By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive series
SDNY COURTHOUSE, June 8 – A young woman who was pimped out and forced to quit high school testified on June 5 in a disturbing prostitution prosecution case proceeding before U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Paul G. Gardephe.
By the afternoon of June 7 the two lawyers for defendant Claudius English rested their case, with a final volley of questions for a police officer from the Bronx' 46th Precinct about whether a bottle of Seagram's gin taken from English's apartment in 1995 Davidson Avenue had been open or closed.
The deeper problem, it has emerged, is that the New York Police Department destroyed evidence they took from English's apartment: three bullets and a holster. The government will submitted a letter to Judge Gardephe by Saturday, June 8 at noon on how the issueshould be addressed in the jury charge.
And here now via Inner City Press on June 8 is from the letter: "During trial, an NYPD property clerk, Sgt. Lachapell, testified that, pursuant to NYPD policy, three bullets and a holster were destroyed. The defendant has requested that the Court provide the jury with a spoliation instruction. The requested instruction is not warranted, because the evidence was not destroyed in bad faith, and because the defendant was not prejudiced by the destruction. See generally United States v. Greenberg, 835 F.3d 295, 304 (2d Cir. 2016) (affirming the denial of a motion to dismiss on spoliation grounds, because “the record is devoid of evidence that the Government acted in bad faith in failing to preserve the data”); United States v. Gonzalez, 764 F.3d 159, 170 (2d Cir. 2014) (stating that the destruction of guns and ammunition seized from defendant during his arrest pursuant to police department policies did not violate the due process rights of defendant); United States v. Pirre, 927 F.2d 694, 697 (2d Cir. 1991) (even assuming unpreserved evidence “might have been potentially useful” to the defense, “absent bad faith there is no violation”); United States v. Laurent, 607 F.3d 895, 902 (1st Cir. 2010) (Boudin, J.) (an adverse inference “instruction usually makes sense only where the evidence permits a finding of bad faith destruction; ordinarily, negligent destruction would not support the logical inference that the evidence was favorable to the defendant”); United States v. Romo-Chavez, 681 F.3d 955, 961 (9th Cir. 2012) (to warrant a spoliation instruction, “a criminal defendant must establish (1) that the evidence was destroyed in bad faith, and (2) that he was prejudiced by its destruction”); United States v. Lanzon, 639 F.3d 1293 (11th Cir. 2011) (affirming district court denial of adverse inference instruction where defendant failed to establish bad faith or prejudice); Stepnes v. Ritschel, 663 F.3d 952, 965 (8th Cir. 2011) (“Severe spoliation sanctions, such as an adverse inference instruction, are only appropriate upon a showing of bad faith”); United States v. Tyerman, 701 F.3d 552, 561 (8th Cir. 2012) (in addition to “bad faith,” prejudice must also be shown to justify a spoliation instruction— “the firearm was more inculpatory than exculpatory,” so the defendant “was not prejudiced by its destruction”). Here, the defendant has not satisfied either prong. There is no evidence of bad faith—the testimony at trial was that the evidence was destroyed in accordance with NYPD policy. And the defendant has suffered no prejudice—the destroyed evidence was highly probative of his guilt on the charge that he possessed and brandished a firearm. Accordingly, the requested adverse inference instruction is not warranted. The defendant can, of course, argue that the jury should consider the destruction of evidence before crediting the testimony from law enforcement officers that they recovered three bullets and a holster from the defendant’s apartment. See United States v. Jennell, 749 F.2d 1302, 1308-09 (9th Cir. 1984) (affirming the district court’s denial of a defendant’s request for a spoliation instruction under similar circumstances, stating that the district court appropriately “told counsel for the defendants that the loss or destruction of the evidence could be argued to the jury')." Will it work?
On Monday, June 10 come the summations and said jury charge. Judge Gardephe's courtroom Deputy told the juror that on Monday, "Lunch is on us," after discussing the admittedly overpriced in-house Sorriso's Court House Cafe ("Established 2019").
Will the NYPD's grossly negligent destruction of evidence in 2018 from a 2013 arrest allow impunity for these charges of child sex trafficking?
Earlier in Judge Gardephe courtroom with an otherwise empty gallery, a witness whom Inner City Press will not name and whose information will be sealed in the transcripttestified to being forced into oral sex by a pimp, whom she called Jay, who fired a gun from his roof and threatened her Irvington, New Jersey parents.
On June 6 the trial continued, with a Special Agent Nelson testifying about IP addresses from which Backpage.com advertisements were taken out. The case is USA v. Claudius English a/k/a Jay Barnes a/k/a Brent English, 18-cr-492 (PGG).
The conduct at issue - the shooting of a gun from the roof, the forced sex, the buying of advertisements and re-sale of Shitsu dog - took place in an apartment building on Davidson Avenue in The Bronx. The payments were made through Comerica Bank.
The witness, called Victim-1 in the initially sealed Complaint, for a time took the NYC subway and the PATH train to her high school in New Jersey, then stopped. She was forced to have sex with men, and was attacked for dating boys her own age. She lost her Shitsu dog.
The defense, doing its job, ended June 5 questioning the quality of disclosure, no 3500 material about the witnesses interviews with prosecutors in The Bronx. Judge Gardephe told the US Attorney's Office to look into it.
Later on June 5 Assistant US Attorneys Michael Krouse and Ni Qian wrote to Judge Gardephe that they had "spoke[n] by phone to the two relevant former Bronx ADAs, Lauren Di Chiara and Meagan Powers. Both stated they met with Sarah W. before she testified in the grand jury, but that they do not believe they took notes."
Perhaps they should have - in the state case against him, Claudius English got part of the search warrants against him quashed, see NYS decision here. Perhaps it emboldened him to go to trial on the Federal charges rather that plea bargain. As the trial nears its end, the wisdom of that decision will soon be seen. Watch this site.
