Court Opinion

ID: 9462973
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:54:43.699715+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:52.319481
License: Public Domain

MANSFIELD, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
Although I concur in most of my brother Van Graafeiland’s thoughtful opinion, I must respectfully dissent from that part which deals with the district court’s admission into evidence of FBI Agent Rigolizzo’s hearsay testimony to the effect that in the course of his investigation he had learned of the theft of some 7,000 blank airline tickets, at least some of which had later passed through the Cross Roads Bar and were connected with Mike Augendiso and Larry Alfano, the latter being the manager of the bar. This testimony was not relevant to any issue properly before the jury and its admission before the jury in the circumstances of this case was highly prejudicial to the defendant. Its effect was to paint the defendant as an associate of known traffickers in stolen airline tickets, since he had made his telephone calls from the Cross Roads Bar and had admitted to the grand jury that he had met Mike Augendiso there and had accompanied Larry Alfano to Augendiso’s house.
This testimony was purportedly offered only to show that the evidence sought to be elicited from the defendant was material to the grand jury’s inquiry, but the contention that it was properly admitted on this basis simply cannot be sustained. The materiality of the subject concerning which a defendant is alleged to have perjured himself *865is a question of law for the court, not a question for the jury. Sinclair v. United States, 279 U.S. 263, 298-99, 49 S.Ct. 268, 73 L.Ed. 692 (1929); United States v. Marchisio, 344 F.2d 653, 665 (2d Cir. 1965). Since there was no need for the jury to hear the prejudicial evidence, the proper course was for the judge to excuse the jury, receive the testimony out of the jury’s presence, and make his ruling on materiality. See United States v. Whitted, 454 F.2d 642, 646-47 (8th Cir. 1972); Harrell v. United States, 220 F.2d 516, 520 (5th Cir. 1955) (dictum).1 Indeed the test of materiality — whether a false answer might tend to influence, impede or dissuade the grand jury in its investigation — is fixed at such a low level that only a minimal amount of proof need be presented to the court to establish materiality; a showing from the grand jury minutes or a statement from the prosecutor that the grand jury was investigating the matter under inquiry would suffice in most cases.
Allowing the jury in this case to hear the testimony could not be. deemed • harmless error. Without Rigolizzo’s testimony the jury might have had serious doubts about whether the defendant Albergo was referring to airline tickets, stolen or otherwise, in his taped phone conversations from the bar, since neither he nor the other party to these conversations (Loraine Zencorich) ever referred to airline tickets, much less to stolen ones. But on the basis of Rigolizzo’s hearsay, testimony to the effect that defendant’s admitted friends, Larry and Mike, one of whom was the owner of the bar from which Albergo was telephoning, had been “connected with” the stolen tickets, some of which had been recoyered from Larry, the trial jury would have an. understandable tendency to assume that because the defendant’s friends were said to be trafficking in stolen tickets, Albergo must have been conducting sales of those tickets in his telephone conversations, and had therefore lied to the grand jury when he testified that he knew nothing about airline tickets “gotten . . from Larry and Mike.” In short the tendency of this testimony was to convict Albergo through guilt by association.
Even if we assume arguendo that Rigolizzo’s testimony might properly be admissible for a limited purpose, it is doubtful that its probative value would outweigh this prejudice to the defendant, see Fed.R.Ev. 403, or that the latter could be cured by an instruction, buried amidst other charges, to the effect that the testimony did not permit the jury to infer participation by the defendant in the handling of stolen tickets. But where, as here, the testimony was wholly irrelevant to those issues properly before the jury, and thus entirely unnecessary, it was clearly erroneous to admit it at all. Under such circumstances, the error could hardly be remedied by such an instruction, which might be countenanced in other instances. “The naive assumption that prejudicial effects can be overcome by instructions to the jury, cf. Blumenthal v. United States, 332 U.S. 539, 559 [68 S.Ct. 248, 257, 92 L.Ed. 154], all practicing lawyers know to be unmitigated fiction. See Skidmore v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 2 Cir., 167 F.2d 54.” Krulewitch v. United States, 336 U.S. 440, 453, 69 S.Ct. 716, 723, 93 L.Ed. 790 (1949) (Justice Jackson concurring).
I must also emphatically disagree with the majority’s statement to the effect that one could assume from the prosecutor’s questioning of the defendant regarding whether he knew “who’s gotten airline tickets from Larry and Mike” that “Larry and Mike were connected in some way with the theft.” This assumption violates basic evidentiary principles. On the contrary, trial judges routinely instruct juries every day that counsel’s mere questions do not constitute evidence, and that they cannot provide an evidentiary basis for any inference. Only answers are evidence. In this case the only evidence forming a basis for such an *866assumption is found in the improperly admitted hearsay answers furnished by Agent Rigolizzo.
For these reasons I would reverse and remand the case for a new trial.

. United States v. Moran, 194 F.2d 623 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 343 U.S. 965, 72 S.Ct. 1058, 96 L.Ed. 1362 (1952), on which the government relies in arguing that the jury might hear this evidence, does not support that position. Moran rejected the argument that the court alone should have heard evidence bearing only on materiality solely on the ground that the point had not been properly raised below in the case. Id. at 626. Here a proper objection was made.