Opinion ID: 202716
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Missing Surveillance Tape

Text: 7 Ossai first challenges the disallowance of the motion to dismiss the indictment due to the alleged destruction or loss of the store surveillance tape by the government. As noted, store manager April Pena testified (i) that she had forgotten to put a new twenty-four-hour tape in the store's surveillance system at noon on the day of the robbery, and upon entering the office after the robbery she immediately noticed that the orange light on the system was off (indicating that the system was not recording), and (ii) that Captain Roy and she replayed the last fifteen minutes of the tape in the machine, and determined that it contained video of the restaurant only up to noontime on December 29. 8 Ossai does not contend that the missing tape is exculpatory in the sense that it would establish that someone else committed the robbery. Rather, Ossai concedes that the government adduced overwhelming evidence that he committed the robbery. Instead, as he contended at trial, Ossai argues that the government could not charge him under the Hobbs Act, given that both Cassidy and Chick were complicit in the robbery, thus he employed neither actual force [n]or threatened force in taking the money from Chick. See United States v. Skowronski, 968 F.2d 242, 248 (2d Cir.1992). 2 Ossai maintains that Chick, as the shift supervisor, possessed a key to the locked office where the video surveillance equipment was kept, that he could have tampered with the surveillance tapes in order to conceal his and Cassidy's participation in the inside theft, and that the missing tape might have exhibited signs that Chick had stopped or rewound the tape in order to prevent its recordation of the activities in the store at the time of the supposed robbery. 9 A defendant who asserts a due process claim based on the government's failure to preserve evidence must show that the government, in failing to preserve the evidence, (1) acted in bad faith when it destroyed evidence, which (2) possessed an apparent exculpatory value and, which (3) is to some extent irreplaceable. Thus in missing evidence cases, the presence or absence of good or bad faith by the government will be dispositive. United States v. Femia, 9 F.3d 990, 993-94 (1st Cir.1993) (citing California v. Trombetta, 467 U.S. 479, 488-89, 104 S.Ct. 2528, 81 L.Ed.2d 413 (1984)); see United States v. Marshall, 109 F.3d 94, 98 (1st Cir.1997) (noting that defendant bears the burden of proof on a Femia motion). The district court denied the Ossai motion, crediting the testimony by Pena and Captain Roy that Pena had forgotten to insert a new tape in the recorder at noon on December 29, and that they reviewed the date-and-time stamped tape after the robbery and determined that it ceased recording shortly after noon on December 29, some seven hours before the robbery. 10 We review conclusions of law de novo, whereas subsidiary findings of fact ( e.g., whether the police acted in bad faith) are reviewed only for clear error. See United States v. Garza, 435 F.3d 73, 75 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 126 S.Ct. 2313, 164 L.Ed.2d 832 (2006). We will determine that clear error occurred only if, after due regard for the district court's opportunity to assess witness credibility, and after reviewing the evidence as a whole, we are left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been made. See United States v. Zajanckauskas, 441 F.3d 32, 37 (1st Cir.2006). 11 The district court finding that the missing tape was not exculpatory is not clearly erroneous. Pena testified that she kept fifteen numbered video tapes on hand in her office, that she normally (although not always) inserted a new twenty-four-hour tape in the recorder every noontime, and after she had used all fifteen tapes, she would record over them during the ensuing fifteen-day cycle. As the tapes were recording, the equipment superimposed the date and time of the recording on each frame of the footage. Pena was required by her employer to review the recorded tapes at least once a week, primarily to detect theft by employees. 12 As Pena, who had been advised of the robbery, was driving back to the Dunkin Donuts, she was almost certain — but not absolutely sure — that she had forgotten to change the surveillance tape that noon, because she had been extremely busy and short-staffed during the morning shift. When she arrived at her locked office following the robbery, the fact that the orange light on the equipment was off ( viz., an indication that the equipment was not recording) only served to confirm her belief that she had forgotten to change the tape, as did the fact that the tape had rewound itself to the beginning. Pena testified that when a tape reached the end of its twenty-four-hour recording period, the equipment automatically rewound the tape to the beginning. Pena and Captain Roy fast-forwarded the tape to the last fifteen minutes of the recording, reviewed this end-footage, and determined that it was a recording of the store premises at or around noontime on December 29. As concerns who had access to the locked office in her absence, Pena testified that she did not believe that Chick had a key, but she was not sure. 13 If we were to assume, arguendo, the defense theory that Chick and Ossai were coconspirators (a theory later rejected by the jury), and that Chick had both the motive and opportunity to tamper with the surveillance system, there are but three conceivable factual scenarios. First, if Pena did forget to change the tape at noon on December 29, Chick might have entered the locked office after Pena left at 4:45 p.m., checked the recorder, determined that the tape was not running (and thus would not contain any evidence that an armed robbery did not occur at 7:15 p.m. on December 29), and simply left the tape alone. In such circumstances, the tape could not have been exculpatory, since it would contain no evidence of the Chick tampering. 14 Second, Ossai implies that, if Pena's recollection that she did not insert a new surveillance tape at noon was wrong, Chick would have observed the new December 29 tape in its seventh hour of recording, and either (1) stopped the tape before 7:15 p.m.; (2) rewound and erased that portion of the December 29 tape that had recorded the restaurant at the time of the alleged robbery; and/or (3) rewound the tape to the beginning in the hope that Pena would mistake it for the old December 28 tape that had stopped recording at noontime and automatically rewound. Ossai relies on Pena's concession that, after the robbery, she did not review the beginning of the tape in the machine, but only the last fifteen minutes. The defense is correct that the interruptions in the action and the date-and-time stamps would have been evidence of possible tampering, but this is precisely why it seems unlikely that Chick, not knowing ahead of time which sections of the tape the police eventually would choose to review, would have hazarded this approach. 15 We know for a fact, in any event, that Chick took none of these actions. Pena fast-forwarded the tape to the last fifteen minutes of the recording, reviewed this footage, and confirmed that it was a recording of the store just before or around noontime on the 29th. If, however, Chick had stopped, erased and/or rewound the December 29 tape, as posited by the defense, the last fifteen minutes of that tape would have been a recording of a different morning shift on or about December 14, 2004, since the last time that tape had been used was some fifteen days before the robbery, and only seven hours at the beginning of the December 14 tape would have been recorded over by the time of the robbery. 16 Had Pena changed the tape at noon on December 29, Chick might have observed the tape in the process of recording, rewound it, and replaced it with the December 28 tape to make it appear that Pena had not changed the tape at noon. If that occurred, however, it would not be the missing tape which was exculpatory, but the December 29 tape which Chick removed from the machine, a tape that Pena likely would have recorded over at a later date without any knowledge that it contained a recording of the restaurant at 7:15 p.m. on December 29. 17 Given the elaborateness of the tampering theory advanced by the defense, Ossai failed not only to carry the burden to prove that the missing tape was in fact exculpatory, but that the police would have found its exculpatory value readily apparent. See Femia, 9 F.3d at 993-94; see also United States v. Colon Osorio, 360 F.3d 48, 51 (1st Cir.2004) (noting that an appellate court may affirm a district court judgment on any ground apparent in the appellate record). Although Pena testified that she gave the tape to Captain Roy, Roy testified that he did not take it into custody, largely because his and Pena's review of the tape had convinced Roy that it had failed to record the robbery and therefore was not relevant evidence. Roy's testimony is plausible inasmuch as law enforcement officers do not normally collect evidence they deem immaterial to the offense under investigation. Further, while the defense subsequently developed the theory that Chick was complicit in the offense, Ossai cannot demonstrate that the police lost or destroyed the tape at a time when they reasonably would have foreseen its relevance to the defense theory. To assume such prescience on the part of the police officers would necessitate that they had reason to suspect that Chick was a coconspirator in the fake robbery. 18 For these reasons, we agree with the district court that the tampering theory advanced by the defense is unavailing. Garza, 435 F.3d at 75.