U.S. v. Jett

In prosecution on charge that defendants conspired to violate Hobbs Act in context of robbing bank, Dist. Ct. properly rejected defendants’ instruction that required jury to find existence of overt act in furtherance of conspiracy, since Hobbs Act conspiracy does not require showing of any act other than act of conspiring itself. Also, Dist. Ct. did not err in admitting agent’s testimony that interpreted certain slang words in text messages between defendants, where: (1) defendants made no request for Dist. Ct. to engage in Rule 702 analysis for proposed expert testimony; (2) Dist. Ct. could properly find that jury might not understand said slang terms; and (3) agent laid adequate foundation with respect to his knowledge of said terms. Moreover, while prosecutor did not clearly establish whether agent was testifying as expert or lay witness when interpreting slang terms, since agent also testified regarding his personal knowledge of case when giving context to said slang terms, said error was harmless given other evidence of defendant’s guilt. Also, Dist. Ct. erred in admitting agent’s testimony that identified one defendant as perpetrator in bank surveillance video, since there was no basis for concluding that agent was more likely to correctly identify defendant from video than jury. However, said error was harmless in light of other evidence against defendant.