Court Opinion

ID: 9455493
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:24:05.677672+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:37.199224
License: Public Domain

DOOLING, District Judge
(dissenting in part).
It would appear that Riviello is entitled to a new trial.
When the Government rested, Riviello strenuously argued for acquittal on the *662ground that the evidence aliunde and independent of hearsay declarations about him made in his absence was insufficient to warrant submission of the case to the jury (170a-174a). The trial judge ruled that under the doctrine of United States v. Nuccio, 373 F.2d 168 (2 Cir.), the evidence sufficed (174a). When all parties rested Riviello again moved for acquittal, the trial judge reserved decision, and then charged the jury (176a-187a).
After defining conspiracy as including the element of the defendants’ knowingly associating themselves with the conspiracy (200a), the Court charged that if the jury concluded that the conspiracy did exist, it had then to determine separately for each defendant whether he participated in it and did so with knowledge of its unlawful purpose (202a). The court then charged
“In determining whether or not the defendant knowingly joined the conspiracy you should examine and consider all the evidence in the case, including the acts and statements of the defendant under consideration as well as the acts and statements of other persons with whom that defendant is alleged to have conspired” (202a-203a, italics supplied)
and the Court then went on to other parts of the charge. Before the jury retired, Riviello’s counsel excepted in the following language (220a)
“I think, your Honor, whether the request is made or not, failed to charge this jury that where a person is sought to become a member of a conspiracy he should be adjudged by his own independent acts or statements that he makes. It is not enough to limit it to only those cases where he knowingly and wilfully joins a conspiracy with knowledge of it. The cases hold that in order to seek one to become a member of a conspiracy it must be done by what he himself says or does aliunde or independent of any declarations or admissions or statements made by an alleged co-conspirator. I spent a great deal of time on that in my summation to the jury and I think, and I think in fairness to Riviello and Gilfone that should be charged.”
The Court, however, stated “I believe I have charged exactly in accordance with the prevailing rule in the Second Circuit.” The Court, plainly, bowed to the line of cases, given their evidently definitive expression in United States v. Geaney, 1969, 417 F.2d 1116, 1119-1121, that reaches back from United States v. Lopez, 1969, 420 F.2d 313, 317-318; United States v. Tyminski, 1969, 418 F.2d 1060, 1062; United States v. Branker, 1969, 418 F.2d 378, 379-380; United States v. Ragland, 1967, 375 F.2d 471, 476-479 (particularly at 479, headnote number 25); United States v. Nuccio, 373 F.2d 168, 173-174; United States v. Dennis, 1950, 183 F.2d 201, 230-231, aff’d sub nom. Dennis v. United States, 1951, 341 U.S. 494, 71 S.Ct. 857, 95 L.Ed. 1137; United States v. Pugliese, 1945, 153 F.2d 497, 500-501; United States v. Renda, 1932, 56 F.2d 601, 602; VanRiper v. United States, 1926, 13 F.2d 961, 967-968. The Court did not give Riviello’s belated (221a-223a) request No. 39 (228a-229a): it posed an opposite view: that the jury must review the adequacy of the “independent” evidence to implicate a defendant in the conspiracy separately, and may not consider evidence of verbal acts (“hearsay declarations”) attributed to and implicating him that took place out of his presence in deciding whether or not the Government has proved the conspiracy and his complicitly beyond a reasonable doubt. The requested charge was based on a charge of Judge Weinfeld in United States v. Galgano, that if the jury found a conspiracy, it had then to determine whether each defendant joined it by evaluating the evidence “without regard to, and independently of, the statements, acts or declarations of others.” The requested charge told the jury that out-of-court declarations or admissions received against the persons who made them were received “on a conditional or *663tentative basis” with respect to absent defendants “subject to independent proof of the existence of the conspiracy, and such absent defendants’ knowing participation in the conspiracy.” The requested charge continued:
“In other words, the alleged participation by a defendant in the conspiracy cannot be established against him by the acts and declarations of any of his alleged co-conspirators done or made in his absence. A defendant’s connection with the conspiracy must be established by independent proof based upon the reasonable inferences to be drawn from such defendant’s own actions, his own conduct, his own testimony or declarations, his own connection with the actions and conduct of the other alleged co-conspirators.
“Each defendant’s acts and declarations may be evidence of his own connection with the conspiracy and the conspiracy may be proved by the sum total of the independent acts and declarations of all the alleged participants.
“However, once you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that a conspiracy existed and that a defendant on trial was a member of the conspiracy, using the test of independent proof, I have described, then the acts and declarations of any one of the other persons whom you may find was also a member of the conspiracy, made during the pendency of the conspiracy and in furtherance of its objectives are considered the acts of all of the others, even though they were not present.”
As to Judge Weinfeld’s charge see United States v. Carminati, 2d Cir. 1957, 247 F.2d 640, 644-645. See in the general context United States v. Elgisser, 2d Cir. 1964, 334 F.2d 103, 107.
The view of the cases from VanRiper through Lopez is now so deeply rooted in Second Circuit law, that to note a dissent may be futile; indeed, the contrary doctrine has been criticized by some commentators,1 and the Second Circuit’s decisions have been followed elsewhere (see, e. g., Carbo v. United States, 9th Cir. 1963, 314 F.2d 718, 735-738). Although the practice of giving the conditional form of instruction may be fairly widespread, appellate support for the propriety and necessity of the practice is uncertain and to an extent of a negative cast. Cf. Glasser v. United States, 1942, 315 U.S. 60, 74-75, 62 S.Ct. 457, 86 L.Ed. 680; Greer v. United States, 5th Cir. 1943, 134 F.2d 912; Schmeller v. United States, 6th Cir. 1944, 143 F.2d 544, 550-551; United States v. Vida, 6th Cir. 1966, 370 F.2d 759, 766; Commonwealth v. Rogers, 1902, 181 Mass. 184, 192-194, 63 N.E. 421, 425-426.
The admissibility against absent defendants of evidence of “declarations of co-conspirators in furtherance of the conspiracy” depends on whether the words themselves were tools used to effectuate a criminal act. They are not admissible for their narrative content *664but for their constitutive role — as “verbal acts.” The merely narrative utterance is inadmissible, and evidence of a “verbal act” is not received for its spurious value as narrative implicating an absent defendant. If an utterance is a verbal act, its evidentiary significance depends not on its truth or falsity — that is beside the point — but upon its function in the commission of the crime. In some circumstances — and may not the present case be one? — a black lie about the absent defendant’s role and orders would be the most efficacious utterance to advance the crime (cf. Geaney, supra, 417 F.2d at 1121, fn. 4) and the most damning if treated as competent evidence of the complicity of the absent defendant.
The cases which have evolved to climax in Geaney, have not suggested that the declarations are competent evidence of the absent defendant’s complicity.2 They explicitly preserve the idea that the Court must keep the case from the jury unless satisfied that the prosecution has proved participation “by a fair preponderance of the evidence independent of the hearsay utterances.” United States v. Geaney, supra, 417 F.2d at 1120. Geaney is, none the less, pellucid that the jury is not only not to be instructed that it must find from the “independent” evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was implicated in the crime before considering the hearsay declarations as part of the total proofs, but that the jury is to be freed affirmatively to consider the hearsay on the issue of the absent defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt (417 F.2d at 1120), to the point, indeed, of using it to “tip the scale” in a case in which the independent evidence might not convince the jury of guilt (ibid). See, e. g., United States v. Bless, 2d Cir. 1970, 422 F.2d 210 at pp. 212-213; United States v. Eskow, 2d Cir. 1970, 422 F.2d 1060 at pp. 1069-1070. The threshold of admissibility is designedly set low enough to accord that advantage to the prosecution.
The present case may now seem at several removes from the context of Bruton v. United States, 1968, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476, but underlying Bruton is the value put on the defendant’s right to confront and to cross-examine his accuser. Riviello could not because Calarco was his accuser; he could not call Calarco to the witness stand, nor meet Calarco’s out-of-court imputation without himself testifying. Cf. Douglas v. Alabama, 1965, 380 U.S. 415, 418-419, 85 S.Ct. 1074, 13 L.Ed.2d 934. And in the frame of reference in which Geaney fixes the matter, the aim and effect of the procedure are to dilute the reasonable doubt requirement — a due process exaction, Matter of *665Winship, 1970, 397 U.S. 358, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 at the point at which, in a large class of prosecutions, the evidence of the prosecution is frequently most suspect, the informer or accomplice testifying to what a silent co-defendant said the absent defendant had said. If the words had a place in the record because they functioned in executing the crime or forming the criminal plan, they were admissible. But does not basic fairness require that the jury be told at once that the declaration is not evidence that the absent defendant was a participant in the crime and will never become such evidence no matter what other evidence is brought in? The declaration as a verbal act may become, perhaps, the responsibility of the absent defendant as a proved participant in the offense, but in an evaluation of the proofs in the legal perspective, it can not contribute to a finding that he was a party to the corrupt program.
If there be truth in the idea of jury incompetency to winnow evidence in pursuance of instructions (contrast United States v. Bless, supra, 422 F.2d at pp. 213-214), the consequence would not be the admission of such evidence for all purposes upon the judge’s impression that a preponderance of the evidence^ if believed, would indicate that the absent defendant was associated in the venture, but the exclusion of the evidence for every purpose on the ground that its prejudicial effect as spurious evidence of participation outweighs its utility as evidence of a constitutive act. Mr. Justice Jackson’s vivid portrayal of the pitfalls of conspiracy practice in the courts (Krulewitch v. United States, 1949, 336 U.S. 440, 453-455, 69 S.Ct. 716, 93 L.Ed. 790) surely argues for the due-process importance of precision in jury instructions. See as questioning the view that juries were less capable than judges of making the required analyses, Morgan, supra, 43 Harv.L.Rev. at 188, 191.

. Cf. Maguire and Epstein Preliminary Questions of Fact in Determining the Admissibility of Evidence, 1927, 40 Harv. L.Rev. 392, 397, fn. 19, 415-424 (condemning theory that court should rule only preliminarily on admissibility and then “pass the question of admissibility along to the jury for their determination,” pages 420-421) ; Morgan, Functions of Judge and Jury in the Determination of Questions of Fact, 1929, 43 Harv.L.Rev. 165, 176 (to believe jurors will reject heard evidence if unable to find a fact which determines its relevancy “requires a credulity impossible to achieve”; such approach furnishes “the defendant an opportunity to entrap an unwary trial judge”) ; cf. Developments in the Law, Criminal Conspiracy, 1959, 72 Harv.L. Rev. 920, 987 (noting that if declarations are thought logically admissible only if independent evidence connects defendant with the conspiracy, yet the evidence is conditionally admitted and the issue passed to the jury, the provisionally admitted evidence may in fact be used to support the prima facie case, hearsay thus lifting itself by its own boot straps to the level of competency, and that where that practice prevails, “the requirement of independent evidence is virtually meaningless”).

. The “multiple hearsay” exception (American Law Institute, Model Code of Evidence, 1942, Rule 530; Uniform Rules of Evidence, 1953, Rule 66; McCormack, Evidence, 1954, § 225, p. 461) would not embrace so much of Warren’s testimony that Calarco had stated to him that Riviel-lo had stated fact “X” to Calarco as sought to put in evidence against Riviello his asserted statement of “X” to Calarco as an “admission” of Riviello’s. Warren can testify to what the defendant Calarco said to him because the words of Calarco made up a verbal act in furtherance of the conspiracy. If it were of moment to show that Calarco thought that Riviello was a party to the burgeoning crime, Warren’s testimony that Calarco’s words to him also implicated Riviello would be admissible, not to show that Riviello was implicated, but to show as against Calarco that if Riviello really was involved, then Calarco knew it. Uniform Rule 66 illustrates the “multiple hearsay” exception by saying that a hospital record (true “hearsay” and within an exception) would be admissible under the business entry exception to the hearsay rule [(Rule 63(13))], and, if it contained a history of the accident as given by an accident-case plaintiff, that history could be put into evidence against the plaintiff as his “admission” under the Rule 63(7) exception.
The scope of Preliminary Draft of Proposed Rules of Evidence for United States District Courts and Magistrates, 1969, Rule 8-01 (c) (3) (v) (comment at p. 169) is uncertain; proposed Rule 8-05 is similar to Uniform Rule 66 and illustrates its sense by use of a hospital record example.