Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-07-03534/USCOURTS-ca8-07-03534-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
John Hughes
Appellant
United States
Appellee

Document Text:

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The Honorable James M. Rosenbaum, United States District Judge for the

District of Minnesota, sitting by designation.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

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No. 07-3534

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United States of America,

Appellee,

v.

John Hughes,

Appellant.

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Appeal from the United States

District Court for the

District of South Dakota.

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Submitted: June 12, 2008

 Filed: July 29, 2008

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Before SMITH and GRUENDER, Circuit Judges, and ROSENBAUM,1

 District

Judge.

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GRUENDER, Circuit Judge.

After a jury trial, John Hughes was convicted of five counts of purchasing furs

in South Dakota without a non-resident fur dealer’s license, in violation of the Lacey

Act, 16 U.S.C. §§ 3372(a)(2)(A) and 3373(d)(1)(B). Hughes appeals his conviction,

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The Honorable Karen E. Schreier, Chief Judge, United Stated District Court

for the District of South Dakota.

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arguing that the district court2

 erroneously concluded that the hearsay evidence he

sought to introduce was not admissible under the statement against interest or the

residual exceptions to the hearsay rule. We affirm.

Hughes is a Montana resident and fur dealer. He held a South Dakota license

to purchase furs from July 1, 2002, until June 30, 2003, when it expired. He testified

that he submitted an application to renew the license around January 10, 2004, but a

South Dakota official testified that she received his application in November 2003.

On January 19 and 20, 2004, Hughes traveled to South Dakota and purchased furs,

assuming that he would receive a license. He testified that he received a license

rejection notice in late January 2004, after he returned from South Dakota. Hughes

then called a fur trapper, Rodney Wheaton, who had previously sold furs to Hughes.

Wheaton spoke with Hughes regularly, generally about business matters, and Wheaton

said that they were friends. Hughes told Wheaton that he did not know his application

had been rejected until after his fur-buying trip to South Dakota.

During trial, Hughes testified on his own behalf. He claimed that he did not

know that his license application had been rejected until after he purchased the furs

in South Dakota on January 19 and 20. Hughes then sought to have Wheaton testify

about Hughes’s prior statement to him that Hughes received the license rejection

notice after he returned from purchasing furs in South Dakota. The district court

excluded it as hearsay. “We review the district court’s evidentiary determinations for

an abuse of discretion.” United States v. Ingram, 501 F.3d 963, 967 (8th Cir. 2007),

petition for cert. filed, --- U.S.L.W. --- (No. 07-8093) (Dec. 5, 2007).

Hughes first claims that his statement to Wheaton is admissible as a statement

against interest under Federal Rule of Evidence 804(b)(3). This exception only

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applies “if the declarant is unavailable as a witness.” Fed. R. Evid. 804(b). Hughes

was available to and did, in fact, testify on his own behalf. Therefore, his prior out-ofcourt statement to Wheaton is not admissible under the statement against interest

exception to the hearsay rule. See Fed. R. Evid. 804(b)(3); United States v. Uribe, 88

Fed. Appx. 963, 964–65 (8th Cir. 2004) (unpublished per curiam) (finding that a

witness called to testify is “available” for purposes of Rule 804).

Hughes contends that enforcing the unavailability requirement of the exception

would force him “to deny himself his right to testify in order to make himself

‘unavailable.’” Appellant Br. at 16. Even had Hughes chosen not to testify, however,

“[w]hen the defendant invokes his Fifth Amendment privilege, he has made himself

unavailable to any other party, but he is not unavailable to himself.” United States v.

Peterson, 100 F.3d 7, 13 (2d Cir. 1996); see United States v. Kimball, 15 F.3d 54,

55–56 (5th Cir. 1994) (concluding that a defendant “may not create the condition of

unavailability and then benefit therefrom”) (citing Fed. R. Evid. 804(a)).

Hughes next claims that his prior out-of-court statement to Wheaton should

have been admitted pursuant to the residual exception to the hearsay rule under

Federal Rule of Evidence 807. “Congress intended the residual hearsay exception to

be used very rarely, and only in exceptional circumstances.” Ingram, 501 F.3d at 967

(quotation omitted). The statement must have “circumstantial guarantees of

trustworthiness,” and we examine the “reliability of and necessity for the statement.”

United States v. Carlson, 547 F.2d 1346, 1354 (8th Cir. 1976) (quotation omitted).

We agree with the district court that Hughes’s statement to his friend Wheaton lacked

any indicia of reliability. See Sweet v. Delo, 125 F.3d 1144, 1158 (8th Cir. 1997)

(“[A] denial of guilt made by a criminal defendant to a friend contains no indicia

whatsoever of reliability.”). Furthermore, the excluded testimony was cumulative of

Hughes’s own testimony and added little to the claim that Hughes did not receive the

license rejection notice until after he returned from South Dakota. See United States

v. Gaines, 969 F.2d 692, 697 (8th Cir. 1992). The district court did not abuse its

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discretion in concluding that Wheaton’s proposed testimony about Hughes’s out-ofcourt statement to him was not admissible pursuant to the residual exception.

Hughes also makes a general argument that the exclusion of Wheaton’s

testimony violated his due process rights, relying on Chambers v. Mississippi, 410

U.S. 284 (1973). Reviewing his argument for plain error, see United States v. Pirani,

406 F.3d 543, 550 (8th Cir. 2005) (en banc), we find no error. Unlike the witness in

Chambers, Hughes, the declarant, was available and ultimately did testify, and the

exclusion of Wheaton’s testimony did not affect Hughes’s due process rights.

Therefore, we affirm Hughes’s conviction.

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