Opinion ID: 781722
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Admission of Ismoil's Redacted Statement

Text: 369 Ismoil also challenges the admission at trial of his redacted written statement and the District Court's denial of Yousef's motion for severance (in which he joined). Neither of these claims has merit. 370 Ismoil argues that the District Court impermissibly bound him to the redacted version of his written statement by precluding him from eliciting the fact that he had expressly referred to Abdel-Basset [sic]. The result of this error, according to Ismoil, was that he was prevented from arguing to the jury that he had been duped by the cunning Yousef rather than some faceless unknown. 371 By written order dated October 31, 1997, the District Court denied Ismoil's request that he be allowed to argue, inter alia, that Ismoil disclosed the name of his co-defendant as the person who initially contacted him, and further involved him in the incident, at the very beginning of his written statement. The District Court held that 372 [c]losing arguments must be based upon admitted evidence. If Mr. Aidala intends to argue that Ismoil disclosed the name of Ramzi Yousef at the very beginning of Ismoil's statement, he may do so only by means of other evidence. ( See Part A of this Memorandum and Order). I have seen no other evidence offered by the defense. 373 United States v. Yousef, No. S12 93 Cr. 180(KTD), slip op. at 8 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 31, 1997) (emphasis added). 374 Nothing in the holding of the District Court precluded Ismoil from arguing that he was duped by Yousef or making any related argument apart from asserting that he had actually named Yousef in his written statement. Significantly, Ismoil's counsel appears to have interpreted the court's statement the same way. In a letter to the court responding to the ruling. Ismoil's counsel stated that he understood the District Court to have precluded him from arguing that Ismoil had actually disclosed Yousef's name in the statement, but not from arguing that Yousef had duped Ismoil and that the jury could infer from the evidence that Yousef was the neighbor referred to in the statement. 375 Ismoil's counsel asserts nevertheless that during the hearing on this issue, the District Court barred him from arguing that Ismoil was duped by Yousef on threat of attorney sanctions. Again, this claim is not supported by the record. The transcript of the October 31, 1997 hearing reveals that the District Court, after criticizing counsel for advancing arguments that lacked any legal support, WTr. at 5143-44, warned counsel against attempting to inject any 376 incident [at trial] which is intended to result in a mistrial. I'm warning everyone now, that if that incident does occur, it will be considered a direct contempt of court and will be dealt with then and there. The mistrial will not benefit the client of the person seeking it ... [and] I want to warn everybody I will do my best to make sure that the perpetrator is disbarred for life. 377 WTr. at 5147. 378 The District Court's comments do not support Ismoil's claim that his attorney was barred from arguing that Ismoil was duped by Yousef. Rather, as Ismoil's counsel acknowledged in his letter to the court, he was free to argue that Yousef was the one who duped Ismoil and the jury could infer that Ismoil's written statement was referring to Yousef from the corroborating evidence presented at trial, including the numerous telephone calls Yousef placed to Ismoil in Dallas, evidence establishing that Ismoil had been in the Pamrapo Apartment in which Yousef lived, and Yousef's own statements, which corroborated some of the details mentioned in Ismoil's statement. 379 The only argument the District Court actually precluded Ismoil from making was that Ismoil had named Yousef in his statement, a point Ismoil contends would have bolstered the credibility of Ismoil's statement. No error can be assigned to this ruling because Ismoil's reference in his written statement to Abdul-Basit was hearsay. See Fed.R.Evid. 801(c) (defining hearsay as a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial,  introduced to prove the truth of the matter asserted) (emphasis added). While Ismoil could have testified to everything asserted in his statement, he could not offer the document itself for the truth of the matter asserted—namely, that it was Abdul-Basit (Yousef) who had caused Ismoil's unwilling participation in the bombing. See United States v. Marin, 669 F.2d 73, 84 (2d Cir.1982) (When the defendant seeks to introduce his own prior statement for the truth of the matter asserted, it is hearsay, and it is not admissible.). Moreover, the most crucial reference to Abdul-Bassit in Ismoil's statement from the perspective of Ismoil's defense, was the following: 380 They all left and we stayed behind myself, ABDEL-BASSET [sic] and SHAKIB; then ABDEL-BASSIT [sic] said to me, I would like to tell you something that the bus which you have parked that which you thought that it was merchandise to be delivered, it is nothing but a bomb, we did not tell you so that you would be calm, so that you would act naturally and you wouldn't become nervous. Don't you dare tell anyone. 381 This statement would have constituted double hearsay because it is an out-of-court statement assertedly repeating another out-of-court statement being offered by Ismoil for the truth of the matter asserted. Thus, while the Government was free to introduce the statement as an admission by a party-opponent, see Fed.R.Evid. 801(d)(2)(A), 68 Ismoil had no right to introduce it on his own, see Marin, 669 F.2d at 84 (holding that defendant had no right to have [his unredacted] statement admitted into evidence because it was, as offered by [the defendant], hearsay, and because it was not needed, in fairness, to make complete the portions of his statement that were admitted against him, and that this is so regardless of which purpose the government had in offering the defendant's statement). Absent a genuine entitlement to introduce the unredacted statement on his own at a severed trial (as distinct from an expectation that the Government would choose to introduce the entire, unredacted statement at a severed trial), Ismoil has offered no reason why the District Court's denial of the severance motion was an abuse of discretion. 382 In a related argument, Ismoil contends that the redacted version of his statement violated the rule of completeness embodied in Fed.R.Evid. 106 69 because the redaction distorted the meaning of Ismoil's statement by conveying the impression that Ismoil had omitted Yousef's name from his statement in order to protect him. We have held that the rule of completeness is violated only where admission of the statement in redacted form distorts its meaning or excludes information substantially exculpatory of the declarant. United States v. Benitez, 920 F.2d 1080, 1086-87 (2d Cir.1990) (quoting Alvarado, 882 F.2d at 651) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Castro, 813 F.2d at 575-76 (discussing origins of rule of completeness). In Benitez we found it clear that neither of these defects [was] present where the redaction involved substituting the word friend for the codefendant's name. Benitez, 920 F.2d at 1087-88; see also Alvarado, 882 F.2d at 651 (holding that redacting statement by substituting words another person for codefendant's name did not violate rule of completeness). The redactions in Ismoil's statement are no different. 383 This case is indistinguishable from the numerous cases in which we have upheld similar redactions on Bruton grounds. Indeed, we have rejected precisely the arguments raised by Ismoil under circumstances where the redactions at issue arguably created considerably more distortion, and potential disadvantage to the declarant, than was created here by the simple removal of the four references to Abdul-Basit. See, e.g., Benitez, 920 F.2d at 1086-87; Alvarado, 882 F.2d at 651; Castro, 813 F.2d at 575-77; Marin, 669 F.2d at 83-84. 384 In Castro, for example, we upheld the district court's denial of severance and the introduction of a redacted statement that omitted the defendant's statement that a bag containing cocaine belonged to his codefendant, but retained the fact that the defendant had pointed the bag out to police officers. See Castro, 813 F.2d at 575. We acknowledged that [n]o doubt, the meaning of Castro's conduct and statement was changed somewhat by not allowing the jury to know that Castro had stated that the cocaine belonged to Acosta. Id. at 576. We nevertheless found no abuse of discretion on the part of the district court in taking the action it did, recognizing that in multi-defendant cases in which statements by one defendant implicate another defendant, the district court faces competing interests. Id. Although the defendant whose statement is redacted ha[s] an interest in having his statement presented in context, the court ha[s] concurrent obligations both to protect the interests of the co-defendant ... and to consider the interests in judicial economy, which are advanced by a joint trial. Id. The Castro court also concluded that any error was harmless because any prejudice resulting from the error [was] relatively insignificant. Id. at 577. The reasoning of Castro applies fully here: the substitution of the word neighbor for the name Abdel-Basset [sic], which did not distort the meaning of Ismoil's statement in any way or cause any discernable prejudice, was a reasonabl[e] accommodat[ion of] the[] competing interests in the case. Id. at 576. 385 Ismoil next claims that the redaction inaccurately attributed one of Abdul-Basit's statements to someone named Shakib, resulting in prejudice to Ismoil. In its opinion denying the severance motion, the District Court expressly permitted the parties to correct the misattribution by stipulation. Ismoil never took up the District Court's offer, however, and therefore has waived his right to raise this claim now. See United States v. Bayless, 201 F.3d 116, 127 (2d Cir.2000) (a defendant's intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right permanently extinguishes the right to raise [the] claim (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). 386 Finally, Ismoil argues that his confrontation rights were violated by the District Court's order precluding him from eliciting during his cross-examination of Qablan the fact that the statement had mentioned Abdul-Basit. We reject this claim as meritless. See Alvarado, 882 F.2d at 651 (rejecting claim that curtailment of cross-examination with respect to redacted statement violated defendant's confrontation rights); see also United States v. Pedroza, 750 F.2d 187, 195 (2d Cir.1984) (collecting cases that articulate the rule that the scope and extent of cross-examination are generally within the sound discretion of the district court).