U.S. v. Jackson
| Decision Date | 06 May 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 02-1264.,02-1264. |
| Citation | 368 F.3d 59 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Aaron L. JACKSON, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Katherine Polk Failla, Assistant U.S. Attorney, New York, N.Y. (James B. Comey, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Gary Stein, Assistant U.S. Attorney, on the brief), for Appellee.
Steven M. Statsinger, The Legal Aid Society, Federal Defenders Division, New York, NY, for Appellant.
Before: LEVAL and CABRANES, Circuit Judges, and AMON, District Judge.*
Defendant Aaron L. Jackson appeals from the judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York convicting him, after a jury trial, of possession of ammunition by a previously convicted felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).1 Jackson challenges the legal sufficiency of the trial evidence offered to prove that, at the time he possessed ammunition, he had a prior felony conviction. The government sought to prove the essential element of the defendant's prior felony conviction by a court record showing a 1984 New York felony conviction for a person named Aaron Jackson. The defendant contends this was insufficient to satisfy the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that he was the Aaron Jackson convicted in 1984.
The government argues that a conviction record in the defendant's name is sufficient if the defendant offers no contrary evidence. The government also argues that the defendant's identity as the subject of the 1984 conviction was sufficiently corroborated by other evidence. Finally, the government contends that, even if the evidence was insufficient to satisfy the government's burden of proof in a criminal case, the conviction should nonetheless be affirmed because the defendant should either be deemed to have stipulated the fact of his prior conviction, or be barred from contesting the sufficiency of the evidence by reason of deceptive conduct on which the government relied in refraining from offering additional evidence.
We cannot accept the government's arguments. Without more, a court record showing a conviction of a similarly named person (especially an eighteen-year-old record) cannot conceivably furnish assurance beyond a reasonable doubt that it pertains to the present defendant. We reject the government's proposed rule that sufficiency is satisfied as the result of the defendant's failure to offer proof in rebuttal. The government's argument that the defendant's identity as the person convicted in 1984 was sufficiently corroborated by other evidence is insubstantial, as the corroborating evidence was scant and unconvincing. Finally, we see no merit in the government's contention that the defendant either stipulated his prior conviction or engaged in deceptive misconduct which should excuse the government from its burden of proof.
The defendant was found guilty at a trial conducted on November 5 and November 6, 2001. Special Agent Matthew White of the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (the "ATF") was the principal government witness. He testified that, in carrying out his duties, which included investigating illegal possession of firearms by convicted felons, he and other agents of the ATF went on September 7, 1999 to Jackson's apartment in the Bronx and asked him whether he had any firearms or ammunition, whereupon Jackson showed them a safe containing a quantity of ammunition.2 The agents seized the ammunition.
To prove that Jackson was a previously convicted felon, the government offered a certified copy of a judgment of the New York Supreme Court for New York County (Manhattan) showing that on January 11, 1984, a person named Aaron Jackson was convicted of unlawful possession of a weapon and of a controlled substance. The government offered no further evidence connecting the defendant to the 1984 conviction. The defendant neither testified nor called witnesses in his defense. On summation, defense counsel argued for the first time that the government had failed to prove that the Aaron Jackson named in the certificate of conviction might be someone other than the defendant on trial.3 The jury found the defendant guilty.
The test for determining a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence asks whether a "rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt." Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979); United States v. Best, 219 F.3d 192, 200 (2d Cir.2000). The evidence, in other words, must be of such persuasive quality that a jury could reasonably find the essential elements beyond a reasonable doubt on the basis of that evidence.
(1) The persuasive force of a conviction record in the defendant's name. The first question we face is whether a fact-finder, given the evidence presented at trial of a 1984 conviction record of a person named Aaron Jackson, could reasonably conclude beyond a reasonable doubt from that evidence alone that the 1984 conviction was of the defendant, Aaron L. Jackson. We do not see how such a degree of confidence could possibly be justified by this evidence. There was no reason to believe the defendant was the only person so named. The name Jackson is quite common, and the first name Aaron, which is of biblical origin, is also quite common. New York is a city of nearly eight million inhabitants, plus a huge number of additional visitors.
If A were to speak of an acquaintance in the City of New York named Aaron Jackson, and B responded, "Why, yesterday in New York City I met a person named Aaron Jackson," one could not be reasonably certain that they were speaking of the same individual. And if B's response were, "Eighteen years ago in New York City I met someone named Aaron Jackson," the likelihood would be even smaller that the two Aaron Jacksons were one and the same.
Or, suppose a defendant named Aaron Jackson were being tried for bank robbery; the fact of the robbery was amply proved but without evidence of the identity of the robber; the only evidence offered by the prosecution to prove that the robbery was committed by the defendant was a showing that the robber's name was Aaron Jackson. We think it inconceivable that such a conviction could be sustained under the standard of Jackson v. Virginia.
The issue we face is essentially the same as posed in these hypotheticals. Notwithstanding that the evidence was provided by an official court certificate, that certificate established no more than that the convicted person was called Aaron Jackson. The fact that someone named Aaron Jackson was convicted of a crime some eighteen years earlier in New York undoubtedly raises a possibility that it might have been the same person as the Aaron L. Jackson now on trial in New York. But, as a proposition of logic, one cannot conceivably justify a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that it is the same person.4
A conclusion cannot be reached with sufficient confidence to satisfy the beyond-reasonable-doubt standard that two separate episodes involving persons of similar features relate to the same person unless the similarities are sufficiently distinctive to make it highly improbable that the two observed persons could be other than the same. Thus, where two separately observed individuals share a highly distinctive feature in common, such as identical DNA or identical fingerprints, we can conclude beyond reasonable doubt that they must be the same person because of well-established scientific information that a particular structure of DNA and a particular fingerprint configuration occur in only one individual. However, when the points of similarity are less unique or distinctive, more similarities are required before the probability of identity between the two becomes convincing. If a conviction record showed only that the convicted person had the same common blood type as the defendant (instead of the same DNA or fingerprint configuration), that would give little or no reason to believe they were the same person because such blood types are widely shared. Two sightings in the same city describing a six foot tall, dark haired man in his thirties would give little assurance that they were of the same person because many people fit that description. On the other hand, the more two portraits are amplified to include further similarities — such as that both were the same age and had the same birthday, the same coloring of skin, eyes, and hair, the same distinctive birthmark, the same unusual clothing, the same name, the same Social Security number, or perhaps that both were seen to engage in the same unusual, distinctive conduct, or were seen at the same place, the more probable it becomes that they refer to the same individual. It is a matter of making either a statistical assessment, or in the absence of statistics, an informal experience-based assessment of probability, that the particular coincidence of similarities is highly unlikely or improbable unless the two persons are the same.5 A conclusion of identity cannot be made beyond a reasonable doubt unless experience, or statistics (if admissible), teach it is far more likely, given the similarities, that the two are the same person, than that they are two different people. The evidence must make it highly improbable that two different people are involved.6
No such judgment can be made with any reasonable degree of confidence from two observations, eighteen years apart, of persons with the not-unusual name of Aaron Jackson, in a city with a population exceeding eight million. The government offered no evidence that the two Aaron Jacksons were of the same race, or of similar height, coloring, fingerprint configuration or even general physical description. There was no showing of the previously...
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