Opinion ID: 152284
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Remaining Evidentiary Issues

Text: Jadlowe's three remaining contentions all concern the ways in which he was identified at trial as the individual who made the arrangements with Gonsalves and Ferreira for the cocaine delivery at 30 Arch Street. Agent Fallon identified him in the surveillance videotape shown at trial by comparing a photograph of him to the video image. Agent Simmons identified a voice on the tapes of the wiretapped phone calls as Jadlowe's, even though he had never spoken with Jadlowe in person; the transcripts of the wiretapped conversations given to the jury reflected Simmons's identification of Jadlowe as one of the speakers. Jadlowe argues that the visual and voice identifications constituted improper lay opinion testimony because neither officer's identification was based on prior personal experience with Jadlowe and [t]he jury was perfectly capable of drawing its own independent conclusion[s] based on the evidence presented. United States v. Garcia-Ortiz, 528 F.3d 74, 80 (1st Cir. 2008); see 36 Exhibit 10's relative unimportance to the case is reflected in a colloquy that took place at the close of evidence. When defense counsel renewed the objection to Exhibit 10, the district court commented that it did not view the document as being a very critical piece of evidence linking anything to anything. The prosecutor agreed and stated that he would not object to its being redacted or excluded. The court said it would make a decision after reviewing Agent Fallon's testimony and, later that day, ruled the exhibit admissible without restriction. -44- also Fed. R. Evid. 701 (allowing lay opinion testimony if, inter alia, it is rationally based on the perception of the witness and helpful to a clear understanding of the witness' testimony or the determination of a fact in issue). He asserts that the district court also abused its discretion in allowing the government to provide the jury with transcripts that presented as fact that he was the speaker. We agree that the officers' identifications should not have been allowed as lay opinion testimony because neither Fallon nor Simmons was in a better position than the jurors to make the identity judgments. Indeed, Fallon testified that she made the identification by comparing his image on the screen with a driver's license photo that was in evidence. We are at a loss to understand the government's argument that Fallon was better situated than the jurors simply because she was watching the events as they were occurring. At the time, she was looking at the same video image seen by the jurors at trial; the Registry of Motor Vehicle's photograph also was in evidence.37 In addition, although the government is correct that identification of a telephone caller may be [established] by circumstantial evidence, United States v. DiMuro, 540 F.2d 503, 514 (1st Cir. 1976) (quotation marks and 37 Fallon also testified that her identification was aided by information from other officers on the scene confirming that Jadlowe was the person she was seeing on the video screen. That reliance on others further diminishes the foundation for her own identification. -45- citation omitted) (alteration in original), the circumstantial evidence on which Simmons relied to infer that Jadlowe was the speaker in the wiretapped conversations – the content of the calls and the physical surveillance reports – also was available to the jury. Nonetheless, any error in allowing the officers' identifications or the related transcripts was unquestionably harmless. An abundance of circumstantial evidence pointed to Jadlowe as the individual whom Fallon saw clearing the garage at 30 Arch Street and whom Simmons heard in the phone conversations with Ferreira and Gonsalves. In a phone conversation on October 8, for example, the caller whose voice Simmons identified as Jadlowe's reported to Gonsalves that he would be getting his hair braided and that he had been home all day on his birthday. Both items of information in the call were linked to Jadlowe. According to motor vehicle records, Jadlowe's birthday was the day before, October 7, and Simmons, who had seen Jadlowe multiple times before, testified that he saw Jadlowe with newly braided hair shortly after this conversation. In a call with Gonsalves on November 4, the speaker Simmons identified as Jadlowe was addressed as Uncle Marc, and in another call the same day, just before 2 p.m., that speaker told Gonsalves that he was [t]aking care of the garage and that he was [d]oin' it right now. According to Agent Fallon's testimony, it -46- was at about that time that, with other officers' assistance, she identified Jadlowe as the individual she had seen moving items from the garage to the yard at 30 Arch Street. Simmons's ability to identify Jadlowe in each instance in which Jadlowe was designated on the transcript as the speaker was supported by the agent's admissible testimony that he had listened to 25 to 50 calls involving the number associated with the phone seized from Jadlowe at 30 Arch Street on November 4, 2005, and that over time he was able to recognize the callers in those wiretapped conversations after hearing the same voices every day. He testified that he had heard no one on that phone other than the speaker Gonsalves referred to as Uncle Marc in the November 4 call. Each of the calls attributed to Jadlowe was thus identified by Simmons as involving the same voice, including the other calls described above whose content was linked to Jadlowe. Hence, even if it were improper for Simmons and Fallon to have offered their opinions that Jadlowe was the speaker in the wiretapped calls and the individual in the videotape, we are confident that any such error did not influence the verdict. This is equally true of the jury's exposure to the transcripts. Not only was there compelling circumstantial evidence that Jadlowe was properly identified as the speaker in the calls, but the district court also instructed the jurors at the time they received the transcripts that it was up to them to make a determination as to -47- whether the transcript is correct in its identification of Mr. Jadlowe as the speaker at the points at which he is so listed in the transcript. The court emphasized that the transcript is only an aid, and that the jurors would have to look to other evidence in the case to ensure yourself that that indeed is true. The court repeated that caution in its charge at the close of evidence, telling the jurors that if they believe that the speaker has been wrongly identified, keep in mind that it is your understanding of the recording that matters. On this record, there was no reversible error stemming from the challenged evidentiary rulings.