Court Opinion

ID: 9458029
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:40:55.781091+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:36.779084
License: Public Domain

KALODNER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I join in Judge Aldisert’s view that reversible error was committed when the trial court “failed to give the jury any *375instruction concerning the relevancy or materiality” of the Government’s evidence that Saperstein died of “acute arsenic poisoning.” I fully subscribe to Judge Aldisert’s keen critical analysis of the impact of the trial court’s error. I can only add that the trial court’s failure to instruct the jury with respect to the arsenic poisoning cause-of-death evidence left it like a “dangling participle” in the rhetoric of the court’s otherwise adequate charge.
I would also reverse for the reason that the trial court prejudicially erred when it permitted the Government to adduce evidence that Saperstein’s death was caused by “acute arsenic poisoning.”
The causal factor of Saperstein’s death had as much relevance in this ease as “[w]ho killed Cock Robin?”. There was not a scintilla of evidence connecting the appellants with Saperstein’s death. Moreover, the Government and the defendants had entered into a Stipulation that Saperstein had died prior to the trial, and that Stipulation was a “cut-off” as far as the cause of his death was concerned.
It cannot be challenged that the arsenic poisoning evidence, taken at the maximum, could have led the jury to conclude that Saperstein was murdered by the defendants, and at the minimum, that the defendants had driven Saperstein to suicide — self-murder. Thus the admission of the arsenic eause-of-death testimony served to convert this trial into a murder trial instead of one for violation of the federal statutes prohibiting extortionate credit transactions. Indeed, the majority here holds that “ . . . the evidence of death by arsenic poisoning served a legitimate purpose — providing a link to determine Saperstein’s state of mind,” and that “[u]nder these circumstances, it was not an abuse of discretion for the district court to permit Dr. Albano to testify as he did.”
I disagree most vigorously with that holding.