People v. Bartholomew

71 Misc. 2d 876, 337 N.Y.S.2d 906, 1972 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1367
CourtNew York County Courts
DecidedNovember 14, 1972
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 71 Misc. 2d 876 (People v. Bartholomew) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York County Courts primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Bartholomew, 71 Misc. 2d 876, 337 N.Y.S.2d 906, 1972 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1367 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 1972).

Opinion

Lyman H. Smith, J.

The defendant, a cook at the Nassau County Jail, has been indicted for allegedly selling liquor and marijuana, and agreeing to sell heroin to an inmate at the jail. The indictment contains 14 counts charging the defendant with bribe receiving (3 counts), receiving a reward for official misconduct (2 counts), official misconduct (3 counts), promoting prison contraband in the first degree (2 counts), and second degree (2 counts), criminally .selling a dangerous drug in the third degree, and criminal possession of a dangerous drug in the fourth degree.

This Indictment No. 34766 was the result of an undercover investigation into the activities of the officers and employees of the Nassau County Jail. That investigation also caused the Grand Jury of Nassau County to hand up 24 additional indictments charging other prison employees with criminal transactions of a similar nature. Prior to the trial in this case one of these indictments was disposed of (by plea). The remaining indictments have not yet gone to trial.

During the course of the trial, the defendant has made an oral application for an order directing the People to furnish him with a copy of all of the testimony given by the People’s witness, Charles Di Umberto, to the Grand Jury which indicted the defendant. Since Di Umberto is presently testifying for tiié [877]*877People upon this trial, the defendant urges that the rule established by the Court of Appeals in the case of People v. Rosario (9 N Y 2d 286) requires that all of his testimony before the Grand Jury should now be made available for purposes of impeachment on cross-examination.

The People have already complied with defendant’s request to the extent that they have provided excerpts from Di Umberto’s Grand Jury testimony, which they claim constitute all of said witness’s testimony concerning the defendant. It is the People’s contention that the remainder of the witness’s testimony should remain sealed since it relates to other defendants who have not yet been tried.

The broad scope of the defendant’s request raises novel Questions concerning the outer limits of the Rosario doctrine. That the Rosario doctrine does have limitations was indicated by the Court of Appeals, but the courts of this State have not yet had occasion to make any significant efforts to explore and determine the exact dimensions of the principle announced in that case. The defendant’s application presents such an occasion, and this court must now initiate the inquiry.

The essence of the Rosario holding is this: after a witness has testified at the trial, the adverse party is entitled to inspect any statement the witness made prior to testifying “ as long as the statement relates to the subject matter of the witness’ testimony.” (People v. Rosario, supra, p. 289).

Thus at the outset it is important to note that the Rosario holding does not require the People to furnish copies of all statements which this witness made prior to trial. The first limitation on the application of the Rosario requirement is that the statement must relate to the subject matter of the witness’s testimony given at the trial. The exact import of this limitation is difficult to discern for there is a dearth of case law on the subject in this State. (See Ann. 7 ALE 3d 181, 226, for cases, in other jurisdictions.) However, it would appear that under normal circumstances, when the People call a witness, they should not be required to open their files and surrender every statement given by this witness including those concerning the criminal activities of other persons not at issue in the trial. Since a large part of the Grand Jury testimony of Charles Di Umberto falls into this category, the first impression is that it is irrelevant and therefore not subject to disclosure under the Rosario rule.

The defendant argues however, that Di Umberto’s Grand Jury testimony is intimately interrelated. It is conceded that it all relates to alleged misconduct of officials and employees of the [878]*878Nassau County Jail; that it was given in hulk as part of one extensive investigation; that on certain days he observed several alleged criminal acts committed by different persons and on other days surrendered real evidence that he had gathered and .preserved over a period of days or weeks. Thus, the defendant argues, a review of the witness’s testimony in toto before the Grand Jury might disclose inconsistencies such as a statement by the witness that he observed two or more criminal acts on the same date, at the same lime, but in different places and involving different persons. He also suggests by his argument that this witness’s testimony before the Grand Jury, concerning real evidence he had obtained, may reveal that the evidence was not preserved or segregated in the manner he has related at the trial. And finally, defendant urges that the Grand Jury testimony may reveal other inconsistencies in Di Umberto’s testimony at trial which he can only determine after the Grand Jury testimony has been revealed to him.

Assuming arguendo that this contention has merit -and that the defendant has shown sufficient relationship between the Grand Jury and trial testimony of the witness to come within the ambit of the Rosario rationale, this would not necessarily lead to the conclusion that all such Grand Jury testimony in the instant case must now be released. For the court in Rosario placed another limitation on the disclosure requirement, when it held (p. 290): Our decision presupposes that the statement relates to the subject matter of the witness’ testimony, that it is to be used for impeachment purposes only after direct examinaion and that the necessities of effective law enforcement do not require that the statement he kept secret or confidential. ” (Emphasis supplied y.

Once again, the exact meaning of this limitation has yet to be defined by reported decisions. In People v. Graydon (70 Misc 2d 336) it has recently been suggested that this requirement enjoins the release of pretrial statements given to social workers since Social Service records are declared to be confidential by statute.

By a parity of reasoning, it would seem that a witness’s testimony before a Grand Jury should not be available for use on cross-examination of that witness at the trial because the minutes of Grand Jury proceedings have been declared to be confidential by long tradition and legislative mandate. (Penal Law, 215.70; CPL art. 190.) Although the United States Supreme Court has held that the defendant’s constitutional right to obtain pretrial statements of prosecution witnesses does not extend to [879]*879their testimony before the grand jury (Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. v. United States, 360 U. S. 395) our State has adopted a broader rule. Thus, despite the cloak of secrecy that normally surrounds grand jury proceedings, it is now well established in this jurisdiction that the 11 pre-trial testimony of prosecution witnesses given before the Grand Jury has been held to come within the Rosario rule” (Richardson, Evidence [Prince 9th ed., 1964], § 480-a) and thus must be made available to the defendant on cross-examination. (People v. Agron, 10 N Y 2d 130; People v. Pizarro, 15 N Y 2d 803; People v. Jaglom, 17 N Y 2d 162.)

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Related

People v. Bartholomew
73 Misc. 2d 541 (New York County Courts, 1973)

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Bluebook (online)
71 Misc. 2d 876, 337 N.Y.S.2d 906, 1972 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1367, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-bartholomew-nycountyct-1972.