Opinion ID: 181375
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The 2006 Recordings

Text: A review of the recorded conversations confirms the district court findings that therein Abu-Jihaad demonstrated his familiarity with Azzam as an organization sympathetic to jihad and admitted his own correspondence with Azzam through its websites, specifically in an email discussing the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. See United States v. Abu-Jihaad, 2008 WL 282368, at . In the conversations, Abu-Jihaad further demonstrated an obsession with secrecy in discussing matters related to jihad. Not only did he routinely employ code in discussing confederates and objectives, he discussed his inability to provide a purported jihad sympathizer with current military intelligence in coded terms that supported an inference that he had provided such intelligence in the past. See id. at -6. Although these conversations made no mention of the charged disclosure of the Battlegroup Document and, in fact, took place more than four years after that charged crime, they were undoubtedly relevant to a jury's assessment of Abu-Jihaad's guilt. To be relevant, evidence need not be sufficient by itself to prove a fact in issue, much less to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. See Contemporary Mission, Inc. v. Famous Music Corp., 557 F.2d 918, 927 (2d Cir.1977) (Evidence need not be conclusive in order to be relevant.). Rather, evidence is relevant if it has any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence. Fed.R.Evid. 401; see United States v. Schultz, 333 F.3d 393, 416 (2d Cir.2003) (Nonconclusive evidence should still be admitted if it makes a proposition more probable than not. (internal quotation marks omitted)). Abu-Jihaad's discussions of Azzam, its websites, and his email communications with that organization were relevant because they linked him to the recipient of the Battlegroup Document. This fact made it more probable that, among the discrete group of persons with knowledge of the classified information at issue, Abu-Jihaad was the source of the unauthorized disclosure to Azzam. Although Abu-Jihaad endeavored to reduce this likelihood by offering evidence that some transit plan information was more widely available than the Navy maintained, see infra at 136-37, such evidence would have affected only the weight, not the admissibility, of the recorded conversations. See United States v. Schultz, 333 F.3d at 416 (observing that factors which make evidence less than conclusive affect only weight, not admissibility (internal quotation marks omitted)). Similarly, the recordings demonstrating Abu-Jihaad's keen concern with secrecy were relevant both generally in demonstrating consciousness of guilt and specifically in explaining why there was no evidence on Azzam websites about transmittal of the Battlegroup Document or the information contained therein. As for Abu-Jihaad's recorded discussion of why he could not provide current military intelligenceI ain't been working ah in, in the field of making meals and or, you know . . . [i]n a, in a long time. I've been out of that for, ah, over ah, quatro years you know, Trial Tr. at 989-90; Gov't Ex. 141k at 7the statement permitted an inference that, four years earlier, Abu-Jihaad had been engaged in making meals, i.e., providing military intelligence, an admission highly probative of his commission of the charged crime. That the statement might be construed more innocently was a matter properly addressed through cross-examination and argument to the jury, not a ground for excluding the evidence as irrelevant. Rule 403 warrants no different conclusion. As we observed in United States v. LaFlam, 369 F.3d 153 (2d Cir. 2004), when we review a district court's evaluation of evidence under Rule 403, we generally maximize its probative value and minimize its prejudicial effect, id. at 155 (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). Applying this standard, we conclude that the recorded discussions were both highly probative of the charged crime and, to the extent they referenced uncharged contemporaneous support for jihad, no more inflammatory than the charges alleged in the indictment. In any event, the district court properly minimized the risk of unfair prejudice through limiting instructions. See United States v. Mercado, 573 F.3d 138, 142 (2d Cir.2009) (upholding Rule 403 determination where challenged evidence not especially worse or shocking than the transactions charged and where district court gave several careful instructions to the jury regarding what inferences it could draw from the admitted evidence). The district court instructed the jury that (a) Abu-Jihaad [was] not . . . charged with anything based on the conversations. . . from 2006, (b) the events that form[ed] the basis of the charges against . . . Abu-Jihaad in this case occurred in 2001, not 2006, and (c) the jury was not to speculate about what was the nature of the investigation involving Shareef and the confidential informant or whether or if any charges resulted from that investigation. Trial Tr. at 992. Abu-Jihaad does not challenge the adequacy of these instructions. Thus, his contention that the 2006 recordings permitted the jury to speculate about Shareef's plans reduces to a challenge to the presumption that jurors follow the instructions they are given. See United States v. Downing, 297 F.3d 52, 59 (2d Cir.2002) (Absent evidence to the contrary, we must presume that juries understand and abide by a district court's limiting instructions.). Because Abu-Jihaad points to nothing in the record to undermine this presumption, we identify no merit in his argument, and we conclude that the district court acted well within its discretion in admitting the 2006 recordings.