Opinion ID: 3183425
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Testimony of Anthony Decarolis

Text: Crawford first takes issue with testimony offered by Anthony Decarolis. Decarolis, a lawyer, told the jury that he had met with Crawford at JFK on December 11, 2004 and that he had not asked her to sign any blank sheets of paper. He was also permitted to testify that he had handled “more than a thousand” similar loan signings during his career, “[s]pecifically in [ ] 2004‐2005,” when many homeowners were refinancing; that during that time period, it had not been “uncommon to have 10 [signings] on the schedule a week”; that his “[t]ypical[ ]” practice when conducting a signing was to hand documents to the borrower, one by one, and briefly explain each; and that, though he could not recall all the particulars of his meeting with Crawford, he would not have deviated meaningfully from his “usual procedure” during the transaction. Defs.’ App. 7‐9. Crawford argues that Decarolis’s testimony about his typical practice, offered to prove that he had acted in conformity with that practice on December 11, 2004, constituted propensity evidence barred by Federal Rule of Evidence 404(a). We disagree. Although Rule 404(a) deems inadmissible “[e]vidence of a person’s character or character trait . . . [offered] to prove that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character or trait,” Federal Rule of Evidence 406 provides that “[e]vidence of a person’s habit or an organization’s routine practice may be admitted to prove that on a particular occasion the person or organization acted in accordance with the habit or routine practice.” Character and habit, though “close akin,” are not identical 6 concepts. Fed. R. Evid. 406 advisory committee’s note to 1972 proposed rule (internal quotation marks omitted). Character may be thought of as “a generalized description of one’s disposition,” while habit “is more specific”: “[i]t describes one’s regular response to a repeated specific situation.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Consistent with these principles, we held in Carrion v. Smith that Rule 406 permitted testimony by a lawyer that it was his “usual practice” to discuss with clients their sentencing exposure should they go to trial, offered to prove that the lawyer had discussed that topic with a particular client on a particular occasion. Carrion v. Smith, 549 F.3d 583, 586‐87, 590 (2d Cir. 2008); see also United States v. Arredondo, 349 F.3d 310, 315‐16 (6th Cir. 2003) (“Plachta testified that he always passed on plea offers to clients. He had already represented five to fifteen criminal defendants in federal court at the time of Arredondo’s trial, and had undertaken more representations since then. In light of Plachta’s experience, his habit testimony was admissible under Fed. R. Evid. 406 to show that he acted in conformity with that habit in this case.”). We see no meaningful difference between Carrion and this case. Decarolis testified that he had conducted more than a thousand signings like Crawford’s—many of them in 2004 and 2005, when he was sometimes conducting ten a week—and that, during these transactions, he always showed the borrower the documents to be signed, explaining their significance as he went. This practice constitutes the sort of “regular response to a repeated specific situation” contemplated by Rule 406. Fed. R. Evid. 406 advisory 7 committee’s note to 1972 proposed rule (internal quotation marks omitted). The District Court thus acted within its discretion in admitting Decarolis’s testimony.