Court Opinion

ID: 9455278
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:17:21.365535+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:32.166082
License: Public Domain

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
If the trial judge had ruled that the description of Littman alleged to have been incorporated in Marino's telephone call was in furtherance of the conspiracy, I would have accepted the ruling on the grounds elaborated in Judge Anderson’s concurring opinion. Indeed I might well have so ruled had I been presiding at the trial. But the judge found otherwise, and there was warrant for his considering the statement to have been simply a piece of gossip. We should give the same respect to such a negative determination on a preliminary question of fact relating to admissibility as when the determination goes the other way. See United States v. Lopez, 420 F.2d 313 (2 Cir. 1969).
Once that position is accepted, Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968), calls for reversal. While that case involved a confession by a coconspirator and this does not, Bruton was not limited to the precise facts there presented. The decision extended to other instances of the receipt of inadmissible hearsay where “the risk that the jury will not, or cannot, follow instructions is so great, and the consequences of failure so vital to the defendant, that the practical and human limitations of the jury system cannot be ignored” 391 U.S. at 135, 88 S.Ct. at 1627. The Court’s further statement, “Such a context is presented here, where the powerfully incriminating extrajudicial statements of a codefendant, who stands accused side-by-side with the defendant, are deliberately spread before the jury in a joint trial,” 391 U.S. at 135-136, 88 S.Ct. at 1628, fits this case exceedingly well.
I would reverse for a new trial.