United States v. Myerson

689 F. Supp. 312, 1988 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6728, 1988 WL 78358
District Court, S.D. New York·Decided July 6, 1988·No. No. 87 Cr. 796 (JFK)·Published·Cited by 1 cases

Opinion

OPINION AND ORDER

KEENAN, District Judge:

Background

Defendant Hortense Gabel (“Gabel”) is charged jointly with her two co-defendants in five counts of a six-count indictment. Defendant Bess Myerson is alone charged in the sixth count. The charges and basic thrust of the indictment are set forth in earlier decisions of this Court dated April 13, 1988 and June 21, 1988, familiarity with which is assumed. Now before the Court is a motion by Gabel to suppress, and have returned to her, certain documents. The motion is granted in part and denied in part.

On August 6, 1987, while the grand jury was investigating this matter and before the indictment was returned, Gabel’s daughter, Sukhreet, appeared at the United States Attorney’s Office with several shopping bags of documents from Gabel’s files which had originally been in Gabel’s Chambers while she was a New York State Supreme Court Justice. The Court is convinced that no Government attorney or agent in any way directed or suggested to Sukhreet Gabel (“Sukhreet”) that the documents be brought to the United States Attorney’s Office and that Sukhreet was acting entirely on her own when she brought these shopping bags to the United States Attorney’s Office.

When this motion was first filed, only ten documents were at issue which the Government initially declined to identify to the defense. At the Court’s suggestion on May 25, 1988, the Government supplied to the defense copies of each of the ten documents. Subsequently on May 26, 1988, the Government supplied the defense with a copy of another document, the telephone bill of a third party, which had also been supplied by Sukhreet on August 6, 1987. It should be noted that all of these eleven documents had already been supplied to the defense in the discovery process by the Government, but it was not until the two late May, 1988 dates that the Government identified them as from the shopping bags.

On June 8, 1988, the Government produced a Supplemental Affidavit of Special Investigator Anthony J. Lombardi which attached as exhibits additional documents which Sukhreet had supplied to the Government. The documents were supplied on August 6, 1987 with the shopping bag documents, on August 10, 1987, or on October 20, 1987. On April 13, 1988, after this motion was filed, Sukhreet also produced her mother’s “Rolodex” file from defendant Gabel’s Chambers.

The “new” August 6, 1987 material referred to in the June 8, 1988 Supplemental Affidavit consisted of four pages of directions for driving to the summer residence of third parties in Eastern Long Island. This material had already been supplied to the defense in discovery. Apparently, Sukhreet originally told the Government that the directions had been given to her in August, 1983 (Lombardi Supplemental Affidavit ¶ 4) and thus the Government did not originally include it in the initial response to the motion to suppress since it would not have been from Gabel’s Chambers. However, further interviews with Sukhreet during the week of May 30, 1988 disclosed that although she had originally gotten the directions in August, 1983 “she had given this document back to her parents.” Lombardi Supplemental Affidavit ¶ 5. Sukhreet also stated that she had gotten the directions from her mother’s records prior to producing them for the prosecution on August 6, 1987.

The item produced by Sukhreet on August 10, 1987 consisted of a single “Rolodex” card with the defendant Myerson’s name, official title and office telephone numbers. Defendant Gabel’s “Rolodex” files had previously been subpoenaed by the grand jury and produced on July 27, 1987. Those “ ‘Rolodex’ files contain an entry for ‘Bess Myerson’ that is virtually identical to the card produced by Sukhreet,” (Lombardi Supplemental Affidavit 117), and they were made available to the [314]*314defense as part of discovery on January 29, 1988.

The documents provided by Sukhreet on October 20, 1987 to the Government consisted of her father’s financial and tax papers. Apparently, these documents have not been copied, studied or analyzed by the Government and are being kept locked and secure separate from other documents.

To insure complete accuracy by the Court, the entirety of paragraph 9 of the June 8, 1988 Supplemental Affidavit of Investigator Lombardi is set forth below:

9. On April 13, 1988, Sukhreet Gabel produced a “Rolodex” file that she stated was the “Rolodex” file maintained by defendant Gabel in her Supreme Court Chambers. Duplicate copies of a limited number of these documents were made by me (Exhibit 4). After I advised Assistant United States Attorney Lawrence about Ms. Gabel’s production, Assistant United States Attorney Lawrence advised me not to make any further duplications and to segregate these duplicated documents. I also was advised by him to return the “Rolodex” file to Ms. Gabel. This was done. The duplicated documents have remained segregated and, until the preparation of this affidavit, have not been reviewed by anyone else except your affiant. The documents have not been relied upon by me in any aspect this case.

The original Government response to this motion was filed on May 3, 1988. Included with the response was an initial affidavit of Special Investigator Lombardi dated May 2, 1988. This affidavit, together with a sworn Question and Answer Statement (“Q & A”) of Sukhreet Gabel taken August 6, 1987 sets forth the method by which the shopping bag documents at issue came into the Government’s possession. Portions of Sukhreet’s “Q & A” relevant to this motion are hereby ordered unsealed and are affixed to this Opinion as Exhibit “A”. The remainder of the “Q & A” is 3500 material which the Government will produce to the defense at trial and is to remain under seal until then.

The history of the “shopping bag” documents can best be summarized as follows. During the last week of July or the first week of August, 1987, defendant Gabel brought to her home from her Chambers portions of her “personal files.” Sukhreet, with her parents’ permission, selected the 1983 files that “pertained to Bess Myerson” and what she thought was relevant correspondence for the years 1982, 1983 and 1984. Although Sukhreet obtained possession of the files with the knowledge and consent of her parents, her parents did not know she would bring the papers to the United States Attorney’s Office, which she did without any suggestion or direction from Government authorities. Sukhreet had not had an opportunity to carefully review the documents she brought in the shopping bags to the United States Attorney and she was later given an opportunity to do so alone, without any Government agent present at the United States Attorney’s Office. Sukhreet was given the option of supplying any documents she wished to the Government or of not supplying any at all. The prosecutor clearly informed Ms. Gabel that she was under no compulsion or obligation to provide any of the documents to the Government even though she had already brought them to the prosecutor’s office. Sukhreet acknowledged that she understood she was under no compulsion. According to the January 21, 1988 affidavit of Sukhreet Gabel filed by the defense in support of this motion at ¶ 5, Sukhreet told her mother that she “might want to show some of the papers to ‘the attorneys’.” Although Sukhreet meant the prosecution attorneys, she did not specify to her mother which attorneys she was referring to.

Discussion

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United States v. Myerson, 689 F. Supp. 312, 1988 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6728, 1988 WL 78358 (S.D.N.Y. 1988).

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