Bennett v. City of Holyoke

90 F. App'x 6

Opinion

PER CURIAM.

This appeal follows the entry of a judgment in favor of defendants-appellees Daniel Szostkiewicz (mayor of the City of Ho-lyoke), Marc Cournoyer (Holyoke’s police chief), and Stephen Donoghue (Holyoke’s former police chief). The circumstances of the case are limned in our opinion in Bennett v. City of Holyoke, 362 F.3d 1 (1st Cir.2004) [No. 03-1520], dated March 22, 2004, and need not be repeated here.

In this appeal, plaintiff-appellant Gary A. Bennett challenges two mid-trial evi-dentiary rulings of the district court: (i) the exclusion of so-called comparator evidence anent Ralph DiNapoli and Joseph Garcia, and (ii) the admission of evidence regarding the criminality of Bennett’s conduct in surreptitiously recording a conversation. 1

It is black-letter law that a district court possesses broad discretion in connection with the admission or exclusion of evidence, and that its determinations in that wise are reviewed only for abuse of discretion. Udemba v. Nicoli, 237 F.3d 8, 14 (1st Cir.2001); Iacobucci v. Boulter, 193 F.3d 14, 20 (1st Cir.1999). We have carefully reviewed the rulings at issue here and we are satisfied that the trial court, in both instances, acted well within the en-cincture of its discretion. Given the fact-specific nature of both the case and the disputed rulings, further discussion would serve no useful purpose. Accordingly, the judgments entered below in favor of Szost-kiewicz, Cournoyer, and Donoghue will be

Affirmed.

1 . Bennett elaborates on this assignment of error by attacking (i) the trial court’s willingness to take judicial notice of the applicable criminal statute, Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 272, § 99, and (ii) the jury instructions related to this evidence. We have considered and rejected both theories.