I. “His Brother's Keeper”

“Christopher Martinez had no idea what was hidden in his parents' apartment, let alone deep in the closets. He isn't responsible for what the police found during their search.” These were the defense attorney's first statements at Mr. Martinez's trial.

Mr. Martinez was born and raised in New York City. His parents were drug addicts, so Mr. Martinez and his younger brother, Manuel, often had to fend for themselves to get food and other necessities. In his early teens, Mr. Martinez and Manuel got caught up with some other young men in their neighborhood and began committing petty crimes to earn some quick cash. About fifteen years before his federal trial, at the young age of nineteen, Mr. Martinez was the get-away driver for the robbery of a convenience store. He was convicted of robbery and sentenced to a short term of imprisonment in state prison. After his release, Mr. Martinez made substantial life changes: he continued his education, sustained steady employment, and started a family.

Although Mr. Martinez turned his life around and was never convicted of another crime, his parents were still addicts, and Manuel picked up several state and federal convictions. Mr. Martinez did what he could to assist his parents, but to no avail. When his mother became ill in 2013, he purchased her a hospital-grade bed, only to find several days later that she had sold it in order to buy drugs. Mr. Martinez did not speak or interact with his brother because he knew that Manuel was up to no good, and Mr. Martinez wanted nothing to do with this. In 2012, Manuel was sentenced to several years of imprisonment for a federal conviction for selling guns.

As his cousin testified for the defense, Mr. Martinez's parents continued to live in the same apartment that Mr. Martinez grew up in; it was a public housing building, in which his grandparents had previously lived before they passed away. Mr. Martinez's parents lived with his adopted sister, Sarah. They were hoarders and kept the apartment rooms, hallways, and closets completely full of boxes, garbage bags, and old clothes. In 2013, Mr. Martinez's mother died, and his father died several months later in 2014.

When his parents passed away, Mr. Martinez became responsible for their apartment, all of their belongings, and Sarah, who was sixteen years old and pregnant. Mr. Martinez entered into family court proceedings to adopt Sarah. She was a minor and needed a legal guardian to avoid being placed in the foster care system, and Mr. Martinez was the only family member willing to become her guardian. Although he lived full-time in his home in Queens with his wife and son, Mr. Martinez transferred the lease of his parents' apartment to himself. Mr. Martinez wanted to ensure that Sarah and her soon-to-be-born baby could continue to live there. In order to do so, he had to qualify as a remaining family member under the succession rules of the New York City Housing Authority.

During 2015--the year in which the alleged crime occurred--Mr. Martinez spent a lot of time in and near his parent's apartment. He visited Sarah and her newborn frequently. He also spent some nights in the apartment to rest after long shifts at work and to avoid the commute. Mr. Martinez's job was near the apartment, as was his son's school.

Several New York Police Department (“NYPD”) officers testified for the prosecution. They first testified that on one evening in the fall of 2015, while Mr. Martinez and his friend were visiting his parents' apartment, he and his friend got into an altercation. Sarah called the police and when the police arrived, they heard shouting. The police officers knocked on the door, and Mr. Martinez told them to come in as the door was unlocked. The officers opened the apartment door to see broken items on the living room floor and Mr. Martinez holding down his friend to restrain her from “breaking things,” as the officer testified. The officers then asked Mr. Martinez for photo identification and whether this was “his” apartment. He showed his identification, which listed the apartment's address--a requirement to be the leaseholder of a public housing unit. He also responded that it was his apartment, and that he lived there with his sister and her child. He told the officers which bedroom was his, and which bedroom was his sister's.

The officers interviewed the friend in the bedroom that Mr. Martinez identified as his for approximately forty minutes. At some point, either while she was questioned at the apartment or after, Mr. Martinez's friend apparently told the officers that he had threatened her with a gun during their argument. Thereafter, she had a psychotic breakdown and was admitted into a hospital psychiatric unit. Based on her allegations, the police officers obtained a search warrant for the apartment where Mr. Martinez's parents had lived.

The NYPD officers searched the apartment for several hours; for the duration, they detained Sarah, her infant, and her boyfriend in the hallway. In the bedroom that Mr. Martinez indicated as his, a bag hung on the closed closet door. This bag contained a carton of take-out food, which the officer suspected, from the smell of the food, had been placed there very recently by Mr. Martinez. The officer described the closet in which she discovered a “green plastic box” containing over one hundred rounds of ammunition and a gun cleaning kit. The officer did not take a single photograph during her search of the closet. She “forgot to,” as she admitted to the jury.

The closet was full from top to bottom with hanging clothes and large black garbage bags of old items, old purses, and winter clothes. Under a briefcase, there was the green plastic box of ammunition. The green plastic box was not visible until all other items were taken out of the closet. The briefcase sitting on top of the green plastic box was full of old documents. Not a single document had Mr. Martinez's name or other information on it. The green plastic box and the gun cleaning kit had no usable fingerprints on them to prove that Mr. Martinez had ever touched either of these items. The ammunition was not tested for fingerprints. Even so, any fingerprints were compromised after the officer organized the ammunition without gloves.

During the trial, the prosecution presented an expert witness who testified about the cell-site data for Mr. Martinez's cell phone during 2015. The expert witness explained that cell-site data could not show the exact location of a person's cell phone; it could only estimate the location based on distance from the nearest cell towers. Specifically, he explained that this data did not show that Mr. Martinez was in his parents' apartment. Rather, the data demonstrated that he was in the “general vicinity,” meaning within a few blocks of the apartment building. Although Mr. Martinez had many reasons to be in and near his parents' apartment in 2015, the government argued that because Mr. Martinez was near the apartment almost daily, he probably lived in this apartment and, thus, likely kept his own personal belongings in this apartment.

The defense counsel presented photographs of the bedroom after the search. These photographs were mostly of large sports jerseys thrown onto the bed. The officer had testified that during her search she saw mostly old sports jerseys, size XXL or larger, hanging in the closet. The defense counsel also presented to the jury some of the sports jerseys that were in these photographs. Mr. Martinez's aunt testified that these sports jerseys belonged to Mr. Martinez's father, not Mr. Martinez. The defense counsel also played some of Manuel's phone calls for the jury. In these calls--intercepted from a city jail--Mr. Martinez's brother described his gun selling business to the person on the phone. He bragged about how women would go to his parents' apartment to get guns from his parents' bedroom closet, and he would sell these guns.

After the NYPD conducted the search and tested various items for fingerprints, the green plastic box of ammunition remained in the police precinct for several months. No one was arrested. There were no suspects, as no one had committed an offense by keeping a box of ammunition in the back of a closet. There was no active case. Eventually, the NYPD referred the case to federal agents since Mr. Martinez had previously been convicted of a felony. Mr. Martinez was charged with possessing ammunition, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), the federal “felon in possession” statute.

After several days of trial, the prosecution summed up its evidence. The prosecution needed to prove that Mr. Martinez knew that this ammunition was in his home and they argued that the evidence showed just that: Mr. Martinez told the police officer that this was his apartment; he had been in the general vicinity of the apartment nearly every day that year; and there was take-out food hanging on the closet door which indicated that he had recently slept in the room. Moreover, the prosecution emphasized, how could Mr. Martinez possibly fail to notice a “green sportsman dry box” in his closet? This type of box would be found on a fishing trip, the prosecutor noted, not in a small apartment in Manhattan.

The defense argued that this evidence in no way established that Mr. Martinez was aware that the ammunition was hidden in the bottom corner of his parents' bedroom closet: the items in the closet did not belong to Mr. Martinez but rather to his parents; Mr. Martinez inherited the mess that was in his parents' apartment and never cleaned out the mess, but let his adopted sister live there; there was no physical evidence linking the ammunition to Mr. Martinez; and the box was buried under many other items--it took even the officers several hours to find the box.

The jury deliberated for about a day and a half. When they reached a verdict, Mr. Martinez, his counsel, and the prosecution, reconvened in the courtroom. Mr. Martinez's aunt fiddled nervously with some rosary beads. The foreperson stood up and read aloud the verdict for the single count of violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). “Guilty.” Everyone was stunned. After comforting Mr. Martinez and his crying family members, the defense team went into the hallway to catch the jury members before they left. About five of them agreed to speak.

“How did you all come to this decision?” They explained that they did not think he knew specifically what was in the closet (which is required), but that he should have known something was in there. They came to this conclusion after re-reading the judge's instruction on “knowledge”--one can “know” something if he “deliberately closed his eyes to what would otherwise have been obvious to him.” Also gleaned from the judge's instructions was the idea of “joint possession.” Mr. Martinez was capable of jointly possessing the items in the closet. They concluded that Mr. Martinez had knowledge--or rather, that he had closed his eyes to the obvious--after hearing the recordings of Manuel talking about storing guns in that same closet. The foreperson stated, “I understand that Mr. Martinez is not his brother's keeper, but how could he not have thought something, such as guns or bullets, was in that closet if his brother was using it for his gun dealing?”