Court Opinion

ID: 9488297
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:41:38.79159+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:48.858435
License: Public Domain

KEARSE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
With all due respect, I must dissent. It is, of course, a given that, in considering a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence to support a conviction, we are required to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the government and credit all inferences that the jury might reasonably have drawn from the evidence. In my view, however, much of what the majority relies on is not evidence but innuendo and speculation. And taking into account all of the material on which it relies, even the majority concedes that the evidence “fell a trifle short,” ante at 70.
The trial evidence in this case showed that defendant Jose Muniz (“Muniz”), a 38-year-old man hobbled by a broken leg, went on three occasions to the residence of his mother, Zaida Muniz. She was not always there. On the last occasion, Muniz lay down on a bed in one of the bedrooms and put the key to the apartment on the table next to him. In that bedroom was a doorless cabinet that contained narcotics paraphernalia. The affir-mance today means that on the basis of his mere presence in that room of his mother’s apartment, which generally is not enough even to establish possession of items found simultaneously in the apartment, see, e.g., United States v. Soto, 716 F.2d 989, 991 (2d Cir.1983); United States v. Johnson, 513 F.2d 819, 823-24 (2d Cir.1975), the jury permissibly found Muniz guilty of possessing heroin that had been found in the locked mailbox for that apartment in the building’s lobby eight days earlier.
As to the mailbox itself, the majority notes that “[tjhere were no signs of tampering ...; this supported the inference that only a person possessing the key to the mailbox for Apartment 6C could have been using it to store the heroin.” Ante at 67. I agree. But there was no evidence that Muniz had a mailbox key. None was found in his possession. And although the majority says that the jury “might reasonably infer ... that [Muniz] had access to the key to the mailbox” because he was using his mother’s apartment, ante at 68, a housing authority policeman who testified at trial stated that when Muniz was arrested the apartment was searched thoroughly, and no mailbox key was found. The suggestion that Muniz had access to the mailbox key because he had access to the apartment, therefore, is based not on any evidence but on speculation.
To compensate for the lack of evidence that any mailbox key was found on Muniz or in the apartment (there was also no other evidence connecting Muniz with the mailbox, such as fingerprints on the heroin packages), the majority endorses the government’s attempt to show that Muniz was a resident of the apartment. From that premise, the argument is that Muniz either (a) had constructive possession of a mailbox key, or (b) possessed the narcotics paraphernalia found in the cabinet in the apartment and was thus also the probable possessor of the heroin in the mailbox. The foundation for these arguments is lacking, however, for there was no real evidence that Muniz resided in his mother’s apartment. There was no evidence, for example, that any of his clothing, toiletries, or other belongings were in the apartment; there was no evidence that he gave his mother’s apartment as his address when pedigree information was taken from him after his arrest; there was no evidence that his fingerprints were found on the cabinet, or on the narcotics paraphernalia found in the cabinet, or indeed, on anything else in the apartment.
Instead of evidence, there is innuendo and speculation. The majority opinion, stating that there was “strong[ ]” “evidence” to support an inference that Muniz resided in his mother’s apartment, refers principally to the testimony of a city housing authority assistant that Muniz’s sister did not live there; to the majority’s own view that Muniz’s lying on a bed in the apartment suggested that he was “very much at home,” a view that seems more idiomatic than evidentiary; to a police officer witness’s reference to the room in which Muniz was found as Muniz’s bedroom; and to testimony that the officer saw no *73indication that anyone other than Muniz and his mother lived in the apartment. Each of these strikes me as seriously flawed.
For example, the majority’s statement that the “testimony of the housing assistant, as to housing records, showed that the defendant’s sister had married and moved out,” ante at 68 (emphasis added), appears to imply that the housing assistant’s testimony was evidence from which it could reasonably be inferred that Muniz had continued to live there. But that testimony dealt only with Muniz’s sister, not Muniz. Having testified that the housing records listed only Zaida as the tenant of the apartment and showed two offspring, Muniz and Esther, on the “family composition sheet,” the housing assistant was asked, “Do those records give any indication of where Esther Muniz may be[,] the other child that you referred to?” (Emphasis added.) Her answer was that Esther had married and moved out. The assistant was not asked, either expressly in a question specifying Muniz or implicitly in a question specifying both offspring, whether the records indicated the whereabouts of Muniz. Consequently, the assistant’s testimony that Esther had moved out could not reasonably be the basis for an inference that Muniz still lived there. The prosecutor’s question, asking not about Muniz but only about another person, elicited evidence only as to that other person, not as to Muniz.
Similarly, when the prosecutor asked a police witness (surprisingly without objection) whether in the search of the apartment he had “come across any indication that anyone other than Jose Muniz and Zaida Muniz lived there” (emphasis added), the response did not elicit information about Muniz. The witness’s negative response, though perhaps sounding helpful, was not in fact testimony that the witness saw an indication that Muniz himself lived there. Any implication that there was some indication that Muniz lived there rested solely in the prosecutor’s question. A question, however, is not evidence from which a jury is entitled to draw inferences, and we are not required to view the innuendo in a question as evidence to be taken in the light most favorable to the government.
The witness was not asked whether he saw any indication that Muniz lived there, and his testimony revealed no such indications. While the majority speculates that “[i]t may be,” ante at 68, that Muniz’s clothes and personal possessions were found in the apartment or that Muniz referred to the bedroom in which he was found as “his room,” id., the government, which of course bore the burden of proof, introduced no such evidence; and at oral argument of this appeal, the government’s attorney stated that he had put on the best case he could. There was no evidence such as that hypothesized by the majority, and the jury was left to infer that Muniz lived there only on the basis that the witness referred to the room in which Muniz was found as “Mr. Muniz’ bedroom.” Though the majority is critical of this dissent for “as-sum[ing]” that the witness had no basis for referring to the room in this way (ie., for pointing out the government’s failure to introduce any evidence of such a basis), in my view the majority errs in hypothesizing such a basis. When no evidence of any basis for such a characterization has been offered, I think, given the presumption of innocence to which a defendant is entitled, that the lack of evidence is noteworthy; and where, as here, the government has acknowledged that it proffered all the evidence it could muster, an “assumption” that there was no more is compelled.
While the majority states that the government had “additional evidence that was improperly excluded from the jury’s consideration,” ante at 71, I assume that it does not mean to suggest that evidence that might have been admitted, but was not, could properly be used in determining what inferences the jury could reasonably have drawn from the evidence that was admitted.
In my view, the evidence presented at trial fell considerably more than “a trifle short”; but even a trifle short is insufficient. I am unpersuaded by the majority’s view that evidence that is only “close to” being sufficient, ante at 70, is nonetheless sufficient under plain-error analysis. I am not aware of any case in which we have found the evidence insufficient to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and yet have refused to find *74that error “plain” and reversible. See generally United States v. Gjurashaj, 706 F.2d 395, 399 n. 6 (2d Cir.1983) (rejecting government’s contention that its failure to prove a necessary fact was a mere technical omission, and stating that “the prosecution’s failure to adduce any evidence as to an essential element of the crime must be regarded as a ‘defeet[] affecting substantial rights,’ Fed. R.Crim.P. 52(b), which the appellate court may therefore review even if the defendant did not bring it to the attention of the trial court, id.”); United States v. Kaplan, 586 F.2d 980, 982-83 & n. 4 (2d Cir.1978) (reversing conviction, on plain error analysis, for insufficiency of proof). In none of the cases invoked by the majority did the court refuse to reverse on the ground that the error was not plain; indeed, none of them even dealt with a claim that the evidence was insufficient. See, e.g., United States v. Olano, — U.S. —, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993) (improper presence of alternate jurors during deliberations found not prejudicial); United States v. Viola, 35 F.3d 37 (2d Cir.1994) (instructions held plain error under new law), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 1270, 131 L.Ed.2d 148 (1995); United States v. Yur-Leung, 51 F.3d 1116 (2d Cir.1995) (erroneous admission of evidence held waived). Insufficiency of the evidence is a defect that is sui generis, and is hence treated differently from other types of errors in many respects. For example, though the majority explains that “ ‘[t]he error must be so plain [that] the trial judge and prosecutor were derelict in countenancing it, even absent the defendant’s timely assistance in detecting it,’” ante at 70 (quoting United States v. Yu-Leung, 51 F.3d at 1121), insufficiency of the proof is a defect that the court is presumed to be able to assess without the aid of the defendant. Thus, Rule 29 provides that, after the evidence is closed on either side, if the evidence is insufficient but the defendant has made no motion for acquittal, the court “shall” enter a judgment of acquittal “of its own motion.” Fed.R.Crim.P. 29(a). And though other defects such as errors in evidentiary rulings or jury instructions, in order to be properly preserved, must be called to the attention of the trial court in time to permit the court to take corrective action, Rule 29(c) expressly permits a defendant to challenge the sufficiency of the evidence up to seven days after the jury has been dismissed, ie., after it is too late for the government to supply any additional proof.
In my view, the present case meets the standard for plain error articulated by the above cases and relied on by the majority. First, there was error: the evidence was insufficient. Second, the law was and is clear: the government’s burden is to introduce evidence from which a rational juror can infer guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Third, no right is more fundamental than the right not to be convicted on the basis of evidence that fails to meet that standard; surely a defendant convicted on the basis of evidence falling short of that standard has suffered cognizable prejudice. Finally, I find it difficult to believe that the trial court is not as able as the appellate court to recognize when the evidence has fallen a “trifle” short.
Despite his failure to move for a judgment of acquittal within seven days after the jury was dismissed, Muniz’s conviction on the basis of evidence that we all recognize was insufficient should not be allowed to stand.