Opinion ID: 772486
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: July 7, 1997 Inventory Search of Dhinsa's Car

Text: 72 Dhinsa argues that the district court erred by admitting certain evidence discovered during a search of his car conducted after Dhinsa was arrested in connection with Satinderjit's murder. On appeal, Dhinsa asks that we examine the legality of both the warrantless seizure and search of his car, a task we did not undertake in our prior decision, and reverse his convictions for racketeering and mail fraud, the murders of Manmohan and Satinderjit, conspiring to murder Sarvjeet and threatening to murder Balwant. Because we now conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury verdict on these counts would have been the same absent the alleged error, we need not opine on whether the district court erred by admitting the evidence obtained during the July 7, 1997 search of Dhinsa's car. 8 See, e.g., Pluta, 176 F.3d at 51. 73 It is beyond cavil that most constitutional errors occurring during trial may be deemed harmless and, thus, not require automatic reversal of a conviction. See Neder, 527 U.S. at 8; Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 306. Categorized as trial errors, these errors typically arise during the presentation of the case to the jury, Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 307, and are suited for harmless error analysis because such errors can be quantitatively assessed in the context of other evidence presented in order to determine whether [their] admission was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 308; cf. United States v. Feliciano, 223 F.3d 102, 110-11 (2d Cir. 2000) (distinguishing between trial errors and structural errors, which require automatic reversal). Courts have applied harmless error analysis in considering claims that evidence was erroneously admitted at trial. See, e.g., Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 52-53 (1970) (evidence obtained during a search in violation of the Fourth Amendment); United States v. Tubol, 191 F.3d 88, 96 (2d Cir. 1999); Colombo, 909 F.2d at 713-14. 74 In analyzing this class of constitutional errors, we must apply the harmless error standard set forth in Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(a), and must disregar[d] errors that are harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Neder, 527 U.S. at 7 (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, [w]here a reviewing court can find that the record developed at trial establishes guilt beyond a reasonable doubt... the judgment should be affirmed. Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570, 579 (1986). Having determined that evidentiary errors are properly subject to harmless error analysis, we must proceed to the question of whether the admission of the evidence obtained from the search of Dhinsa's car was harmless under the present circumstances. We consider each of Dhinsa's convictions separately for purposes of our harmless error analysis. 9 See Tubol, 191 F.3d at 97.
75 Assuming arguendo that the district court erred in admitting the items discovered during the search of Dhinsa's car, we conclude that such error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt in light of the direct and overwhelming evidence, Moskowitz, 215 F.3d at 270, of Dhinsa's participation in the murders of Manmohan and Satinderjit. We analyze the evidence presented by the government with respect to these murders separately. 76 Numerous witnesses testified that Manmohan was actively investigating his brother Kulwant's disappearance from a Citygas station on or about July 1995. To that end, Manmohan confronted Gulzar and other members of the Singh Enterprise and planned to confront Gulzar and Dhinsa directly concerning their role in Kulwant's disappearance at the time he was murdered. Manmohan's attempts to meet with Gulzar were independently corroborated by telephone records of calls made to Gulzar's beeper from the gas station where Manmohan worked. Thus, a jury reasonably could infer that Manmohan's inquiries posed a threat to Dhinsa, Gulzar and other members of the Singh Enterprise, as well as to the continued operations of the Singh Enterprise. 77 The strongest evidence of Dhinsa's involvement in Manmohan's murder came from the testimony of Dodson and Powell, Dhinsa's co-conspirators in the murder of Manmohan, and the cellular telephone records that established Dhinsa's contact with Dodson and the other hitmen around the time and location of Manmohan's murder. Dodson testified that Dhinsa arranged to meet with him near the gas station where Manmohan worked a few days before Manmohan was murdered. During that meeting, Dhinsa instructed Dodson to kill Manmohan because he was cooperating with the police in a murder investigation involving his brother Gogi. After identifying Manmohan as one of the attendants working at the gas station where they met, Dhinsa told Dodson to check with Gulzar to confirm the victim's identity and directed Dodson to go to a nearby Citygas station to pick up the gun to be used for the murder. At Dhinsa's suggestion that he find someone to assist him in committing the murder, Dodson contacted Powell, a member of the trio of hitmen employed by Dhinsa. Payroll records seized at the Citygas headquarters in Brooklyn, New York a few months later confirm that Dodson was an employee of Citygas at that time, receiving a weekly salary of $700. 78 Powell's testimony and cellular telephone and pager records corroborate Dodson's version of the events surrounding Manmohan's murder. The telephone records establish that Dodson made numerous attempts to contact Dhinsa and Gulzar during the period March 14 through March 16, 1997, the day Manmohan was murdered. These records also indicate that Dodson called Dhinsa and Gulzar within hours after Manmohan was murdered, presumably to inform them of his success. The government also presented evidence that the vehicle driven by Dodson during the murder was registered to a company owned by Dhinsa, and that Dhinsa arranged to have the truck repainted and re-registered following Manmohan's murder. 79 The evidence of Dhinsa's involvement in Satinderjit's murder is equally overwhelming. Numerous witnesses testified that Satinderjit was actively cooperating with police in an investigation of Dhinsa and the Singh Enterprise at the time he was murdered. Uberoi, Satinderjit's girlfriend, testified that Dhinsa contacted her twice, threatening to have her and Satinderjit shot if Satinderjit continued to assist the police in its investigation of Dhinsa. Dodson testified that Dhinsa ordered Satinderjit murdered shortly after the July 1997 police raid of his Citygas offices in Brooklyn, New York. Dodson further testified that Dhinsa drove him to Satinderjit's neighborhood and identified his apartment. A short time later, Dhinsa provided Dodson with a photograph of Satinderjit and a printout of the registration and license plate for Satinderjit's car. An employee of the insurance company testified that she ran the check on Satinderjit's car at the request of Antonio Galvan, an employee of Citygas. 80 Similar to Manmohan's murder, cellular telephone records corroborate Dodson's version of Satinderjit's murder. These records show that Dhinsa made in excess of thirty telephone calls to Dodson in the days and weeks before Satinderjit was murdered and establish a sequence of calls between Dhinsa, Samuels and Powell on June 18, 1997, the day Satinderjit was murdered. The telephone records confirm Dhinsa's presence in calling areas near the location where Satinderjit was murdered. The government also presented testimony from Samuels and Powell, who corroborated Dodson's version of Satinderjit's murder, and from Santokh, an employee at a Citygas station owned by Dhinsa, who testified that Dhinsa directed him to change the license plate on the van used by Dodson during Satinderjit's murder. 81 Viewing the trial record as a whole, we conclude that the items recovered during the search of Dhinsa's car relating to the murders of Manmohan and Satinderjit were at most only cumulative and corroborative evidence of Dhinsa's involvement in these murders. The government presented extensive evidence, including testimony from Dodson, Samuels and Powell, Dhinsa's co-conspirators in the murders, cellular telephone and site records and other documentary evidence, that provid[ed] ample independent basis for [Dhinsa's] convictions. Gallego, 191 F.3d at 169. The items obtained during the search that related to these murders -- a piece of paper bearing Dodson's name and a piece of paper bearing the name of the detective that arrested Dodson and the voucher number of the car Dodson was driving at the time of his arrest -- were only a minor part of the overwhelming evidence presented by the government establishing Dhinsa's guilt for these murders. See Neder, 527 U.S. at 17; Moskowitz, 215 F.3d at 270; United States v. Lyles, 593 F.2d 182, 196 (2d Cir. 1979); cf. Colombo, 909 F.2d at 714 (evidence of defendant's guilt passed the sufficiency of the evidence test by a hair's breadth) (quotation marks omitted). Further, the government did not continuously and repeatedly impress[] [upon] the jury that Dhinsa should be found guilty on the basis of the items obtained during the search of Dhinsa's car. Chapman, 386 U.S. at 25, 26 (holding that a machine-gun repetition of a denial of constitutional rights was not harmless); see also Lyles, 593 F.2d at 196. Rather, the government argued that the jury consider that evidence as corroboration of the testimony of Dhinsa's co-conspirators and the cellular telephone records that clearly established Dhinsa's involvement in the murders of Manmohan and Satinderjit. Thus, even if we were to view the admission of the contents of the July 7 search as erroneous, it is clear beyond a reasonable doubt that the outcome would not have been altered. United States v. Joyner, 201 F.3d 61, 76 (2d Cir. 2000). 10
82 The decision to murder Sarvjeet was the result of Sarvjeet's cooperation with the police in an investigation of a homicide allegedly committed by Gogi in 1991. A few weeks after Gogi was arrested at Dhinsa's Citygas offices in Brooklyn based on Sarvjeet's identification, Gurdial, Dhinsa's cousin and a Citygas employee, rented an apartment directly across from where Sarvjeet lived. Notably, Dhinsa was listed as the guarantor on the lease for that apartment. Numerous witnesses, including the person living in Sarvjeet's home, testified that Dhinsa was actively looking for Sarvjeet around that same time. Further, Samuels and Powell testified that Dhinsa instructed them to kill Sarvjeet, taking them to Sarvjeet's home and directing their escape route following the murder. Samuels and Powell also testified as to the manner in which Dhinsa instructed them to carry out Sarvjeet's murder. 83 Even excluding the piece of paper bearing Sarvjeet's address that was discovered during the search of Dhinsa's car, the evidence of Dhinsa's role in the plot to murder Sarvjeet was overwhelming. Similar to the items relating to the murders of Manmohan and Satinderjit, the piece of paper with Sarvjeet's address merely corroborated the testimony of Samuels and Powell, Dhinsa's co-conspirators in that murder plot, and numerous witnesses that testified regarding Dhinsa's efforts to locate Sarvjeet following Gogi's arrest in May 1997. Dhinsa's status as the guarantor on the lease for the apartment across from where Sarvjeet lived that was presumably used to monitor Sarvjeet's movements is further evidence of his involvement in the plot to murder Sarvjeet. Contrary to Dhinsa's description of the paper bearing Sarvjeet's address as a smoking gun, a careful reading of the record reveals that the piece of paper constituted but a small part of the government's proof. United States v. Langford, 990 F.2d 65, 70 (2d Cir. 1993); see also United States v. Nivica, 887 F.2d 1110, 1115 (1st Cir. 1989). Given the strength of the government's proof on Dhinsa's involvement in the plot to kill Sarvjeet, we conclude that any error resulting from the district court's admission of the evidence relating to that crime obtained during the search of Dhinsa's car amounted, at most, to harmless error.
84 The evidence presented by the government in connection with Dhinsa's pump-rigging scheme and the bribes made to corrupt DCA inspector Woods was equally overwhelming. Dozens of former Citygas employees and gasoline attendants testified as to the existence of the pump-rigging device and how it operated. In addition, former Citygas customers testified about being short-changed during gasoline purchases at Citygas stations. FBI agent Glynn and DCA inspectors testified that they recovered a pump-rigging apparatus at various Citygas stations and the DCA inspectors described how the device controlled the flow of gasoline purchased by consumers. The DCA inspectors further testified that gasoline purchases made by the DCA in an undercover vehicle revealed a shortfall at thirteen of the sixteen Citygas stations targeted by the DCA. The government also presented notebooks obtained during the search of the Citygas offices in Brooklyn, New York that contained accounting records of the pump-rigging scheme. 85 DCA inspector Woods testified that he regularly received payments from Dhinsa in exchange for information regarding DCA investigations involving Citygas and future field visits scheduled at Citygas stations. Dhinsa's connection to Woods was established independently through bank records and records maintained at the Citygas offices in Brooklyn, New York showing that Dhinsa paid Woods' cellular telephone bills. The government also presented an audio tape of a conversation between Dhinsa and Gulzar during which they discussed payment of Woods' cellular telephone bill and a videotape of Antonio Galvan making a payment to Woods. 86 The evidence obtained from the search of Dhinsa's car related to the pump-rigging scheme and Dhinsa's arrangement with Woods consisted principally of DCA seals and stickers, a cellular telephone bill addressed to Woods and various papers bearing Woods' name. In light of the extensive evidence of the pump-rigging scheme and the bribes made by Dhinsa to Woods, we need not pause in concluding that any possible error in failing to suppress the challenged evidence was harmless as a matter of law. 87 The last issue that we must address concerns statements made by the district court in connection with its ruling on Dhinsa's suppression motion. Specifically, Dhinsa points to the district court's statement that a denial of his motion to suppress the fruits of the July 7, 1997 search of his car would not constitute harmless error. 88 We are unprepared to say that the government's attempts before the district court and this Court to introduce the items obtained during the search of Dhinsa's car leads to the conclusion that the government placed a heavy reliance on that evidence. As a matter of course, most suppression motions are decided early on during a criminal proceeding, before the parties have had the opportunity to present their case before the jury. Accordingly, assessments made at that time regarding the importance of evidence that is the subject of a suppression motion may vary when evaluated against the trial record as a whole. See United States v. Annigoni, 96 F.3d 1132, 1144 (9th Cir. 1996) (en banc) (noting that in conducting harmless error analysis, a court has the entire trial record as a frame of reference against which to compare the erroneously admitted [evidence]). That conclusion is reinforced in cases like the present where the trial record contains voluminous testimony and exhibits. On a similar note, surely the government's decision to appeal an adverse suppression ruling, which was contrary to the district court's express findings of fact and conclusions of law and made before the government presented its case-in-chief, does not automatically lead to the conclusion that admission of the evidence subject to the suppression order is not harmless as a matter of law. A contrary result would hamstring the government's ability to appeal an adverse suppression ruling made early on during the trial by forcing the government to forego such an appeal in order to avoid a later determination that the evidence subject to the suppression ruling was essential to its case and, thus, its admission could not be harmless. 89 To the extent the district court commented on the significance of the evidence obtained from that search, those comments represented the district court's preliminary assessment of that evidence in establishing Dhinsa's guilt for the crimes charged in the indictment. However, that assessment, like any other preliminary assessment, was subject to modification after the court had the opportunity to consider the totality of the government's case. This conclusion is reinforced by statements made by the district court after the jury returned its verdict. There, the district court stated that Dhinsa's guilt was a certainty... and it was the cell phone and the cell site records that made it a certainty. Accordingly, we reject Dhinsa's argument that the district court's comments foreclose a conclusion that, assuming arguendo that the district court erred in admitting the fruits of the July 7, 1997 search, such error could not be harmless.