Source: http://www.nyfederalcriminalpractice.com/jury-other/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 11:57:29+00:00

Document:
[The use of officer-expert evidence] must be limited to those issues where sociological knowledge is appropriate. An increasingly thinning line separates the legitimate use of an officer expert to translate esoteric terminology or to explicate an organization's hierarchical structure from the illegitimate and impermissible substitution of expert opinion for factual evidence. If the officer expert strays beyond the bounds of appropriately "expert" matters, that officer becomes, rather than a sociologist describing the inner workings of a closed community, a chronicler of the recent past whose pronouncements on elements of the charged offense serve as shortcuts to proving guilt . . .
The Government cannot satisfy its burden of proof by taking the easy route of calling an "expert" whose expertise happens to be the defendant.
Mejia and his co-defendants were charged with various violent acts that supported the notorious MS-13 gang. At trial, the government presented the testimony of Hector Alicea, a police officer, as an expert witness on MS-13's background, "its history, its presence on Long Island, and its national and international presence; about the gang's colors, hand signs, graffiti use, naming practices, and tattoos; and about its local subunit structure, leadership structure, division of responsibilities, and membership rules." In addition, Alicea testified to more specific details about MS-13's operations: how they traveled to other states, their attendance at organizational meetings and how they spent money on guns and narcotics. He also summarized specifics of the investigation, including firarms and ammunition seizures, arrest for narcotics trafficking, and the numbers of murders MS-13 had allegedly committed on Long Island between June 2000 and the trial. The defendants were convicted on all counts.
Alicea testified about facts that were "well within the grasp of the average juror" – such as statistics from the investigation of this case about actual firearms seizures, arrests for narcotics trafficking, and commission of murders. "No expertise is required to understand any of these facts." In effect acting as a "case-agent," " [t]hose parts of [Alicea's] testimony that involved purely factual matters, as well as those in which [he] simply summarized the results of the Task Force investigation, fell far beyond the proper bounds of expert testimony."
Some of Alicea's testimony involved "merely repeating information he had read or heard – information he learned from witnesses through custodial interrogations, newspaper articles, police reports, and tape recordings:" While experts may rely on hearsay evidence and "analyze" or "synthesize" this evidence, "[t]he expert may not, however, simply transmit that hearsay to the jury."
Alicea’s testimony improperly communicated out-of-court testimonial statements of cooperating witnesses and confidential informants under the guise of expert testimony, in violation of the Confrontation Clause and the Supreme Court's holding in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004). Significantly, the Court went on to point out that since Alicea clearly communicated one fact to the jury that he had learned from a co-conspirator's proffer statements (a very specific fact regarding MS-13’s tax policies), "[t]his impugn[ed] the legitimacy of all of his testimony and strongly suggests that Alicea was 'simply summarizing an investigation by others that was not part of the record,' and presenting it 'in the guise of an expert opinion.'"
This case highlights how cavalier the government has become in presenting officer-expert testimony, to the extent that it, in this case, the government back-doored a co-conspirator's proffer statements through the so-called "expert." The case is an important reminder of the importance of exploring the basis for this testimony (as the defense lawyers did so impressively here) and objecting to it, while simultaneously providing terrific ammunition in ensuring that that objection is heard. Practitioners should be especially wary of prosecutors' efforts to end-run the holding in this case, by getting their "expert-officer" to present all his/her improper facts via some bogus "synthesizing" questions.
A prospective juror who says he’s a political science professor, albeit also a lawyer who has not practiced for the last six years, sounds like a good defense gamble. After all, liberal professors outnumber conservatives in the social sciences by 11 to 1. On the other hand, if you throw in that that same individual “received a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, a master’s degree from Harvard University, a law degree from Harvard, taught at the University of Michigan law School, was a litigator at two New York City law firms, and served for seven years as general counsel to two New York City agencies and as acting commissioner of homeless services,” one might think again about having such a smart, worldly person on the jury, since people with these kinds of credentials can wield disproportionate influence in the jury room. It’s great if that influence operates in your favor, but can erase the possibility of a hung verdict if it does not.
In United States v. Bangiyev, 07-cr-331 (NG), 2008 WL 4240005 (E.D.N.Y. September 12, 2008), the presence of such a juror in a counterfeiting trial spawned a Rule 33 motion for a new trial on the grounds that the juror’s failure to reveal his legal work history was materially dishonest. Had it known the truth, the defense contended it would have struck the juror for cause, or exercised a peremptory challenge. A peculiar wrinkle in the case involved a post-verdict encounter between the judge and two jurors, who asked to speak to her about an aspect of their decision. Judge Gershon declined to speak to them. The defense – creatively – suggested that this was evidence that the jury had been “coerced and improperly influenced” by the deceptive professor/litigator.
Judge Gershon denied the motion for a new trial, holding first that the juror had not been dishonest – she had only asked the jurors in voir dire about employment with a law enforcement agency, which she found did not encompass the juror’s employment in the New York City Law Department. Moreover, even if the juror had misled the court, there was no evidence that he had harbored any bias against the defendant to sustain a cause challenge, and the defense had forfeited its right to make an informed peremptory challenge by failing to ask additional questions about his employment history.
Most interesting in the decision are the court’s comments on the defendant’s claim that the juror improperly used his experience and learning to influence the others. Dismissing the claim as pure speculation, Judge Gershon added that, in any event, “personal experiences are permissible influences on jury deliberations.” Rather, what is prohibited is the introduction of additional extra-record facts about the defendant. She quoted Judge Friendly: “while the jury may leaven its deliberations with its wisdom and experience, in doing so it must not bring extra facts into the jury room. In every criminal case we must endeavor to see that jurors do not [consider] in the confines of the jury room ...specific facts about the specific defendant then on trial” (emphasis in the original).
As an agent points out in United States v. Graziano, 07-cr-508 (JFB), 2008 WL 789886 (E.D.N.Y. March 20, 2008), computers can be repositories of one’s most private, even subconscious, thoughts. Asked why he examined Internet history files when searching a defendant’s computer for gambling records, he explained they “help[ ] to give you what the user was thinking about . . . at this particular time.” As a result, the agent uncovered and tagged an AOL search entitled “Arson RICO laws,” ostensibly for use in the gambling investigation, because RICO is “a federal statute that is used to prosecute illegal gambling offenses.” In the end, however, it became key evidence in a parallel investigation that led to an indictment charging the defendant with arson of a competitor’s business.
But computers can contain warehouse loads of documents, including the equivalent of boxes of photographs, personal e-mails and Internet search histories. It is hard to see how any of this information could yield the specific documents sought in this search warrant: “records of bets, accounts and transactions, including betting slips, made in the course of illegal bookmaking activity.” Thus, where is the prejudice from precluding law enforcement in advance from searching those files (and denying the agents an opportunity to turn the computer search into a general fishing expedition)?
The court found that the bookmarking of the “arson RICO laws” search, once it had been uncovered, was reasonable given the agent’s credible testimony that he saved the evidence because gambling is prosecuted under the federal RICO statute (though, perhaps more plausibly, the evidence comes under the “plain view” exception to the warrant requirement).
The more critical issue is whether it was reasonable for the agent to search records containing Internet search histories at all (such files are listed with the designation “htm” or “html,” and are thus readily identifiable to the examiner in advance as Internet search history files). The district court credited the agent’s “reasonable belief that evidence related to an illegal gambling operation might be contained in AOL search records.” That may be true (searches for sports scores, etc.), but, as noted above, the search warrant here did not authorize a search for all documents related to an illegal gambling operation. Rather, it specified particular gambling-related records that may be searched for and seized, documents that would not be contained in files with Internet search histories.
The court does not address how Internet search records could reasonably be related to or produce the specific gambling records at issue. (The case also does not address another interesting issue – raised by Judge Weinstein in United States v. Polizzi, 2008 WL 1886006 (E.D.N.Y. April 1, 2008) – that is, whether the searched files could have been independently obtained from AOL itself, as some courts have held that an Internet user can have no expectation of privacy in their Internet search histories).
6/22/08 Update Richard Willstatter adds this comment on Graziano's preclusion of cross-examination regarding the mandatory minimum sentences faced by the cooperating witness: While Judge Bianco permitted some cross concerning potential sentences faced by the cooperating witnesses, the harsh mandatory minimum is at the heart of the witness's motive to curry favor with the government. Judge Bianco cites the Second Circuit's decision in United States v. Rosa, 11 F.3d 315 (2d Cir.1993), where the Court held that it was well within the trial judge's discretion to limit cross-examination on the "the vagaries of the sentencing guidelines." There is, however, nothing vague about mandatory minimums, and therefore, Rosa does not dictate the result the court reached in Graziano. In fact, Second Circuit precedent dictates the opposite conclusion. See United States v. Roldan-Zapata, 916 F.2d 795, 806 (2d Cir. 1990) (holding that cross-examination is not improperly curtailed if the jury is in possession of facts sufficient to make a discriminating appraisal of a witness's credibility); Cotto v. Herbert, 331 F.3d 217, 248-249 (2d Cir. 2003)("The Confrontation Clause is violated when a defendant is 'prohibited from engaging in otherwise appropriate cross-examination designed . . . to expose to the jury the facts from which jurors . . . could appropriately draw inferences relating to the reliability of the witness'") (quoting Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 680 (1986)); Howard v. Walker, 406 F.3d 114 (2d Cir. 2005)("while the right to cross-examination is not absolute, it is effectively denied when a defendant is prohibited from 'exposing to the jury the facts from which jurors, as the sole triers of fact and credibility, could appropriately draw inferences relating to the reliability of the witness'") (quoting Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 318 (1974)). If a defendant is prevented from exposing crucial facts that implicate the witness' reliability, he "states a violation of the Confrontation Clause." Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. at 680.

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