Opinion ID: 772486
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Murders of Manmohan and Satinderjit

Text: 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