Split NY Court of Appeals affirms assault conviction

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In a split decision, New York state’s highest court has affirmed an assault conviction, even though key video evidence was destroyed before the trial.

Defendant Tonie Coggins was convicted in August 2019 in state Supreme Court in New York City of third-degree assault.

Coggins appealed to the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court, First Department, but the conviction was unanimously affirmed.

Next Coggins appealed to the New York State Court of Appeals, which upheld the conviction in a 4-3 vote.

Judges Michael J. Garcia, Madeline Singas, Anthony Cannataro, and Caitlin J. Halligan voted to affirm the conviction. Judge Shirley Troutman dissented and authored an opinion, in which Chief Judge Rowan D. Wilson and Judge Jenny Rivera concurred.

Coggins and the victim fought outside the victim’s apartment building. A surveillance system recorded video footage of the altercation, but the recording was deleted due to a 30-day retention policy of the building’s security company.

A copy of the surveillance footage made by a police officer on his department-issued cellphone also was destroyed when that phone was turned in to be upgraded.

Before the start of the trial, the prosecution sought to introduce testimony from several individuals who did not witness the fight but viewed the surveillance footage of the fight in the building’s security office.

Coggins’ lawyer objected, arguing that the testimony should be precluded under the best evidence rule. After a pretrial hearing, the judge ruled that the testimony was admissible.

The judge ruled that there was no bad faith in the destruction of the video and the witnesses were able to substantially and accurately recount the contents of the video.

The judge acknowledged that the witnesses’ testimony was inconsistent in some respects, but “consistent with what would be expected from any group of multiple witnesses to an event,” according to the Court of Appeals decision.

“To address the loss of the cellphone copy of the video due to mistakes made by law enforcement, the court gave the jury a permissive adverse inference charge,” the Court wrote.

“There was no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s determination, following a thorough hearing, that the witnesses could testify to their observations of the lost surveillance footage,” the Court of Appeals majority ruled.

“The testimony of the witnesses who watched the video recording before it was destroyed failed to meet the standards of reliability and accuracy that we require to admit secondary evidence under the exception to the best evidence rule,” Judge Shirley Troutman wrote in the dissent.

“Although the decision whether to admit such testimony is committed to the trial court’s sound discretion, Supreme Court abused its discretion in allowing the testimony here,” she wrote.

“The witnesses generally agreed on certain aspects of the recording’s contents … But the testimony was deficient in key respects,” Troutman wrote.

She noted that five of the witnesses “could not tell or recall who threw the first punch, and the other two witnesses contradicted each other on that point.”

That detail was critical for evaluating Coggins’ justification defense.

“To be sure, discrepancies are naturally to be expected where several witnesses testify to the same event, and the existence of discrepancies unrelated to core issues may to some extent support a finding of reliability of the collective testimony, but it does so at the expense of accuracy,” Troutman wrote.

“Courts evaluating testimony under the exception to the best evidence rule must be cautious to ensure that the testimony represents a reasonably accurate portrayal of the material details of the unavailable original,” she wrote.

“Because the witnesses were unable to recount and gave conflicting accounts of core details of the video recording that were critical for evaluating the justification defense, Supreme Court abused its discretion by admitting their testimony under the exception to the best evidence rule,” she wrote.

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