Opinion ID: 514214
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Denial of Scopo's Request for Subpoenas

Text: 24 During the trial, Scopo sought to call as witnesses 13 persons involved in the construction industry (the industry witnesses) to testify principally that there was no bidrigging in concrete-pouring contracts above the $2 million level and that Scopo had never extorted money from them. The court denied the subpoenas on the ground that the proposed testimony would be merely collateral to the issues in the case. The charges here focused solely on concrete-pouring contracts worth $2 million or less. A bill of particulars furnished by the government explicitly so stated, and all of the counts against Scopo alleged extortionate schemes or acts with respect to contracts at this level. Though the government believed the scheme alleged here was complementary to the scheme in which four organized crime families in New York City controlled the award of Manhattan concrete contracts worth more than $2 million, charges relating to the latter scheme were included in the Salerno I indictment and excluded from this case. Hence, the court concluded that the testimony to be elicited from Scopo's proposed industry witnesses would not address any of the charges in the present indictment, and it refused to issue the subpoenas. 25 Scopo points out that the government's proof at trial, both the live testimony and the tapes of conversations to which Scopo was a party, included statements by Scopo with respect to concrete-pouring contracts worth more than $2 million, and he contends that the court's refusal to subpoena his industry witnesses infringed his Sixth Amendment right to rebut the government's proof. We disagree. 26 The Sixth Amendment, by its terms, gives the defendant in a criminal trial the right to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor. This does not, however, guarantee him an unrestricted right to compel the presence of any and all witnesses he may choose. Rather, the defendant who complains that his right to call witnesses has been violated must at least make some plausible showing of how their testimony would have been both material and favorable to his defense. United States v. Valenzuela-Bernal, 458 U.S. 858, 867, 102 S.Ct. 3440, 3446, 73 L.Ed.2d 1193 (1982); see id. n. 7; United States v. Ginsberg, 758 F.2d 823, 831 (2d Cir.1985); United States v. Taylor, 562 F.2d 1345, 1362 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 853, 98 S.Ct. 170, 54 L.Ed.2d 124 (1977). 27 In assessing the value of proposed witnesses' testimony, we must bear in mind that the trial judge has wide discretion to exclude proffered evidence that is collateral, rather than material, to the issues in the case. E.g., United States v. Gleason, 616 F.2d 2, 21-23 (2d Cir.1979), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 1082, 100 S.Ct. 1037, 62 L.Ed.2d 767 & 445 U.S. 931, 100 S.Ct. 1320, 63 L.Ed.2d 764 (1980); cf. Fed.R.Evid. 403 (Although relevant, evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed ... by considerations of undue delay [or] waste of time....). If the court could properly have excluded proffered testimony on the ground that the evidence was collateral, its refusal to subpoena witnesses who were to give that testimony cannot be deemed error. 28 The principal witness who referred to the contracts worth more than $2 million was Stanley Sternchos, who testified that his company, Technical Concrete Construction Corporation (Technical), had been forced to pay Scopo sums totaling between $800,000 and $900,000 from 1981 to 1984. Sternchos's testimony with respect to conversations with Scopo included the following. 29 Scopo told a Technical partner in 1980 that Technical would have to pay Scopo one percent of each contract it was awarded if it wanted to do business in New York City. A portion of this money would be passed on to Scopo's crime family. When Technical thereafter tried to bid on contracts worth more than $2 million, Scopo told Sternchos that was impermissible because such projects were allocated among six firms, which he named, each of which was controlled by one of four organized crime families. Scopo referred to these firms as the Club. He described for Sternchos an incident in which a Club member had failed to pay the required percentage to the four families and stated that only the fact that the company was going out of business prevented its principal from being killed. Although Scopo never directly threatened him, Sternchos testified that Scopo's mention of this incident certainly pointed out to [Sternchos] that Ralph Scopo felt that he and his people had the power to kill anybody whenever they felt like it, and Sternchos feared for his own physical safety and that of his family if Technical did not pay Scopo. 30 The evidence of Scopo's statements with respect to the prevalence of payoffs in the construction industry and with respect to control of the award of contracts worth more than $2 million was relevant to the present case in two respects. First, many of these statements were intertwined with Scopo's extortion of moneys on contracts worth less than $2 million and were needed as background to clarify Scopo's demands of companies such as Technical. Second, an element of the nine Hobbs Act counts (which in turn were charged as RICO predicate acts) was the extortion of money through the wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1951(b)(2). Scopo's statements to Sternchos as to the sole reason the four crime families had decided not to kill a man who failed to make a required Club payment plainly provided a sound basis for Sternchos to fear violence should Technical discontinue paying Scopo. 31 Both of these uses of the over-$2 million evidence served to underscore the collateral nature of the rebuttal proposed by Scopo. His proposed industry witnesses included five officials of four of the firms that Sternchos said Scopo had identified as members of the Club. Scopo informed the court that he expected these five to testify that he had never extorted money from them or that as far as they knew there was no Club. Five other proposed witnesses were to testify that although their firms were not alleged to be members of the Club, they had obtained contracts worth more than $2 million. Two others were to testify that their company had 60% of the concrete business in the metropolitan area, that as far as they knew there was no Club, and that Scopo had never tried to shake them down. The last proposed witness, a subcontractor, was to testify that Technical had never asked it to inflate its bid, as Technical might have done in order to provide funds for a payoff to Scopo. 32 Thus, the thrust of the testimony of Scopo's proposed witnesses would have been that in fact there was no Club, no rigging of bids above the $2 million level, and no payoffs above that level. The government's use, however, of Scopo's statements as to the existence of the Club and the extreme penalty for nonpayment to the crime families did not depend on the truth of those statements. Scopo used his statements to control the actions of the firms from which he extorted money and to instill fear of violence in his extortion victims. Thus, for the present case, the important fact regarding the Club was not whether or not it actually existed or how it worked but only whether Scopo made the statements. Even if Scopo's proposed witnesses could have cast doubts on the veracity of Scopo's statements, they could not have cast doubt that the statements were made. 33 In sum, the trial court's view that the proposed testimony of Scopo's industry witnesses was directed to a collateral matter was entirely sound. None of the proposed testimony would have contradicted the charges in the present indictment; it would not have dealt with contracts of $2 million or less; and it would not have addressed the crucial fact that Scopo made the statements. Accordingly, we reject Scopo's challenge to the trial court's refusal to issue subpoenas for his proposed industry witnesses.