U.S. v. Pacelli, 1153

• Decision Date: 24 July 1975
• Docket Number: No. 1153,D,1153
• Citation: 521 F.2d 135
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Vincent PACELLI, Jr., Defendant-Appellant. ocket 75-1149.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 135

521 F.2d 135

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Vincent PACELLI, Jr., Defendant-Appellant.

No. 1153, Docket 75-1149.

United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit.

Argued June 24, 1975.

Decided July 24, 1975.

James E. Nesland, Asst. U. S. Atty. (Paul J. Curran, U. S. Atty. for the Southern District of New York, John D. Gordan, III, Asst. U. S. Atty., of counsel), for appellee.

Steven B. Duke, New Haven, Conn. (Pierce O'Donnell, New Haven, Conn., on the brief), for defendant-appellant.

Before CLARK, Associate Justice, ^* and MANSFIELD and MULLIGAN, Circuit Judges.

MULLIGAN, Circuit Judge:

Vincent Pacelli, Jr., was convicted on January 31, 1975 after a two-week jury trial before Hon. Charles E. Stewart, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York, on both counts of a two-count indictment. Pacelli was charged in Count One with a conspiracy with Barry Lipsky to violate the civil rights of a Government witness, Patsy Parks, by causing her death before she could exercise her right to testify, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241. Count Two charged the use of force to impede her testimony, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1503. On February 28, 1975, Judge Stewart sentenced Pacelli to a term of life imprisonment on Count One and to five years imprisonment on Count Two, to be served concurrently with each other but consecutively to a twenty-year term and a fifteen-year term of imprisonment on two prior narcotics convictions. Pacelli now appeals from the judgment of conviction.

I. THE FACTS

The appellant here had previously been convicted of the same crimes involving the murder of Patsy Parks but that conviction was reversed by this court, United States v. Pacelli, 491 F.2d 1108 (2d Cir. 1974), and Pacelli's petition for certiorari on certain of the issues in that case was denied by the Supreme Court, 419 U.S. 826, 95 S.Ct. 43, 42 L.Ed.2d 49 (1974). Judge Mansfield's opinion for this court on the prior appeal details the facts which led to the homicide of Miss Parks. In that case as well as this, the prosecution hinged upon the testimony of Barry Lipsky, who participated in the killing. Pacelli did not testify in his own behalf in this trial and his defense, as in the initial trial, consisted of an attack on the credibility of Barry Lipsky. We find no reason, therefore, to repeat the sordid story except in summary fashion.

Patsy Parks, under subpoena, testified before a grand jury in the Southern District of New York on May 27, 1971 about a box, apparently containing money, which she had kept for Pacelli in her apartment. An indictment charging Pacelli, his wife and two others with narcotic violations was returned by the grand jury. The case was set for trial on February 8, 1972. On February 3, 1972, Government agents sought unsuccessfully to serve Parks with a subpoena for her appearance at the Pacelli trial. Lipsky, who was advised by Parks of the attempted service and her desire to contact Pacelli, testified that he drove to Pacelli's apartment in New Rochelle in the early morning of February 4, 1972. Upon being advised of the Parks subpoena, Pacelli stated: "It's that box. It's that God-damned box. She has been to the grand jury and she ratted me out. I know what I have to do." The two men then drove in a rented car to New York, stopping to purchase four gallon cans of gasoline, and then proceeded to the "Hippopotamus," a New York discotheque where Parks was drinking with friends while waiting to be contacted by Pacelli. Lipsky told Parks where Pacelli was parked and the three then proceeded to a remote area of Massapequa, New York. Enroute, Pacelli discussed the narcotics case with Parks and offered her money to leave town, which she declined. Finally, Pacelli stabbed Parks in the throat and several times in the chest with a knife until she was dead. Her body was then doused by Pacelli with the gasoline purchased earlier and set on fire, with Lipsky lighting the match. The men then returned to Pacelli's apartment in New Rochelle, disposing of Parks's effects, the empty gasoline cans and the knife and cleaning the car to eliminate bloodstains. Parks's body was found on the morning of February 4th and was identified a week later by footprints and dental charts.

Although the Government's case was dependent upon Lipsky's detailed testimony, it was corroborated in some respects by other witnesses. Parks was placed by witnesses in the Hippopotamus on the night and at the time testified to by Lipsky; the night attendant at the gasoline station identified Lipsky as the purchaser of four gallon cans of gasoline at about 2:30 a. m. one morning; a knife was found in the mud of a bay area two blocks from Pacelli's residence where Lipsky stated they had disposed of the murder weapon. There was also evidence that the same rented car in which the murder was committed was again rented by Pacelli's drug partner, Al Bracer, on February 16, 1972 and was found engulfed in flames two days later in Fairfield, New Jersey, at a time when Lipsky was hiding in Florida. Chemical inspection disclosed that there was gasoline throughout the interior of the car and indicated, although not conclusively, that traces of blood were present on the floor carpet.

II. LIMITATIONS ON CROSS-EXAMINATION

Appellant argues that the trial court erred in precluding the defense from cross-examining Lipsky with respect to three matters of direct significance in assessing his credibility. It is well understood that the admission of evidence on cross-examination is a matter within the discretion of the trial judge. United States v. Jenkins, 510 F.2d 495, 500 (2d Cir. 1975); United States v. Miles, 480 F.2d 1215, 1217 (2d Cir. 1973) (Per curiam ). Here almost 400 pages of the transcript and two-and-a-half days of trial time were devoted to Lipsky's cross-examination. It is significant that a comparatively small amount of time (perhaps one-third of the cross-examination) was devoted to challenging Lipsky's eyewitness account of the fatal assault upon and the cremation of Patsy Parks. The bulk of the examination was directed to an attack upon Lipsky's credibility and his hostility to Pacelli. In determining whether or not independent evidence of Lipsky's motivation for perjury was admissible, we obviously cannot ignore the evidence already before the jury, as well as that which was available to the defendant and would not have involved diversionary forays into extraneous matters. United States v. Kahn, 472 F.2d 272, 279 (2d Cir.), cert. denied,411 U.S. 982, 93 S.Ct. 2270, 36 L.Ed.2d 958 (1973); United States v. Bowe,360 F.2d 1, 16 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 385 U.S. 961, 87 S.Ct. 401, 17 L.Ed.2d 306 (1966). An examination of the record before us indicates that the jury had ample evidence with which to support the defendant's proposition that Lipsky was a vicious criminal with every motive to inculpate Pacelli.

On direct examination, Lipsky related in detail the horrible execution of Patsy Parks by Pacelli but also discussed his own participation which commenced with alerting the defendant to her appearance before the grand jury. He furthermore obviously knew of Pacelli's intent to kill her; he purchased the gasoline, he took a book of matches from the Hippopotamus and he put the match to the gasoline which caused the conflagration aimed at destroying the corpse and making its identification impossible. Also on direct examination, he admitted to his alliance with Pacelli in the distribution of narcotics. On cross-examination, he admitted that he had taken illegal drugs and was presently using medicinal drugs; he also admitted that he had pleaded to a stock fraud charge in cooperation with the Government. He admitted lying to his lawyers, to juries and to a probation officer who he knew was preparing a pre-sentence report which was to be submitted to a sentencing judge. He admitted to selling stolen books in college and forging his mother's checks. He admitted that his attorney had told him on April 11, 1972, before he went before the grand jury, that an agreement had been reached with the Government that he had complete transactional immunity and would not be prosecuted for anything he told the Government, not for "any damn thing." He admitted that he lied in two previous federal trials in 1972 about his understanding as to whether or not he would be prosecuted. He further admitted that he thought that by testifying against Pacelli he would "get off relatively easy."

In view of this elicitation of the litany of Lipsky's licentious behavior, his corruption and his past perjury, the argument that cross-examination was erroneously restricted in the very areas in which his vulnerability had already been exposed becomes insubstantial and unconvincing.

Judge Stewart, it is urged, erroneously refused to permit cross-examination of Lipsky with respect to his testimony in a narcotics trial in June 1972, which, it is alleged, falsely implicated Pacelli. The testimony sought to be introduced was that of one Joseph Nunziata, a deceased New York City detective, who testified in a case involving another defendant, Valentine, which ended in a mistrial. Lipsky testified that he, Valentine and Pacelli had conducted a drug transaction in a New York cafe, "Yellowfingers." Nunziata's testimony, Pacelli contends, was that he had observed both Valentine and Lipsky at the scene, but did not observe Pacelli in the restaurant. On denying Pacelli's post-trial motion for a new trial based on the exclusion of this evidence, Judge Stewart found that this testimony did not establish that "Pacelli was not in fact at the restaurant for at least some of the time in question." A reading of the testimony reveals that Nunziata had a clear view of Lipsky and Valentine, but does not indicate that he could observe all of the persons in the Yellowfingers cafe at the time or that he would have recognized Pacelli had he been present. Nunziata's death, of course,...