Appeals Court Orders New Trial for Convicted Drug Dealer

COURT HOUSE — A man who is serving time in state prison for dealing drugs won a recent appeal and should soon get a new trial.
On July 25, 2008, Craig Young, 41, currently of Bayside State Prison, Leesburg, was sentenced to eight years incarceration with four years of parole ineligibility after being convicted on third-degree drug distribution charges related to an undercover drug buy in early 2007.
Young appealed from his conviction on several points, including: broken discovery rules, improper hearsay evidence and unfair admittance of past bad acts.
The appeal was submitted to the Appellate Division on Jan. 6 and decided by Judges Mary Catherine Cuff, Edith K. Payne and Alexander P. Waugh, Jr. on May 4.
Young won his appeal with the judges finding at least three reasons that a new trial should be warranted.
On Feb. 21, 2007, a confidential informant (identified as R.B.) contacted a detective from the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office and informed him that an individual named Craig (Young) was planning to sell drugs in the county. R.B. set up a meeting between the detective and Young that night at 3124 Route 9 South in Rio Grande.
According to the court record, the detective purchased one-eighth of an ounce of cocaine, colloquially known as an “eight-ball,” from Young for $150.
Young was not arrested at the time because officers hoped to arrange further purchases from him. However, the arrangements could not be made, and Young was arrested on July 15, 2007 and charged with the single sale.
At trial, Young’s defense attorney asked for a mistrial when prosecutor’s revealed that R.B. was the confidential informant. R.B. was on the defense witness list and had prepared a statement, which would have exonerated Young. If defense counsel knew R.B. was the informant, they would have known that R.B.’s exoneration should be taken with “a bigger grain of salt,” court documents stated.
On appeal, Young argued that by waiting for the trial to begin, prosecutors were, “thereby violating the discovery rules and resulting in unfair surprise and manifest injustice.”
From the trial record, appeals judges concluded that: the prosecutor was aware of R.B.’s identity as the confidential informant; the prosecutor knew that defense counsel was unaware; the prosecutor didn’t disclose R.B.’s role to defense counsel after receiving R.B.’s statement in discovery; but the prosecutor made that information known at the very first opportunity at trial, at a time when counsel’s defense strategy was essentially set.
“Indeed, the State’s timing of its disclosure appears to have been purposefully calculated to result in a proceeding that was fundamentally unfair to the defendant,” the appeals court decided. “In these circumstances, either a mistrial or a substantial continuance was warranted.”
A second point on appeal regarded improperly permitted hearsay testimony in which police witnesses were allowed to recount out-of-court statements of confidential informant R.B. that incriminated Young.
The record reflects the following testimony of the detective by the prosecutor:
Q. And how did that (the Feb. 21 drug buy) come about?
A. I had been talking with a confidential informant, and he called me that day and told me that there was somebody that he knew as Craig that was going to come down and start dealing drugs in Cape May County. He asked me if I would be available to try to meet with Craig, and I told him I would be.
Q. After you spoke with the C.I. with regard to jump starting an investigation with an individual named Craig, what happened next?
A. Well, I agreed to meet with the C.I. at about 7:45 that evening. He told me that Craig should be on his way over around that time.
Regarding this testimony, the appeals court cited another opinion:
“It is well settled that the hearsay rule is not violated when a police officer explains the reason he approached a suspect or went to the scene of the crime by stating that he did so ‘upon information received.’ Such testimony has been held to be admissible to show that the officer was not acting in an arbitrary manner or to explain his subsequent conduct,” the opinion stated.
“However, when the officer becomes more specific by repeating what some other person told him concerning a crime by the accused the testimony violates the hearsay rule. Moreover, the admission of such testimony violates the accused’s Sixth Amendment right to be confronted by witnesses against him.”
The Appellate Court said allowing this hearsay evidence was an error.
“Our review of the record in the present matter satisfies us that a reasonable possibility exists that the evidence complained of might have contributed to the conviction,” the opinion stated. “We reject any claim that the admission of the hearsay testimony constituted harmless error. A new trial is thus warranted.”
Because Young indicated that he would testify on his own behalf at trial, his criminal record was disclosed to the jury, including:
• On July 19, 1991, Young received two years of probation for third-degree unlawful possession of a weapon.
• On May 29, 1992, while on probation, he received a five-year sentence for probation violation, two third-degree drug charges and a fourth-degree resisting arrest charge.
• On May 19, 1995, he was sentenced to four years with 15 months of parole ineligibility for a third-degree drug distribution charge.
• On July 1, 1998, he was sentenced to three years on a third-degree drug charge.
• On Jan. 18, 2002, he was sentenced to one to three years in New York prison on drug charges.
The appeals court said it was ok to inform the jury appropriately regarding Young’s criminal record, but not to elicit lengthy testimony regarding his experience as a drug dealer.
At trial, defendant admitted on direct examination to being a former drug dealer, but he testified that in 2005 he determined “to clean up his act,” and that he had not sold drugs since June 2006. He adamantly denied selling drugs to the detective or to anyone else on Feb. 21.
On cross-examination, the State intensively questioned defendant on his prior drug dealing. The appellate decision listed a question and answer session nearly fifty lines long, including these excerpts:
Q. Okay. You said — I think it was kind of word for word, “I haven’t sold drugs since 2006.” Doesn’t that imply you sold them in 2006?
A. June. As of June.
Q. Who did you sell them to?
A. People that I know.
Q. In June of 2006 when you were selling drugs how did these acquaintances get in touch with you to buy drugs from you?
A. I would go by their house, or I would meet mainly at Sportsman’s and they would —
Q. What did you sell out of Sportsman Tavern as late as June 2006?
A. Cocaine.
“Its extended cross-examination focused instead solely upon the specifics of defendant’s prior illegal drug sales, occurring under circumstances that differed significantly from the sale for which defendant was now being prosecuted,” judges found on appeal. “The testimony elicited by the State thus bore no relevance to defendant’s guilt.”
The appellate judges noted that courts have found “mere proof that an accused has sold narcotics on another occasion, especially when it is a distantly-related occasion, has no special relevance…The prejudicial effect of such propensity evidence clearly outweighed any probative value that it might be found to have had.”
“We find these defects also to be sufficient to warrant a new trial,” the judges concluded.
Assistant County Prosecutor J. Vincent Molitor handled the appeal for the state and an attorney from the Public Defender’s Office represented Young. Calls to Molitor regarding this story were not returned and the Public Defender’s Office declined comment.