Opinion ID: 444351
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: the petrozziello hearing

Text: Defendants allege that the trial court's application of the coconspirator hearsay exception rules articulated in United States v. Petrozziello, 548 F.2d 20, 23 (1st Cir.1977), and subsequent cases was erroneous in three respects. First, defendants contend that they were entitled to limiting instructions on all coconspirator statements pending the outcome of the Petrozziello hearing. Second, they allege the court could not properly consider the coconspirator statements in determining whether a conspiracy had been shown, and third, they allege that the evidence was insufficient for a preponderance finding that a conspiracy existed and that all the conspiractors' statements were made in the course of or in furtherance of that conspiracy. Statements of coconspirators are admissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2)(E) only if the district court finds that it is more likely than not that the declarant and the defendant were members of a conspiracy when the hearsay statement was made, and that the statement was in furtherance of the conspiracy .... United States v. Petrozziello, 548 F.2d at 23. Under Petrozziello, as expanded in United States v. Ciampaglia, 628 F.2d 632, 638 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 956, 101 S.Ct. 365, 66 L.Ed.2d 221 (1980), this court has ruled that the trial judge's determination of whether coconspirators' statements will be admissible should not occur until after both the government's and the defendant's evidence has been received. Hearsay evidence is thus admitted subject to the outcome of the Petrozziello hearing. If the government fails to meet its burden, at the close of the evidence the judge must issue a cautionary instruction or upon appropriate motion declare a mistrial if an instruction is not sufficient to cure the prejudice. Ciampaglia, 628 F.2d at 638. Under Ciampaglia, the court acted properly in refusing to give defendants' requested limiting instructions pending his determination of the admissibility of the hearsay evidence and the corresponding determination of whether a limiting instruction was appropriate. Where trial courts have given limiting instructions before holding the Petrozziello hearing, defendants have claimed to be prejudiced because the retraction of the limiting instruction can appear to be a judicial endorsement of the conspiracy. See, e.g., United States v. Patterson, 644 F.2d at 896-97. In any case, defendants, here, clearly cannot claim to be prejudiced by the court's failure to conditionally give limiting instructions since the trial court properly found the existence of a conspiracy by a preponderance of the evidence. We must accept the district court's findings of fact in applying the Petrozziello test unless it is clearly erroneous. United States v. Patterson, 644 F.2d at 895. At the end of the defendants' cases the trial court indicated that without considering the hearsay testimony it found that the evidence was sufficient to find by a preponderance of the evidence that each of the defendants was part of the conspiracy. Alternatively, the court ruled that upon considering both the conspirators' statements and other evidence it found the existence of the conspiracy by a preponderance on the evidence. See United States v. Martorano, 557 F.2d 1, 10 (1st Cir.1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 922, 98 S.Ct. 1484, 55 L.Ed.2d 515 (1978). Leaving no stone unturned, the judge additionally found, at defense counsel's request, that if he had ruled at the close of the government's case rather than at the end of the defendants' case as suggested by Ciampaglia, he still would have determined that the conspiracy had been shown to involve each of the defendants as charged by a preponderance of the evidence. See Ciampaglia, 628 F.2d at 638. We approve the postponement of the Petrozziello hearing until the conclusion of all the evidence and find the defendants' argument that the district court improperly relied on hearsay evidence in making its Petrozziello findings to be meritless. First, the district court specifically found that, absent consideration of the hearsay testimony, there was sufficient evidence to find by a preponderance of the evidence that there was a conspiracy and defendants participated in it. Second, this court has previously stated that hearsay and other inadmissible evidence, including perhaps the very statement seeking admission, can be considered by the district court in ruling on the admissibility of coconspirators' statements. United States v. Martorano, 557 F.2d 1, 11 (1st Cir.1977). While we have noted that trial judges should give little weight to the 'bootstrap' evidence in deciding whether to admit hearsay statements of coconspirators, United States v. Petrozziello, 548 F.2d at 23 n. 2, the district court clearly did not violate that mandate in this instance since it specifically found that the hearsay statements were superfluous to its determination.