Court Opinion

ID: 9450204
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:38:18.77347+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:11.576149
License: Public Domain

WATERMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I concur with the majority in affirming the conviction of Angelo Moret, but I respectfully dissent from the affirmance of that of Augustine Moret. I am of the belief that the latter defendant’s motion for a directed verdict of acquittal, first made at the close of the government’s case, repeated after both sides had rested, and made once again after the jury had returned its verdict, should have been granted. The only evidence introduced by the government in support of the government’s case against her was not merely weak — it was so completely self-contradictory that it afforded insufficient basis for permitting the issue of her guilt to go to the jury.
As the government approached this trial, and as it recognized in its opening statement and in its profferings of evidence, in order for it to make out a proper case against Augustine it was essential to show that she, as well as her husband, had been in actual physical possession of the half ounce of heroin Angelo sold to the narcotics agent. The government recognized that eye witness testimony of association with her husband when accompanying him to the scene could not suffice for conviction. The government attempted to establish this essential fact of actual possession through the testimony of three of its agents, one of whom purchased the half ounce of heroin from Augustine’s husband, Angelo, inside a building, and two of whom observed the actions of Augustine and her husband immediately prior to the entry of both defendants into that building. These latter two agents, observing appellants with binoculars at a distance of 60 to 70 feet through a wire mesh fence, testified they saw Augustine get out of a car with Angelo and pass something to him before the two entered the building. The government argued that the heroin sold inside the building was the something that had changed hands outside. The difficulty with this claim, however, is that the details of the inside agent’s testimony, when compared with those of the outside agents’ testimony, point to a conclusion I believe inescapable, that, if anything at all changed hands outside the building, it was something different from that which was sold inside.
The agent who testified to purchasing the heroin from Angelo Moret stated that the heroin, which Angelo extracted from his right trouser pocket before handing it to him, was contained in a one-inch square double glassine envelope; and the agent identified at trial and put into evidence the very envelope which he said he had received. This envelope differed markedly from the object which the other two agents claimed they saw Angelo take from his wife outside the building and place in his right trouser pocket. Both these latter agents, observing defendants at a distance and through a wire mesh fence with binoculars, described the object which they saw change hands as having been much larger. One described it as a white fiat package four inches by four inches; the other described it as a white flat package three and one half inches by three and one half inches. In fact, the latter agent indicated that the package had to have been that big for him to have seen it at all, for he stated that when Augustine transferred the package she did so with her palm turned away from him, and he was only able to see the edges of the package sticking out over her hand. Stating the size of the various packages in terms of total area, the glassine envelope which contained heroin and which was transferred inside the building was but one inch square, while the package which the agents saw being transferred outside the building was described as being either 12% square inches or 16 square inches large.
The government never attempted to resolve this contradiction in the evidence against Augustine, except by arguing *894that because the envelope of heroin was taken from the same trouser pocket into which Angelo had been seen placing the package given him by his wife outside, it must have been the same package. But in order to accept this conclusion, the testimony of the two agents outside must be entirely discredited on the issue of what they saw being transferred, and it must be assumed that what they really saw being transferred, despite their testimony, was not of the size of 12% or 16 square inches, but was only one inch square.1
I cannot agree with my brother Kaufman that, despite this gross conflict in the only evidence which the government introduced against Augustine, we should affirm her conviction and not set aside her five-year sentence of incarceration upon the theory that the jury was merely confronted with a slight variance in evidence such as frequently occurs in trials and which it was the proper province of the jury to resolve. This case does not present the familiar situation that creates a two-sided credibility issue for the jury to resolve when a key government witness and a key defense witness give different versions of the same event. Nor does it involve the submission to the trier of fact of several possible inferences as to a defendant’s state of mind which a jury might reasonably draw from certain established outwardly observable facts, compare, e. g., United States v. Dardi, 330 F.2d 316 (2 Cir. 1964), or several possible reasonable interpretations thereof, one inference consistent with innocent conduct, compare, e. g., United States v. Tutino, 269 F.2d 488 (2 Cir. 1959). We are concerned here only with whether the government’s evidence adequately established that one particular event, Augustine Moret’s possession of a one-inch square package containing heroin, actually took place. This case also does not involve, in my judgment, the presentation by the government of evidence which, because of slight variations, merely fails to “precisely dovetail.” It would be a sorry day indeed if government testimony in a criminal case always had to be “letter perfect” by rote if convictions were to be obtained. Here, however, two segments of testimonial evidence, the testimony of the agents outside the building and that of the agent inside the building, both of which were absolutely essential to support the conviction of Augustine, constituted the only evidence presented by the government in support of its case against her, and those two segments of testimonial evidence contradicted each other.
This in itself, in my judgment, requires that we reverse this conviction.
In addition, the nature of this conflict of crucial evidence invites a look at certain other disturbing questions about the government’s case against Augustine. Could the agents, through binoculars, even under the best of conditions, have seen a one-inch square envelope changing hands at the relevant distance? If, as one of the agents testified, Augustine’s palm was turned away from both agents as she made the transfer, how did either of the agents see the one-inch square envelope being passed? At least, how could the one agent who testified he saw only the edges of a white flat package sticking out over Augustine’s palm, turned away from him, possibly have seen sticking out over her palm the edges of a glassine envelope one inch by one inch ? If the agents made an error of this magnitude in observing the size of the package passed, mistaking something about the size of a postage stamp for something almost half the size of an ordinary business envelope, how certain can we be that they actually saw anything *895change hands ? These are not idle questions. They bear directly on the only issue involving Augustine — that of whether the government produced any credible evidence tending to show that she ever had physical possession of the heroin her husband subsequently sold so as to require that the question of her guilt be submitted to a jury.
I am also unable to accept my brother Dimock’s reasoning that the jury could have found that, sometime between the time the defendants entered the building and the time Angelo met the agent to whom the sale was made, Angelo Moret either transferred heroin from a larger package given him by his wife to the small glassine envelope which contained the heroin when it was sold, or took the small glassine envelope out of a larger package. There are several reasons why I feel compelled to reject this explanation as a basis for sustaining Augustine Moret’s conviction. First, the government consistently attempted to establish the identity of the package by showing that when the sale was made Angelo withdrew the glassine envelope from the same pocket into which he had placed the package he had taken from his wife. This argument rests on the assumption that what was in Angelo’s pocket before he entered the building stayed there until his sale to the narcotics agent inside. Any attempt to resolve the conflicting testimony as to the size of the packages observed by implying some switch of packages after Angelo entered the building destroys this underlying assumption. In order to affirm on such a theory, we must assume not only that what Angelo put in his pocket outside stayed there until his meeting with the agent inside, but also that sometime between the time he entered the building and met the agent, while unseen by anyone except possibly his wife, he made a switch of packages and then put the new package back into his same trouser pocket. Such hypothetical conjecture is, in my judgment, insufficient to support Augustine’s conviction. Moreover, if an assumption be made that Angelo received from Augustine a large package with the small1 glassine envelope of heroin inside, and' that once inside the building he was able to maneuver with his hand within the recesses of his trouser pocket, so as to-pluck the glassine envelope from inside the large package and thus produce only the small glassine envelope for sale, such an effort to resolve the conflict in testimony is equally open to criticism as similarly being but hypothetical conjecture. Second, the government never suggested to the jury, or to this court, that such a switch had been made, or that more than one package, or any package within a package, was involved, but argued to it and to us that the mere fact that Angelo’s hand went into and came out of the-same pocket established that what Angelo sold to the agent was what he had' received from his wife. Lastly, even assuming that a charge to the jury which indicated that the agents’ contradictory stories could be reconciled by adopting either of the two theories just discussed, and thereby the conviction would be justified, I agree with Judge Kaufman that the charge did no more than indicate to-the members of the jury that they could infer that the package sold inside the-building was the same one which the agents outside had seen change hands.
Finally, I point out that all three of us have indicated that, in the face of the government’s conflicting evidence as to-the identity of the package of heroin which she is supposed to have had in her possession, there are only two possible-ways of justifying an affirmance of Augustine Moret’s conviction: (1) by regarding the evidence as sufficient for the-jury to conclude that the package transferred by Augustine outside the building-was the very one which contained the heroin which her husband sold to the-government agent inside; or (2) by regarding the evidence as sufficient for a jury to conclude that more than one package was involved, at least one of' which was in Augustine’s possession outside the building and when in her possession contained heroin. My brother Dim-*896ock notes in his opinion that the package of heroin sold inside the building would not much resemble the one described as having changed hands outside, but says that to support the verdict it is unnecessary to conclude that the two packages were the same, thus tacitly rejecting alternative (1) above. My brother Kaufman, in his concurring opinion, explicitly rejects alternative (2) in favor of a ruling that the jury could reasonably have found the envelopes to have been the same. I, of course, reject both alternatives (1) and (2). Therefore, although separate majorities of this panel agree in rejecting each of the only two possible methods of reconciling the government’s contradictory evidence which would permit affirmance of Augustine Moret’s conviction, she must serve the prison sentence imposed upon her unless she is able to obtain a different result in a higher court than ours.
I would reverse Augustine Moret’s conviction.

. Of course it would be theoretically possible to credit the testimony of the binocular-equipped agents and to reject the testimony of the agent who purchased the one-inch square glassine envelope which contained the heroin; but as that envelope was introduced into evidence and the agent described it on the record as being of that size, such a choice of stories would be an unrealistic choice, indeed.