Court Opinion

ID: 9473897
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:42:59.4968+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:48.320261
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
The central issue in this case is whether Ford manifested enough purposeful behavior implicating him in the cocaine transaction for a jury to have returned a guilty verdict. The Government’s case against him turns on his role as an aider and abettor — in the context of this case, on his role as a “steerer.” But the undisputed nature of the transaction indicates that Richards, not Ford, was the steerer. The evidence leaves unclear the role Ford played. The Government argues that Ford initiated the transaction with his question, “How many do you want?” Ford’s utterance, however, only indicates that he intended to initiate a transaction. It is insufficient to implicate him in the cocaine transaction for which he was convicted. Although a jury could be sure beyond a doubt that Ford was not hawking sunglasses or stepladders, it is also reasonable to suppose that Ford was hawking “joints” of marijuana, not cocaine. Detective Rush herself conceded during cross-examination that young black men have attempted to sell her marijuana “joints” with the lead, “How many do you want?” (App. 336). I do not know what *64the “circumstances” are that the majority-says permit the inference of Ford’s expectation to profit from Thomas’s cocaine sale; the evidence is that he did not do so.
Ford’s argument that the court improperly excluded Richards’s and Thomas’s hearsay statements is also cogent. The district court refused to admit the statements apparently because it concluded that the statements did not satisfy the conditions set forth in Rule 804(b)(3) for admission of hearsay statements against penal interest. The court’s position is difficult to understand in light of this court’s decisions in United States v. Lieberman, 637 F.2d 95 (2d Cir.1980), and United States v. Garris, 616 F.2d 626 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 447 U.S. 926, 100 S.Ct. 3021, 65 L.Ed.2d 1119 (1980), holding that a statement neutral to a declarant’s interests is admissible under Rule 804(b)(3) if part of a larger statement itself inculpatory to the declarant. See Lieberman, 637 F.2d at 103; Garris, 616 F.2d at 630. The statements Ford sought to admit were of the sort qualifying under Lieberman and Garris, while the Government’s attempt to interpret Lieberman and Garris as cases establishing that Rule 804(b)(3) benefits only the prosecution borders on the arrogant. It should be noted that by “neutral statements” this court has meant statements “neutral as to the declarant’s interest,” Garris, 616 F.2d at 630 (emphasis added), as against the Government’s claim that Garris neutrality precludes the admission of statements exculpatory to a non-declarant such as Ford. If instead the court’s denial of the motion was based on its independent assessment of the trustworthiness of the statements, then the court abused its discretion; there was no evidence that the statements, which were clearly corroborative of the Government’s case against Thomas and Richards, are untrustworthy. The Government’s claim that the statements “are flatly contradicted by the officers’ testimony,” Government Brief at 18 n. **, is inexplicably lame. The question of what Ford intended is the issue here. That is not a question to be begged by accepting the views of the police on faith and rejecting other accounts because they disagree with the police version.
Accordingly, I am required to dissent.