Opinion ID: 626819
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Whether the Testimony was Relevant to an Issue in Dispute

Text: The only purpose proposed by the government that we can credit at all is that the recognition testimony was relevant to identity. But relevance is not the end of the inquiry: evidence admitted under 404(b) must be relevant to an issue in dispute. LaFlam, 369 F.3d at 156. While the government itself admits that identity was not disputed per se, it contends that Scott's failure to concede identity meant that it was sufficiently in dispute for the recognition testimony to be relevant and admissible. The record belies such an argument, however. Identity was not only not in dispute during the trialit was also clear to the government and to the court that it would not be beforehand. We have held that a formal stipulation removing an issue from a case, while preferable, is not necessary: Whether an issue remains sufficiently in dispute for similar acts evidence to be material and hence admissible, unless the prejudicial effect of the evidence substantially outweighs its probative value, depends not on the form of words used by counsel but on the consequences that the trial court may properly attach to those words. When the Government offers prior act evidence to prove an issue, counsel must express a decision not to dispute that issue with sufficient clarity that the trial court will be justified (a) in sustaining objection to any subsequent cross-examination or jury argument that seeks to raise the issue and (b) in charging the jury that if they find all the other elements established beyond a reasonable doubt, they can resolve the issue against the defendant because it is not disputed. While those consequences can be attached to a formal stipulation that the issue has been conceded, a formal stipulation is not required or necessarily appropriate. United States v. Figueroa, 618 F.2d 934, 942 (2d Cir.1980) (emphasis added) (citation omitted). Here, Scott's counsel did not explicitly concede identity, but he was not required to in order to remove identity from the case. The record indicates that defense counsel attempted to inform the court that he would not be challenging identity at trial, as indeed he did not. Mr. Farber: I guess the question is: How is that properly before this jury that he has had prior police contact? If I raise the issue of identification, or lack of familiarity with his face, clearly I am opening up the door. But if it's a matter of simply the officer The Court: Mr. Farber, we have been through this. The government has the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. They are entitled to have their witnesses' identification supported by the fact that they have seen him before. The defense might well have stipulated to identity if the district court had permitted further discussion. See United States v. Colon, 880 F.2d 650, 659 (2d Cir.1989) ([U]pon consideration of the record and of counsel's argument before us, we believe that [counsel] was endeavoring to remove intent from the case, and that he might well have agreed to an explicit stipulation if the district court had permitted further examination of the issue after the change in defense theory.). That under these circumstances an express stipulation from counsel was not forthcoming is not surprising, especially in light of the court's statements that it did not believe Scott could expect to be portrayed as someone who... is simon-pure. These statements would have led any reasonable defense counsel to believe that the court would not hear a stipulation as to identity even if offered. Even more crucially, defense counsel conceded in his opening statement not only that his client was present, but also that it was, in fact, his client who was engaged in the behavior that led police to believe they had observed a drug sale. Scott's defense was not predicated on the theory that the detectives witnessed a drug sale committed by someone other than Scott. Instead, the defense was that detectives witnessed Scott himself engaged in innocent behavior. This is a crucial difference, and one that we have recognized in our case law in analogous circumstances. See Colon, 880 F.2d at 657 (2d Cir.1989) (Our cases have thus recognized a distinction between defense theories that claim that the defendant did not do the charged act at all, and those that claim that the defendant did the act innocently or mistakenly, with only the latter truly raising a disputed issue of intent.); United States v. Ortiz, 857 F.2d 900, 904 (2d Cir.1988) (Moreover, intent is not placed in issue by a defense that the defendant did not do the charged act at all. When a defendant unequivocally relies on such a defense, evidence of other acts is not admissible for the purpose of proving intent. (internal citations omitted)). In some circumstances the very nature of a defense put forward by the defendant may itself remove an issue from a case. United States v. Tarricone, 996 F.2d 1414, 1421 (2d Cir.1993). This was such a circumstance. By telling the jury that they would come to see how an innocent encounter between Mr. Scott and another individual rose to become this case that you're asked to sit on the jury today, the issue of identity was removed from the case with sufficient clarity so as to meet Figueroa's demands. Ultimately, nothing in the defense case, from opening to close, even remotely raised the issue of identity. The government suggests that appellant might have raised the issue of identity at summation, too late to be rebutted, but such an argument cannot be credited under the facts of this case. If identity was in dispute here, it is hard to imagine the case in which it would not be in dispute. Where the defense has attempted to concede identity pretrial, opened on a theory completely inconsistent with misidentification, and presented a case that went only to the fact of a crime itself and not the identity of the perpetrator, a prosecutor's fear that an inconsistent theory will be advanced at closing cannot justify the admission of highly prejudicial other act evidence. Finally, even if we were to credit the possibility that Scott and his counsel might have, in the end, pulled a fast one, this would only justify the admission of testimony that detectives had seen Scott in the past, not that they had spoken to him repeatedly and at some length. See Lumpkin, 192 F.3d at 287. The government provides no explanation, and we can find none, for why testimony that the detectives recognized him simply from having seen him so many times before would not have sufficed to support their identification. Officers who could testify that they had seen a defendant up to twenty times before would not need to further confirm their ability to identify him by testifying about the number and length of conversations they had had with him, especially where a challenge to identity was so obviously disclaimed by the defense. We see no reason to have admitted the testimony at all, but even accepting that it may have been necessary, it was not necessary to have gone so far. Identity was not in dispute in this case. There was, accordingly, no proper purpose for the recognition testimony.