Opinion ID: 674597
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Knife

Text: 104 During his description of the conspiracy to rob the Ming Jewelry Store in Rochester, Tinh Ngo testified that prior to going to Rochester he and Minh Do had attempted to purchase a knife in Manhattan and that when they were unable to do so, they drove to Minh Do's apartment in the Bronx to retrieve one before going to Thai's house on Long Island. On cross-examination, Minh Do's counsel extensively probed the implausibility of the story that Tinh Ngo and Minh Do had made a three-hour detour to Minh Do's apartment to get a knife rather than simply purchasing one at any hardware store. 105 Later in the trial, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) agent who had participated in the search of the gang's vehicles in Rochester, testified that she had found a knife in one car. Minh Do immediately moved for a mistrial on the ground that the existence of the knife had neither been mentioned in any of the police reports nor disclosed by the government in response to defendants' pretrial motions. 106 The district court denied the motion for a mistrial, but it gave Minh Do the options of striking the BATF agent's testimony about the knife or recalling Tinh Ngo for further examination. While arguing that neither of these remedies was sufficient, Minh Do decided not to have the testimony stricken and instead cross-examined government agents extensively about their failure to mention the knife in their incident reports. He pursues here the contention that the court should have declared a mistrial. We disagree. 107 Assuming that the government's nondisclosure of the seizure of a knife violated its disclosure obligations, the matter was far too insubstantial to warrant a mistrial. The cross-examination of Tinh Ngo did not intimate that there had been no knife but only that it was implausible that the gang members had taken a three-hour trip to get one from Minh Do's apartment rather than simply buying one at a hardware store. Further, the BATF agent did not testify that the knife found had belonged to Minh Do. And, as the court noted, the course of events allowed the defense to have a field day on cross-examination with respect to the agents' failure to mention the seized knife in their reports. 108 The district court offered defendants, inter alia, the extreme sanction of having the testimony stricken from the record, which is the most severe remedy a court can impose short of declaring a mistrial. United States v. Rodriguez, 765 F.2d 1546, 1557 (11th Cir.1985) (internal quotes omitted). No more was required.