Opinion ID: 2669163
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: United States v. Mejia

Text: The Defendants rely heavily on a case in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, United States v. Mejia, 545 F.3d 179 (2d Cir. 2008). There the officer–expert identified various crimes committed by MS-13 gang members. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the officer–expert’s testimony “impermissibl[y] substitut[ed]” factual evidence by “simply disgorg[ing] [his] factual knowledge to the jury” to “satisfy the elements of the charged offense.” United States v. Mejia, 545 F.3d 179, 191 (2d Cir. 2008). Officer Merino’s testimony differs from the officer’s testimony in Mejia. Unlike the Mejia expert, Officer Merino based his testimony on his accumulation of information from multiple sources, which he then filtered and analyzed based on his TCG expertise. See id. at 197 (noting that testimony “synthesi[zing] . . . various source materials” constituted proper expert testimony); United States v. Johnson, 587 F.3d 625, 636 (4th Cir. 2009) (distinguishing Mejia because the expert witnesses in Johnson were applying their expertise rather than simply passing “along an important testimonial fact . . . learned from a particular interview”). And in testifying about this analysis, Officer Merino described this progression in criminality not in terms of specific crimes (as in Mejia), but in generalities to explain the context in which TCG operated. 17 The Defendants’ reading of Mejia is overly broad. And even if this reading of Mejia were correct, we would be required to apply our own precedents, which have upheld expert testimony similar to Officer Merino’s.