Daniels v. Nogan

Tyrone Daniels (defendant) was convicted of first-degree robbery and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment based on events at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino (the casino). Daniels’s girlfriend at the time, Margaret Robertson, was a cashier at the casino. Robertson testified at Daniels’s trial that she had helped Daniels plan and execute the robbery and had given Daniels an access card for the casino’s cashier’s office. Tracey Smith testified that on the day of the robbery, someone approached Smith in the office, pointed a gun at Smith, and took a bag of money. Smith had not been able to identify the robber. Daniels’s counsel did not request a jury instruction regarding the state’s burden to prove the robber’s identification beyond a reasonable doubt. Counsel reasoned that because Robertson knew Daniels and was the witness identifying Daniels as the robber, the issue was not whether she had accurately identified Daniels, but rather whether she had testified credibly about Daniels’s involvement in the robbery. Separately, at a pretrial suppression hearing, a police detective had testified about her colleagues’ witness interviews and review of surveillance footage during the robbery investigation. Daniels’s counsel had objected to the testimony as hearsay because the detective had not interviewed the witnesses or reviewed the footage herself. The court had overruled the objection and allowed the testimony to show how the information from the other officers had affected the detective’s investigatory decisions. Daniels’s conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal, and Daniels’s request for state postconviction relief was denied. Daniels then filed a federal habeas corpus petition, asserting, among other things, that the trial court had improperly (1) failed to instruct the jury about the state’s burden to prove identification, (2) allowed hearsay testimony at the suppression hearing, and (3) refused to enter a judgment of acquittal.