Opinion ID: 2804139
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Russian Stereotype Testimony

Text: Kolodesh argues that the government committed prosecutorial misconduct by repeatedly eliciting testimony from witnesses that Russians “game the system,” which 6 Kolodesh also makes reference to Rules 403 and 404(a) of the Federal Rules of Evidence. Any argument based on improper character evidence under Rule 404(a) is waived due to the cursory nature of the reference to it in the brief. See United States v. Hoffecker, 530 F.3d 137, 162 (3d Cir. 2008) (noting parenthetically that “[a]n issue is waived unless a party raises it in its opening brief, and for those purposes a passing reference to an issue will not suffice to bring that issue before this court”); see also Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(8). Kolodesh’s Rule 403 argument – that the inflammatory nature of the single instance of profanity rendered the comment unfairly prejudicial – fails, particularly in light of its probative value. Cf. United States v. Pirani, 406 F.3d 543, 555 (8th Cir. 2005) (en banc) (concluding that tape recording where defendant was “swearing expressively” was not unfairly prejudicial). 10 testimony the government then used to “assert to the jury that Kolodesh must be guilty because … [he] was born in Russia.”7 (Opening Br. at 37.) He misstates the record. First, the prosecutors did not elicit a majority of the statements of which Kolodesh complains; rather, those references to Russians were offered by witnesses without any prompting by the government.8 And statements that arguably were elicited by the prosecutors are relatively innocuous in the context of this case. The nurses at Home Care Hospice 7 Kolodesh was originally from the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, but he casts his argument on appeal broadly to include not only “Russian ethnic stereotypes” but also stereotypes about “native Russians,” “Russian speakers,” and, more generically, the “Russian community” in the United States, with which Kolodesh was identified at trial. (Opening Br. at 37, 38.) 8 For example, one of the prosecutors engaged in the following exchange with Pugman: Q Are you familiar with the concept of a continuous care schedule? A Yes. Q What is that? A So, if Irina as coordinator on Russian team would come to me and by that time, let’s say, in the year 2007-2008, especially nurses on the Russian team, they loved continuous care. Continuous care meant a lot of money, of course, some work in terms of documenting, but then getting paid for this. (App. at 1016-17.) 11 were divided into a “Russian team” and an “English team,” with each team focusing on patients who spoke those respective languages. (App. at 956-58.) When asked which team was involved with most of the fraudulent claims, Pugman stated matter-of-factly that it was the Russian team, without elaborating on the reasons. When Ganetsky was asked whether any nurses refused to participate in the fraud, she responded, “None of the Russian nurses had a problem with fabricating charts.” (App. at 2531.) But she immediately followed with the statement that, “[o]n the English team, there was a nurse who refused to participate,” making it clear that participation in the fraudulent scheme did not break down strictly along ethnic, linguistic, or cultural lines.9 (Id.; see also id. at 1031-32 (Pugman testifying that “a couple of nurses” refused to participate, without specifying which team, and stating by way of illustration that if he approached a nurse on the English team who refused, he would simply approach another nurse on the English team and offer to pay her double to do it).) In another instance cited by Kolodesh, Pugman stated that Kolodesh told him “how the marketing is done in [the] Russian community.” (App. at 963.) When the prosecutor asked for further details, Pugman recounted Kolodesh’s explanation of how he would provide doctors cash kickbacks for referrals. Yet that testimony must be considered in the context of other evidence, such as Pugman’s testimony that both “Russian” and “American” doctors received kickbacks for giving referrals, though the former preferred cash kickbacks while 9 If the fraudulent activity had broken cleanly on such lines, that would be a matter of fact, not bias. That it did not do so simply reduces any force in the argument that there was a risk that the jury would succumb to prejudice. 12 the latter preferred to be placed on the payroll.10 (App. at 1214.) The government did not invoke Russian stereotypes in its opening statement or closing argument to the jury. The only references to ethnicity or language groups came in closing argument and involved a reference to how each group of doctors – Russian speakers and English-only speakers – preferred to receive kickbacks and a reference to a statement by Ganetsky that she believed the co-conspirators would be suspected of fraud because they were Russians. The prosecutor used the latter statement not to prove that Russians were predisposed toward fraudulent activity, but to suggest that Ganetsky, Pugman, and Kolodesh believed that Home Care Hospice was about to come under closer scrutiny, and that their subsequent efforts to discharge large numbers of inappropriate patients indicated knowledge of the fraudulent nature of their actions. Thus, the government did not, as Kolodesh alleges, “broadcast” Russian stereotypes to the jury. (Opening Br. at 40.) Viewed in the context of the evidence presented at trial, the prosecutors’ questions and statements do not constitute misconduct, nor was it plain error for the District Court to permit them.11 10 The final statement Kolodesh cites that was actually elicited by the prosecutors was Kolodesh’s own comment that he is “savvy … like all Russians.” (App. at 1121.) But the context of Kolodesh’s statement indicates that he was referring to why he prefers the cash-basis accounting method to the accrual-basis method; he was not referring to fraudulent activity. 11 Kolodesh further argues that testimony concerning Russians was inappropriate because none of the witnesses 13