DETECTIVE SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO TESTIFY AS AN EXPERT ABOUT THE ROLES PLAYED BY THE PEOPLE OVERHEARD IN RECORDED PHONE CALLS IN THIS DRUG CONSPIRACY CASE, ERROR DEEMED HARMLESS HOWEVER.

Although deemed harmless error in this drug conspiracy prosecution, the Second Department determined a detective should not have been allowed to testify (as an expert) about the alleged roles played by people overheard in recorded phone calls:

It was proper to permit the detective to describe certain practices and define certain terms that have a “fixed meaning . . . within the narcotics world” … . However, it was error to permit the prosecutor to elicit testimony as to the roles played by the individuals overheard in the phone calls, and the relationships among them, for example, that several were “runners or workers” for the defendant or codefendant, and the meanings of certain “case-specific” terms that he had discovered in the course of the investigation. As the Court of Appeals cautioned in People v Inoa, where, as here, “the trial court qualifie[s] a government agent, intimately involved in the investigation of the case and development of the prosecution, to testify as an expert,” there is a danger that the agent will end up “testifying beyond any cognizable field of expertise as an apparently omniscient expositor of the facts of the case” (id. at 473), thereby usurping the role of the jury. Also improper was the testimony, elicited by the prosecutor from members of the surveillance teams who observed the defendant and his associates at the locations described in the phone calls, that what they witnessed was consistent with a drug transaction … . Nevertheless, we find that the improperly admitted testimony was harmless, as the proof of the defendant’s commission of the charged crimes was overwhelming, and there is “no significant probability that, but for the error, the verdict . . . would have been less adverse” … . People v Melendez, 2016 NY Slip Op 02667, 2nd Dept 4-6-16

CRIMINAL LAW DETECTIVE SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO TESTIFY AS AN EXPERT ABOUT THE ROLES PLAYED BY THE PEOPLE OVERHEARD IN RECORDED PHONE CALLS IN THIS DRUG CONSPIRACY CASE, ERROR DEEMED HARMLESS HOWEVER)/EVIDENCE (CRIMINAL LAW, DETECTIVE SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO TESTIFY AS AN EXPERT ABOUT THE ROLES PLAYED BY THE PEOPLE OVERHEARD IN RECORDED PHONE CALLS IN THIS DRUG CONSPIRACY CASE, ERROR DEEMED HARMLESS HOWEVER)/EXPERT OPINION (CRIMINAL LAW, DETECTIVE SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO TESTIFY AS AN EXPERT ABOUT THE ROLES PLAYED BY THE PEOPLE OVERHEARD IN RECORDED PHONE CALLS IN THIS DRUG CONSPIRACY CASE, ERROR DEEMED HARMLESS HOWEVER)