Ferranti v. United States

6 F. App'x 67
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit
DecidedMarch 20, 2001
DocketNo. 00-2271
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 6 F. App'x 67 (Ferranti v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ferranti v. United States, 6 F. App'x 67 (2d Cir. 2001).

Opinion

[68]*68 SUMMARY ORDER

UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the judgment be AFFIRMED.

Petitioner-appellant Jack Ferranti appeals the judgment entered in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Weinstein, J.) denying his petition brought pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Ferranti was convicted at a jury trial in the Eastern District of New York of arson homicide in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 844(i), arson conspiracy in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371, related mail fraud counts resulting from insurance fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1341 and witness tampering in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(b).

Ferranti raises the following three issues pursuant to a Certificate of Appealability: (1) was the testimony of government witness Vincent Marziano materially false at trial such that Ferranti deserves a new trial; (2) under the Supreme Court’s decisions in Jones v. United States and Apprendi v. New Jersey, was it error for the district judge to determine the degree of homicide under Section 2A of the Sentencing Guidelines; and (3) did a material Brady violation occur as a result of the prosecutor’s failure to turn over to the defense evidence in the hands of the Fire Department (specifically, that the helmet worn by the firefighter who died in the fire from a fall was condemned by OSHA).

1. Marziano testified at trial to a statement made to him by one of the arsonists, who (according to Marziano’s account) knocked on his window at 2 a.m., woke Marziano, and blurted a statement that was admitted as an excited utterance. Marziano told the grand jury that he lived at one location at the time of the fire, but testified at trial that he was living at another location with one John Tancredi. The defense recently discovered from Tancredi that he was not living with Marziano at the relevant time. Ferranti deems this inconsistency critical because it raises the prospect that Marziano was living at yet another location at which there was no window to knock upon — which would discredit the only detail of Marziano’s account capable of corroboration.

To the extent that Ferranti argues that the government’s failure to disclose Marziano’s mistaken testimony before the grand jury requires § 2255 relief, this nondisclosure was not material to Ferranti’s conviction, as required by Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963) (holding that a nondisclosure by the prosecution “violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution”). A nondisclosure is material “only if there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different. A ‘reasonable probability’ is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome.” United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 682, 105 S.Ct. 3375, 87 L.Ed.2d 481 (1985). A number of witnesses (in addition to Marziano) gave testimony devastating to Ferranti: his recent reinstatement of the store’s insurance policy, his removal of valuable inventory from the store the day before the fire, his procurement of a new space-heater that was not in the store prior to the fire (and was found in between flammable liquid burn patterns), his instructions to several employees to lie to authorities concerning various matters related to the arson and his statements in the months prior to the fire that if business continued to fail he would collect on the insurance.

Ferranti also argues that the government failed in its obligation to research [69]*69issues bearing upon the credibility of its witnesses (especially Marziano). However, the subject matter of the testimony was the residence of a witness who was peripatetic. In this confused situation, the government did little enough to unravel the facts, and candidly acknowledged at oral argument that more could be done. But Marziano’s testimony was insufficiently crucial to Ferranti’s conviction for this Court to have to decide whether the government had an obligation to do more than it did.

2. The district court calculated Ferranti’s sentence by looking to U.S.S.G. § 2K1.4(c)(l) (the guideline for arson where death results), which instructs the district judge to apply the “most analogous” homicide guideline. The district court applied U.S.S.G. § 2A1.1 (the guideline for first degree murder) and downwardly departed to 435 months from the required sentence of life imprisonment because no recommendation of life imprisonment had been requested of the jury as required by the applicable version of 18 U.S.C. § 34.

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Related

Jack Ferranti v. Warden Allenwood LSCI
679 F. App'x 113 (Third Circuit, 2017)

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Bluebook (online)
6 F. App'x 67, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ferranti-v-united-states-ca2-2001.