United States v. Louis

63 F. App'x 29
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit·Decided May 14, 2003·No. Docket No. 02-1388·Published·Cited by 2 cases

Opinion

SUMMARY ORDER

UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the judgment of the District Court is hereby AFFIRMED.

Defendant-appellant Darnell Louis appeals from a judgment of conviction entered on June 28, 2002, after defendant’s conviction by a jury, sentencing Louis principally to fifty months of imprisonment for possession of a firearm following a felony conviction, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(a)(2). Defendant argues on appeal that the District Court erred (1) by excluding relevant evidence favorable to his defense (i. e., the exclusion of a police officer’s contemporaneous notes including the names of people the officer had searched, and statements by people that defendant was not the right man), (2) by improperly applying a two-level sentence enhancement for obstruction of justice based on allegedly intentionally false statements defendant made in a declaration in support of a motion to suppress, and (8) by improperly preventing defendant from testifying at sentencing by threatening to impose an additional two-level sentencing enhancement if the Court found that he gave intentionally false statements.

This timely appeal followed.

A.

A district court is granted broad discretion for its evidentiary rulings. Such rulings are only reversed if they are manifestly erroneous such that the district court’s decision on the admissibility of the evidence constitutes an abuse of discretion. See, e.g., United States v. SKW Metals & Alloys, Inc., 195 F.3d 83, 87 (2d Cir.1999); United States v. Flaharty, 295 F.3d 182, 191 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 123 S.Ct. 37, 154 L.Ed.2d 237 (2002), cert. denied, Johnson v. United States, — U.S. -, 123 S.Ct. 1502, 155 L.Ed.2d 241 (2003). Generally, relevant evidence is admissible so long as its probative value is not substantially outweighed by its potential for unfair prejudice. Fed.R.Evid. 401, 403. We have held that a district court “is in the best position to evaluate the evidence and its effect on the jury, [and that the district court’s] rule 403 rulings are entitled to considerable deference and will not be overturned absent a clear abuse of discretion.” Constantino v. Herzog, 203 F.3d 164, 173 (2d Cir.2000). District courts are also afforded wide latitude in their decisions to exclude evidence that poses an undue risk of prejudice and/or confusion of the issues. See United States v. Blum, 62 F.3d 63, 67 (2d Cir.1995).

The District Court held that the testimony of unspecified bystanders and Florey Mompoint, individuals who were not eyewitnesses to the altercation or to the events that led to Louis’s arrest for possession of a handgun, bore no relevance to the defendant’s argument that the arresting police officers were motivated to lie and held that whatever probative value the testimony had was “vastly outweighed” by the danger of unfair prejudice and jury confusion. Additionally, both arresting officers testified that they never heard anyone claim that they were arresting the wrong individual at the time of the arrest. The Court excluded the testimony and held that “the defense’s proposed use of the evidence does not have any tendency to make the existence of the fact that the defense is attempting to establish, namely that the officers have lied about seeing the [31] gun in the defendant’s hand more probable than not.” Gov’t App. at 150.

Defendant argues that Police Officer Richard Banks’s memo book was improperly excluded. The District Court excluded the notebook as hearsay, finding that Banks had testified regarding his inability to remember whether he had searched Ducaste Lamothe, a defense witness, and that the memo book could not be used to corroborate Lamothe’s testimony that he was searched by Banks, stating that defense counsel was “going to try to draw inferences from a hearsay document as to what it means. You are attempting to corroborate the truth of the testimony of your witness [i.e., Lamothe].” Defendant argues on appeal that the memo book was circumstantial evidence of the connection between Banks and Lamothe on the night of defendant’s arrest (April 24, 2001). However, the connection between Banks and Lamothe was established by Banks’s testimony that his memo book contained Lamothe’s “pedigree” information (e.g., name, address, etc.), which Banks would have obtained on the night of April 24, 2001-testimony which corroborated La-mothe’s testimony that Banks searched him. [Red 22]

We find no abuse of discretion in the District Court’s exclusion of the testimony of the witness who did not observe the arrest and its decision that the testimony’s potential prejudicial effect and the potential confusion of the jury substantially outweighed its probative value. The exclusion of Banks’s memo book was harmless error, as Banks acknowledged, based on his having recorded Lamothe’s pedigree information in his memo book, that he must have questioned Lamothe.

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United States v. Louis, 63 F. App'x 29 (2d Cir. 2003).

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