Opinion ID: 2758672
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The cell phone evidence

Text: Rossetti next argues that his counsel wrongly failed to impeach Rossetti's own witness when she gave erroneous testimony that was actually favorable to Rossetti's theory about his motivation on the day of his arrest. When arrested, Rossetti was carrying a cellphone that the government suggested at trial he could have used to call his co-conspirators. Such a call could explain why he did not go to the garage where he had agreed to meet them but instead surveilled and continued past it. At trial, Rossetti called a witness who testified that the company that employed Rossetti, and that paid for the phone, was charged for no calls on Rossetti's phone that morning, thereby counteracting the government's theory. The witness also testified, erroneously according to Rossetti, that the company would have been billed for a call even if Rossetti had called someone else but the call had not been answered. The jury, Rossetti claims, knew from their collective common sense that Rossetti was conveying erroneous information regarding cellular billing practices and, hence, found Rossetti's defense less credible. If cellular phone billing practices were such common knowledge, however, it seems unlikely that the government attorney, Rossetti, his counsel, and the witness would all have failed to notice the witness's mistake. Moreover, what Rossetti claims was a mistake actually benefitted Rossetti by -14- negating any suggestion that he even tried to call his coconspirators. This mistake was unchallenged on cross or in closing by the prosecutor, and one can only imagine what Rossetti would have said had his counsel flagged it. In short, Rossetti has not come close to demonstrating that his counsel was ineffective by failing to impeach his own witness. Alternatively, Rossetti argues that his trial counsel should have retained an expert who might have been able to ascertain that the phone was never used the morning of the arrest, and that the FBI may have tampered with it. And Rossetti complains that the district court should have allowed him to do discovery to explore this theory. The simple answer is that whether Rossetti (who often advised his fellows on the need to be careful) learned by a phone call on the morning of the planned robbery that something was amiss, or instead suspected there was a problem for other reasons, was not important to the government's case. And, as we have explained, Rossetti's actual undisputed conduct rendered his withdrawal defense too farfetched to serve as the basis for showing a causal connection between counsel's alleged failures and prejudice to Rossetti.