Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter
Citation Limited Pursuant to lst Cir. Loc. R. 32.3
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 03-1525
GARY A. BENNETT,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
DANIEL SZOSTKIEWICZ, ETC.,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Michael A. Ponsor, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Selya, Circuit Judge,
Coffin, Senior Circuit Judge,
and Smith,* District Judge.
Tani E. Sapirstein, with whom Sapirstein & Sapirstein was on
brief, for appellant.
John H. Fitz-Gibbon, with whom Harry L. Miles, Green, Miles,
Lipton, White & Fitz-Gibbon, John C. Sikorski, and Robinson
Donovan, P.C. were on brief, for appellees.
March 24, 2004
__________
*Of the District of Rhode Island, sitting by designation.
Per Curiam. This appeal follows the entry of a judgment
in favor of defendants-appellees Daniel Szostkiewicz (mayor of the
City of Holyoke), Marc Cournoyer (Holyoke's police chief), and
Stephen Donoghue (Holyoke's former police chief). The
circumstances of the case are limned in our opinion in Bennett v.
City of Holyoke, ___ F.3d ___ (1st Cir. 2004) [No. 03-1520], dated
March 22, 2004, and need not be repeated here.
In this appeal, plaintiff-appellant Gary A. Bennett
challenges two mid-trial evidentiary rulings of the district court:
(i) the exclusion of so-called comparator evidence anent Ralph
DiNapoli and Joseph Garcia, and (ii) the admission of evidence
regarding the criminality of Bennett's conduct in surreptitiously
recording a conversation.1
It is black-letter law that a district court possesses
broad discretion in connection with the admission or exclusion of
evidence, and that its determinations in that wise are reviewed
only for abuse of discretion. Udemba v. Nicoli, 237 F.3d 8, 14
(1st Cir. 2001); Iacobucci v. Boulter, 193 F.3d 14, 20 (1st Cir.
1999). We have carefully reviewed the rulings at issue here and we
are satisfied that the trial court, in both instances, acted well
within the encincture of its discretion. Given the fact-specific
1
Bennett elaborates on this assignment of error by attacking
(i) the trial court's willingness to take judicial notice of the
applicable criminal statute, Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 272, § 99, and
(ii) the jury instructions related to this evidence. We have
considered and rejected both theories.
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nature of both the case and the disputed rulings, further
discussion would serve no useful purpose. Accordingly, the
judgments entered below in favor of Szostkiewicz, Cournoyer, and
Donoghue will be
Affirmed.
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