Opinion ID: 202348
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Misstatement of defendant's testimony about his brother's phone call

Text: 36 In his closing argument, the prosecutor implied that the jury should be skeptical of the defendant's testimony about his phone conversation with his brother Nickoyan the night Nickoyan was arrested. The prosecutor noted that, in the middle of the night on October 5th, the most urgent call you could possibly imagine, three o' clock in the morning he calls him, `The police are surrounding my building. What should I do?' He testifies that — you know, they didn't really talk about that. They went on to other, I guess, more pressing things. The defendant argues that the prosecutor misstated his testimony about his brother's phone call. Wallace argues that he testified that he had no idea where his brother called from and that he refused to adopt the prosecutor's characterization of the conversation as one in which his brother said there were cops surrounding his building. 37 We find no error here. The record demonstrates that when asked what he spoke to his brother about, if not Nickoyan's impending arrest, Wallace stated I can't recall. I mean, what I remember it was very brief. Wallace stated that he remembered Nickoyan telling him that he (Nickoyan) was in trouble, but Wallace asserted that Nickoyan did not tell him the nature of this trouble, or, as far as Wallace could remember, anything about the police surrounding the building. Thus, the prosecution's characterization of Wallace's testimony was not plainly erroneous. 38 d. Reference to the TEC-9 recovered from the apartment as the TEC-9 possessed by the second man in the robbery 39 The defendant argues that the prosecutor erred by repeatedly referring to the TEC-9 admitted into evidence (taken from the 181 Pleasant Street apartment) as the TEC-9 used in the robbery. He argues that the gun in evidence had no particular characteristics to distinguish it from any other TEC-9 and could not be connected by the prosecution to the TEC-9 used in the robbery. 40 We find no error here, plain or otherwise. There was ample evidence to support the government's argument that the TEC-9 recovered from the apartment was the same TEC-9 used in the robbery. DiBiasio, a firearms dealer with 40 years of experience, testified that the gun pointed at his face was a particular vintage of the TEC-9 semi-automatic and that it matched the gun recovered from the apartment. In addition, the TEC-9 recovered from the apartment was found there with five of the six stolen handguns from the robbery. This evidence is enough to support the government's argument. 4