Opinion ID: 779999
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Parker's False Exculpatory Statements

Text: 40 Finally, the Government argues that Parker's false statements to the police following the shooting demonstrated consciousness of guilt. See United States v. Gordon, 987 F.2d 902, 907 (2d Cir.1993) (finding that circumstantial evidence may include acts that exhibit a consciousness of guilt, such as false exculpatory statements). Several months after the murder, while being interrogated by Buffalo police, Parker, who was a target of a narcotics investigation, gave a sworn statement that he did not know Lewis, that he was not at the corner of Fillmore and Girard on January 13, 1997, that he had not been to that intersection for approximately one year, and that he had learned of Lewis's shooting the day after it had occurred. The testimony of several trial witnesses contradicted these statements, and the jury presumably concluded that Parker lied to the police. 41 Although false exculpatory statements to law enforcement officials may be circumstantial evidence of consciousness of guilt and may strengthen inferences supplied by other pieces of evidence, they do not alone prove guilt. United States v. Samaria, 239 F.3d 228, 236 (2d Cir.2001); United States v. Johnson, 513 F.2d 819, 824 (2d Cir.1975); see also United States v. Nusraty, 867 F.2d 759, 765 (2d Cir.1989) (holding that defendant's false exculpatory statement was insufficient to support his conviction where other evidence was weak and circumstantial). As we explained in Johnson, 42 falsehoods told by a defendant in the hope of extricating himself from suspicious circumstances are insufficient proof on which to convict where other evidence of guilt is weak and the evidence before the court is as hospitable to an interpretation consistent with the defendant's innocence as it is to the Government's theory of guilt. 43 513 F.2d at 824; accord Nusraty, 867 F.2d at 765. 44 In effect, Parker was not willing to admit to the police that he (1) consorted with Lewis, a known drug dealer, (2) frequented a high-traffic drug marketplace on January 13, 1997, and (3) had been frequenting that marketplace for approximately one year. Although Parker's false exculpatory statements — especially his statement that he had not learned of Lewis's death until the day after the shooting — unquestionably are probative, their evidentiary value is not, in the context of the remainder of the Government's case, sufficiently weighty to carry it over the threshold of reasonable doubt. 45