Opinion ID: 272895
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Admission of testimony as to burglary of the Fairview Post Office.

Text: 13 Kuhle's narrative began, over defense objection, with a criminal episode slightly antedating the series we have recited. On January 15, at a bar in Union City, N.J., Jones, Mulhearn and Pizzo told Kuhle and another friend, Donald Smith, 8 of a 'very, very big score' they had made in burglarizing the post office at Fairview, N.J. Kuhle suggested that their success should enable them to help their mutual friend Bozza. When the trio declined on the ground they hadn't received all their money yet, Kuhle responded, in words reminiscent of a better cause, that if they would give him their tools, he would be the job. They assented to this, and also asked Kuhle to act as their 'cover' next morning when they proposed to sell the stolen Fairview stamps in Manhattan to 'Indian Joe' Fallo; he agreed, and testified in great detail and with considerable color as to how he was summoned to cover Jones after the stamps had been handed over to Fallo; how Fallo, left alone momentarily in a car, ran off before paying for the goods; and how, despite initial consternation, the money was eventually received. A photograph of the violated safe at the Fairview post office was received; so also was an admission by Jones, the effect of which will be considered in Point III. 14 Jones, Mulhearn and Pizzo contend that it was error to receive this evidence of a crime which was not and, for lack of venue, could not have been charged in the indictment, 9 since it does not fall under any recognized exception to what they claim to be a general prohibition of evidence of other crimes. The rule in the federal courts is not so formalized; evidence of another crime may be introduced if, though only if, it 'is substantially relevant for some other purpose than to show a probability' that the defendant 'committed the crime on trial because he is a man of criminal character.' McCormick, Evidence 157, at 327 (1954); Lovely v. United States,169 F.2d 386, 388-389 (4 Cir. 1948); Swann v. United States, 195 F.2d 689, 690-691 (4 Cir. 1952); Model Code of Evidence, Rule 311; Note, Other Crimes Evidence at Trial: Of Balancing and Other Matters, 70 Yale L.J. 763, 767-69 (1961). A more detailed and illuminating formulation is that 15 'the problem is not merely one of pigeon-holing, but one of balancing, on the one side, the actual need for the other-crimes-evidence in the light of the issues and the other evidence available to the prosecution, the convincingness of the evidence that the other crimes were committed and that the accused was the actor, and the strength or weakness of the other-crimes-evidence in supporting the issue, and on the other, the degree to which the jury will probably be roused by the evidence to overmastering hostility.' McCormick, supra at 332. Pertinent also is the statement in Quarles v. Comminwealth, 245 S.W.2d 947, 948-949 (Ky.1951): 'evidence of an independent offense is inadmissible even though it may have some tendency to prove the commission of the crime charged, because the probative value of the evidence is greatly outweighed by its prejudicial effect. This is especially so where the evidence is of an isolated, wholly disconnected offense. But the balance of scales is believed to be the other way where there is a close relationship to the offense charged.' 16 The Fairview burglary had about as close a relationship to the offenses charged as can be imagined; indeed, if the evidence of Kuhle's talk with Jones, Mulhearn and Pizzo after the burglary had been omitted, the jury would have had only a truncated version of what was claimed to have occurred. The earlier episode was relevant in several ways. Knowledge of the success at Fairview was what led to the request for and the loan of the tools that enabled Kuhle and Bozza to effect their 'hits' at Morganville, Middletown, Wookbridge and Keyport. Proof that Jones, Mulhearn and Pizzo had loaned the tools for the known purpose of enabling Kuhle to 'hit' a post office and thereby help Bozza to repay debts to the trio was not merely relevant but almost basic to Count 6, charging them with conspiracy in these burglaries at which they were not physically present; the evidence permitted the jury to conclude not only that they knowingly made tools available for the crimes but encouraged such use in order to collect Bozza's indebtedness. The association begun as the aftermath of Fairview was relevant also to the counts linking Jones, Mulhearn and Pizzo with the Paramus and Hillsdale burglaries and the sale of their proceeds. Although what was most directly relevant was not the fact of the Fairview burglary but its significance in the later interview between the three participants and Kuhle, the principle of completeness justified telling all that was said, see 7 Wigmore, Evidence 2094 (3d ed. 1940); McCormick, Evidence 56 (1954), and evidence that the post office had in fact been burglarized was probative by way of corroboration. On the other side, the danger that the jury would 'probably be roused by the evidence to overmastering hostility' was minimal. The temperature generated by Kuhle's narration of six post office burglaries was not likely to be significantly augmented by evidence that still another had gone before. Hence with respect to the Fairview burglary itself, 10 this was not at all a case 'where the minute peg of relevancy will be entirely obscured by the dirty linen hung upon it.' State v. Goebel, 36 Wash.2d 367, 379, 218 P.2d 300, 306 (1950). Failure to include a charge on the limited purpose for which the evidence could be considered cannot be raised on appeal where no request for this was made to the trial court. F.R.Crim.P. 30; See United States v. Sherman, 171 F.2d 619, 624 (2 Cir.), cert. denied, 337 U.S. 931, 69 S.Ct. 1484, 93 L.Ed.2d 1738 (1948); Berry v. United States, 271 F.2d 775 (5 Cir. 1959), cert. denied, 362 U.S. 903, 80 S.Ct. 612, 4 L.Ed.2d 555 (1960); Baker v. United States, 310 F.2d 924, 929-930 (9 Cir.), cert. denied, 372 U.S. 954. 11 Under these circumstances the court's general charge that testimony of an accomplice 'should be received with great caution and weighed with great care' and that the jury should not convict 'upon the unsupported evidence of an accomplice unless you believe the unsupported testimony supports the Government's charge beyond a reasonable doubt' sufficiently covered the Fairview evidence, at least in the absence of a request for an instruction that the burglary should not be considered unless the jury was satisfied that the crime had been clearly shown. See McCormick, supra at 331 and n. 22. 17