Summary Summary

Here are June’s first two summary orders of interest.

In United States v. Heredia, No. 07-0849-cr (2d Cir. June 20, 2008), the court agreed that introducing hearsay evidence as a prior consistent statement was error, but found the error to be harmless. In addition, the court condemned some of the prosecutor’s comments in summation – he compared an omission in a stipulation signed by both parties to an omission in the arresting officer’s memo book. This comment “falsely” implicated defense counsel in the government’s error, misrepresented the police officer’s testimony, and attempted to use defense counsel as a witness. Nevertheless, this too was harmless.

In United States v. Cammacho, No. 07-2370-cr (2d Cir. June 3, 2008), the court held that the sentencing record seemed to indicate that the district court incorrectly believed that it was required to make a supervised release violation sentence consecutive. The case was remanded for clarification.