  The fourth uncharged crime did
not involve either Gotay or Quintanilla: The People proved that
defendant had stolen a trailer in April 2000, working with
accomplices not connected by any evidence to this case. 
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Evidence of all four incidents was admitted over
defendant's objection under Molineux.  A jury convicted defendant
of grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, and
the Appellate Division affirmed, with two Justices dissenting. 
An Appellate Division Justice granted leave to appeal, and we now
affirm.   
II
The rule of Molineux is familiar: Evidence of uncharged
crimes is inadmissible where its only purpose is to show bad
character or propensity towards crime (People v Alvino, 71 NY2d
233, 241 [1987]).  The rule, we have explained, "is based on
policy and not on logic" (People v Allweiss, 48 NY2d 40, 46
[1979]).  It may be logical to conclude from a defendant's prior
crimes that he is inclined to act criminally, but such evidence
"is excluded for policy reasons because it may induce the jury to
base a finding of guilt on collateral matters or to convict a
defendant because of his past" (Alvino, 71 NY2d at 241). 
However, "[w]hen evidence of uncharged crimes is relevant to some
issue other than the defendant's criminal disposition, it is
generally held to be admissible on the theory that the probative
value will outweigh the potential prejudice to the accused"
(Allweiss, 48 NY2d at 47).  A commonly used, though non-
exhaustive, list names five so-called Molineux exceptions --
i.e., purposes for which uncharged crimes might be relevant: "to
show (1) intent, (2) motive, (3) knowledge, (4) common scheme or
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plan, or (5) identity of the defendant" (Alvino, 71 NY2d at 241-
242; see also, e.g., People v Ventimiglia, 52 NY2d 350, 359
[1981]; Molineux, 168 NY at 293).  Still, even if technically
relevant for one of these or some other legitimate purpose,
Molineux evidence will not be admitted if it "is actually of
slight value when compared to the possible prejudice to the
accused" (Allweiss, 48 NY2d at 47).  
Applying these principles to this case, we conclude
that the evidence relating to Gotay's fencing operation and to
the crime committed in 1996 by defendant and Quintanilla was
admissible.  Evidence of the crime committed by defendant in
April 2000 was not. 
As to the evidence of Gotay's fencing operation, the
issue is easy: This was not Molineux evidence at all.  The point
of Molineux is to prevent a jury from convicting a defendant
because of his criminal propensity.  Evidence of two criminal
transactions in which defendant was not involved could show
nothing about his propensity.  The evidence was relevant to the
case: It showed that a business defendant called in the hours
immediately after the theft was one where stolen goods could be
disposed of, and it thus supported an inference that defendant at
that moment needed a fence's services.
The evidence of the 1996 crime, however, does present a
Molineux issue, for that crime involved defendant as well as
Quintanilla, and could have led a jury to infer that defendant
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had a propensity for crime.  Still, it was not an abuse of
discretion to admit the evidence (see People v Dorm, 12 NY3d 16,
19 [2009]).  The predicate for its admission was evidence showing
that defendant called Quintanilla shortly after the theft; that
Quintanilla traveled from Florida to New Jersey beginning the
next day; and that Quintanilla arrived in northern New Jersey not
long before the discovery of the stolen trailer, with a tractor
attached, on a highway in the vicinity.  Abandonment of the
tractor-trailer (unless the thief walked away from it) was a task
that required an accomplice with a second vehicle.  The evidence
supported an inference that Quintanilla provided defendant with
the ride he needed.    
We have held that evidence of "a distinctive repetitive
pattern" of criminal conduct may be admitted under Molineux to
show the defendant's identity (Allweiss, 48 NY2d at 48). 
Repeated commission of similar crimes with the same accomplice is
an example of such a pattern (People v Whitley, 14 AD3d 403, 405
[1st Dept 2005]; People v Palmer, 263 AD2d 361 [1st Dept 1999]). 
Because the evidence supported a finding that Quintanilla and
defendant were working together to commit the crime in this case, 
Molineux did not require that the jury be kept ignorant of the
fact that they had worked together on such a transaction before.
There was, however, no valid ground for admitting proof
of the April 2000 incident.  The People acknowledge, in
substance, that the only relevance of that proof was to show that
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defendant was an experienced trailer thief.  This is not, the
People argue, pure propensity evidence because of the nature of
the crime -- a specialized one, that required unusual skills,
knowledge and access to the means of committing it.  But we see
no justification, at least in a case like this, for creating a
"specialized crime" exception to Molineux.  No doubt this crime
is beyond the skills of the average citizen; most people could
not swiftly hook a trailer to a tractor and drive it away.  But
the crime could probably have been committed by any experienced
tractor-trailer driver, and we cannot believe there was no less
prejudicial way to prove that defendant had experience in that
line of work.  This was not a crime "so unique that the mere
proof that the defendant had committed a similar act would be
highly probative of the fact that he committed the one charged"
(People v Condon, 26 NY2d 139, 144 [1970]).  Admitting the
evidence of the April 2000 incident violated the Molineux rule.
III
The outcome of this case thus turns on whether allowing
the jury to learn of defendant's April 2000 crime was harmless
error.  We conclude that it was.  
An error of law may be found harmless where "the proof
of the defendant's guilt, without reference to the error, is
overwhelming" and where there is no "significant probability . .
. that the jury would have acquitted the defendant had it not
been for the error" (People v Crimmins, 36 NY2d 230, 241-242
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[1975]).  Here, though there was no eyewitness to the crime and
defendant did not admit it, the proof can fairly be called
overwhelming.  The key piece of evidence, of course, is
defendant's fingerprint on the toll ticket.
Though the dissent suggests otherwise (dissenting op at
9), we find the proof that the fingerprint was indeed defendant's
to be extremely clear.  A qualified expert testified without
contradiction that he had found "at least fifteen obvious points
of identification in common" between the fingerprint on the toll
card and one known to come from defendant's left index finger. 
It is of no significance that defendant shares one characteristic
-- a "loop" rather than a "whorl" or "arch" demarcation -- with
most of the population; the fifteen points of identification
prove the fingerprints match.  Much of defense counsel's cross
examination of the expert was devoted to demonstrating that
fingerprint analysis is not absolutely infallible; i.e., that
mistakes in fingerprint identification are not unknown to
history.  Nothing in the record gives any ground for serious
doubt about the accuracy of this particular identification.  
The fingerprint, combined with the time of the toll
ticket's issuance, shows that, within minutes of the time the
stolen trailer disappeared, defendant drove a tractor-trailer
onto the New York State Thruway at the exit where the theft
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No. 142
1 There was also testimony from a tollbooth operator that he
remembered seeing, and noticing some unusual features of, a
tractor-trailer that entered at Exit 25A that morning.  Since
this testimony was not precise as to time, did not conclusively
identify the tractor-trailer, and did not identify defendant, it
adds little to our analysis of the facts.
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occurred.1  Thruway Authority records showed that the tractor-
trailer defendant was driving left the thruway at Exit 15, the
exit that led toward the northern New Jersey area where defendant
lived and the trailer was later found.  No other tractor-trailer
traveled the same route at approximately the same time.  Before
and shortly after leaving the thruway, defendant placed phone
calls to a fencing operation in northern New Jersey and to a
former accomplice in a trailer theft.  Beginning the next day,
the former accomplice traveled from Florida to northern New
Jersey, arriving there shortly before the trailer and the tractor
hooked to it were found abandoned on a highway.
All these facts were proved by near-irrefutable
evidence and, taken together, they exclude to a virtual certainty
any hypothesis of defendant's innocence.  The idea that he
happened to be pulling a trailer other than the stolen one, at
the same time and over the same route that the stolen trailer
would logically have traveled, while the stolen trailer was for
some reason elsewhere, borders on the fanciful.  The idea that,
at the time of this astonishing coincidence, defendant just 
happened to place phone calls to Gotay's fencing operation (3
times) and to his old accomplice Quintanilla is absurd.
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Nor do we see any likelihood that the jury would have
acquitted defendant if it had not heard the improperly admitted
evidence.  The jury properly had before it all the evidence we
have just recited.  Thus it would have known, without evidence of
defendant's April 2000 crime, not only all the facts pointing to
his commission of the 2003 theft, but also that he stole a
trailer (with Quintanilla) in 1996.  As to both the 1996 and the
April 2000 incidents, the jury was instructed that they were "no
proof whatsoever that he possessed a propensity or disposition to
commit the crimes charged in this indictment or any crime.  It is
not offered for such a purpose and must not be considered by you
for that purpose."  Of course, there can be no absolute certainty
that the jury followed this instruction -- but if it did not, the
prejudicial effect of the evidence that was admitted in error
could not have added much to the effect of the evidence properly
admitted.  There is no significant probability that the result in
this case would have been different if the trial court had, as it
should, excluded the evidence of defendant's April 2000 theft.
Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division should
be affirmed.
*  It is true, as the majority holds, that there is no
unique or specialized crime exception under Molineux providing
for the admission of evidence of a prior complex crime to prove
the identity of a defendant for the crime charged.  If that were
so, a jury would naturally infer that the defendant was guilty of
the instant crime based solely upon propensity, and the ensuing
prejudice would be almost insurmountable. 
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People v Arafet (Nasin)
No. 142
CIPARICK, J. (dissenting):
Because the majority resorts to an improper application
of the harmless error doctrine where County Court committed a
flagrant Molineux violation in allowing highly prejudicial
evidence as to defendant's prior federal felony conviction and a
multitude of other collateral evidence concerning prior
criminality, I respectfully dissent.*  The glaring error of
permitting an FBI special agent to testify at length as to
defendant's prior cargo theft in April 2000 -- a crime of the
very same nature as the charges in this case -- most certainly
impacted the jury to defendant's detriment.  In addition, as this
prosecution rested entirely on circumstantial evidence of less
than compelling force, invocation of harmless error is not
appropriate to avoid the conclusion that defendant was deprived
of a fair trial.         
Furthermore, County Court's admission of several-
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hundred pages of testimony on numerous other collateral matters
is most troubling.  In addition to the Molineux error in allowing
evidence of defendant's prior conviction for cargo theft, the
court allowed evidence as to the underlying facts of defendant's
alleged involvement in an uncharged cargo theft with an
accomplice, one Nelson Quintanilla, in 1996, in yet another
tractor-trailer heist.  These errors were then further compounded
by the admission of testimony from police officers as to the
felony convictions of one Jose Gotay -- a person not charged in
this case -- for receiving stolen cargo in December 2000 and
another such offense in December 2003.  All of these collateral
matters involved similar types of offenses as those with which
defendant here was charged.  
According to the majority, there was a nexus bonding
the events in this case with Gotay's criminal past based upon
phone records showing that calls from one of defendant's cell
phones were made at about the time of the crime to a company
where Gotay was listed as a contact person, which "supported an
inference that defendant at that moment needed a fence's
services" (see majority op at 5) sufficient to inject evidence of
this third party's crimes into defendant's trial.  As to the
evidence involving Quintanilla, the majority states that "the
evidence supported a finding that Quintanilla and the defendant
were working together to commit the crime in this case" (see
majority op at 6) when he allegedly abandoned the trailer in
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Northern New Jersey.  The majority concludes that the admission
of these bad acts by other persons, where it is alleged that
defendant was merely in contact with them at or about the time of
the commission of the crime, was not unduly prejudicial to
defendant.  I disagree.   
The prejudicial effect that all of this extensive
collateral evidence had is clear: the jury was naturally led to
believe that, because defendant had committed two cargo thefts in
the past and at the time of this alleged crime telephoned a
federally convicted "fence" of stolen goods, he was guilty of the
crimes charged here.  It is remarkable that one-fifth of this
trial record -- spanning several hundred pages of trial testimony
from numerous state and federal law enforcement officers and
dozens of exhibits -- is consumed by collateral matters,
including multiple photographs depicting warehouses, stolen
trucks and stolen goods related to extraneous crimes.  In total,
two FBI agents and three police officers testified as to
uncharged matters and convictions involving cargo thefts and
stolen goods.  Much of the prosecution's summation was then
centered upon these matters. 
Our long history of more than a century of Molineux
jurisprudence guards against the admissibility of a defendant's
prior crimes, except in very limited circumstances, because of
the real danger that such evidence would sway the jury to convict
the defendant based upon prior bad acts and thus deprive the
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accused of the fundamental right to a fair trial (see People v
Molineux, 168 NY 264, 313 [1901]).  To introduce Molineux
evidence, the prosecution must meet its burden of establishing
that the probative value of the proffered material outweighs its
prejudicial effect (see People v Alvino, 71 NY2d 233, 241-242
[1987]).  "Prejudice involves both the nature of the crime, for
the more heinous the uncharged crime, the more likely that jurors
will be swayed by it, and the difficulty faced by the defendant
in seeking to rebut the inference which the uncharged crime [or
prior charged crimes] evidence brings into play" (People v
Robinson, 68 NY2d 541, 549 [1986]).  The reason for this is
obvious: "'it is much easier to believe in the guilt of an
accused person when it is known or suspected that he [or she] has
previously committed a similar crime'" (People v Allweiss, 48
NY2d 40, 48 [1979], quoting People v Molineux, 168 NY at 313). 
Hence, the admission of such collateral evidence must be
subjected to "the most rigid scrutiny" (Molineux, 168 NY at 314). 
  
I agree with the majority's holding that County Court
erred in allowing evidence of defendant's prior federal
conviction, but this error can not be characterized as harmless. 
As the majority notes, the requirements for the Molineux identity
exception were not established as to this past crime. 
Defendant's prior conviction for a cargo theft was not so unique
or peculiar that it involved a signature offense.  As a
prosecution witness explained at the trial, the theft of a
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tractor-trailer is a relatively common type of crime in this
general region.  Further, no witness at this trial could testify
as to how defendant may have stolen this vehicle, much less that
he did so in a peculiar and distinctive manner, thereby
identifying himself as the culprit.  Nor was the collateral
evidence probative of a common scheme or plan because that crime
and the charges here do not strike "'such a concurrence of common
features that the various acts are naturally to be explained as
caused by a general plan of which they are the individual
manifestations'" (People v Fiore, 34 NY2d 81, 85 [1974], quoting
2 Wigmore, Evidence § 304, at 202 [3d ed]).  Moreover, even had
the identity or common scheme or plan exceptions been established
-- which they were not -- the probative value of this collateral
evidence would have been outweighed by its potential for
prejudice. 
As to the evidence of defendant's uncharged cargo theft
with Quintanilla, the majority concludes that this is classic
Molineux identity evidence.  They point out that previously
defendant was accused of acting with several individuals in a
cargo theft, one of whom he allegedly telephoned at the time of
this crime.  This mere alleged similarity, however, is not enough
to meet the strictures of our Molineux jurisprudence.  
  
To establish the identity exception, Molineux demands
that there be evidence of a distinctive crime forming a
uniqueness that necessarily identifies the defendant as its
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culprit, as would a signature.  "A similar modus operandi is not
enough; there must be sufficient uniqueness to identify the
accused as the perpetrator of the charged crime" (Prince,
Richardson on Evidence § 4-514 et seq. [Farrell 11th ed], citing
People v Robinson, 68 NY2d at 548-549; People v Beam, 57 NY2d
241, 251-252 [1982]; People v Allweiss, 48 NY2d at 47-48).  As
Molineux long ago stated, "'the naked similarity of . . . crimes
proves nothing'" (Robinson, 68 NY2d at 549, quoting Molineux, 168
NY at 316). 
Here, this uncharged cargo theft displays neither any
sort of distinctive manner that conclusively identifies defendant
in the allegations in this case, nor a pattern of criminal
behavior.  Rather, this evidence accomplishes nothing more than
telling the jury of defendant's propensity to commit this type of
offense based upon his alleged earlier engagement in a similar
type of crime along with a person he may have telephoned at the
time of this crime.  Unknown are the contents of the telephone
calls made from defendant's cell phone to Quintanilla or evidence
sufficient to substantiate the pure supposition that he was
involved in the planning and execution of this crime.  Thus, the
purported linkage to Quintanilla, upon which extensive collateral
evidence was based, is speculative and tenuous.  Meanwhile, the
potential for prejudice injected into the trial by such extensive
collateral evidence is clear.  As the prosecution argued to the
jury in summation: 
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"Maybe they are friends.  It's good to be
friends with your colleagues.  That doesn't
mean that at times they're not involved in
some wrongdoing, and this -- on this
particular date, the calls surrounding this
July 26, 2003 incident, I submit to you the
evidence is they're up to no good, they're
scheming about stealing this trailer, and
that's what happened . . . This is some
planning to steal the trailer and then the
contents and make money from it."    
It is settled law that when evidence is of slight value when
compared to the possible prejudice to the accused that it must be
excluded (see People v Allweiss, 48 NY2d at 47). 
County Court then added to this prejudicial effect by
allowing evidence of Gotay's convictions related to the receiving
of stolen goods.  The court concluded that Gotay, who remains
uncharged in this case, was going to act as a "fence" for these
goods merely because defendant had telephoned him at the time of
the crime, and that this bare fact was sufficient to put such
explosive evidence before the jury.  Again, there was no evidence
of what the defendant and Gotay may have said in these phone
conversations.  In considering the admissibility of evidence of
prior crimes of third parties as part of the prosecution's case,
though not strictly subject to Molineux, the court must be
mindful of similar dangers, such as instances where prejudice
outweighs probativeness and the danger of the defendant's
propensity to commit the charged crime and his guilt thereof
merely by association with individuals with criminal pasts.    
We have not hesitated to reverse convictions affected
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by admission of evidence of uncharged crimes, where the prejudice
to defendant was much less acute than in this case (see People v
Resek, 3 NY3d 385, 387 [2004] [evidence that police were
monitoring a car based upon a report that it was stolen could
have been dealt with by less prejudicial means, such as
instructing jurors that the defendant's stop of the vehicle and
arrest were lawful]; People v Green, 35 NY2d 437, 442-443 [1974]
[the trial court erred by allowing police testimony that one
month earlier they had attempted to enter defendant's apartment
because of a drug complaint and the error was prejudicial]).  In
the recent case of People v Giles (11 NY3d 495, 500 [2008]), we
held that evidence of prior crimes to show that a metrocard was
stolen was irrelevant, where there was no proof that defendant
committed the prior burglaries, and the resulting prejudice
required reversal of defendant's conviction in the absence of a
limiting instruction by the trial court. 
The majority ascribes no prejudicial effect from
multiple law enforcement agents testifying as to these third
parties' cargo thefts on the basis that this extensive testimony
does not directly relate to defendant's criminal past.  They
state with confidence that the jury did not impute criminal
propensity to defendant from Gotay's convictions.  The jury,
however, would naturally have believed that, because defendant
associated with a person convicted of receiving stolen goods in
the recent past and was in direct communication with him at the
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time of this cargo theft, defendant committed the crimes charged. 
Turning to harmless error, this doctrine is applicable
only if two discrete factors are clear: (1) the quantum and
nature of the evidence against the defendant must be great enough
to excise the error, and (2) the causal effect that the error may
nevertheless have had on the jury must be overcome (see People v
Crimmins, 36 NY2d 230, 240 [1975]).  Put differently, it must be
established that the evidence against the defendant is
overwhelming, such that it is likely that the trial error did not
infect the jury's finding (see id. at 240-242).      
Here, the majority contends that the non-collateral
evidence against defendant was so compelling and overwhelming
that it "exclude[s] to a virtual certainty any hypothesis of
defendant's innocence" (see majority op at 9).  The non-
collateral evidence, however, was neither overwhelming nor
particularly compelling.  The prosecution's fingerprint evidence
taken from a New York State Thruway toll ticket consisted of a
partial, smudged left index fingerprint (allegedly from
defendant) sharing a loop that is common to 70% of the
population.  The prosecution urged that this toll ticket handed
to a toll booth collector on the route that the driver may have
taken was from the only five-axle truck driving that portion of
the highway at around the time of the crime.  The second piece of
evidence was cell-site information showing that calls were made
from one of defendant's cell phones that ostensibly track the
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same route.  There was no testimony from eyewitnesses, DNA
evidence, inculpatory statements by defendant, or any contraband
(cash or merchandise) recovered from defendant or anyone else. 
This evidence was certainly not overwhelming in establishing
defendant's guilt.   
The prejudice to defendant, however, in allowing an FBI
agent to testify as to his prior federal felony conviction, along
with the underlying facts of that crime, and the admission of
another federal agent's testimony regarding the facts from an 
uncharged tractor-trailer offense, is significant.  Allowing the
evidence that defendant contacted a federally convicted "fence"
compounded the prejudicial effect of these errors.  Finally, the
fact that at least one-fifth of this trial was dedicated to
collateral matters casts serious doubts on whether defendant
received a fair trial.  
Nor were the errors in admitting extensive testimony of
extraneous criminal acts cured by the limiting instructions. 
County Court's jury instruction first contains a summary of the
collateral evidence against defendant, merely highlighting this
wrongful evidence to the jury, and then the court told the jury
that they must not view these crimes for propensity but for a
common scheme or plan and as identity evidence.  While the
instruction may have served to highlight the wrongly admitted
evidence, it certainly failed to cure the prejudice to defendant.
 
In conclusion, the admission of evidence regarding
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defendant's prior bad acts and the bad acts of third parties was
highly prejudicial and served to deprive defendant of a fair
trial.  Where the evidence is far from overwhelming, it can not
be said that the result would have been the same if it were
possible to extricate such egregious errors. 
Accordingly, I would reverse defendant's judgment of
conviction and direct a new trial. 
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
Order affirmed.  Opinion by Judge Smith.  Judges Graffeo, Read
and Pigott concur.  Judge Ciparick dissents and votes to reverse
in an opinion in which Chief Judge Lippman and Judge Jones
concur.
Decided October 22, 2009