Opinion ID: 199140
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Appellant's Proffered Testimony Was

Text: Inadmissible. Appellant testified on direct examination that he first met Gonzalez in mid-March 1996 when he was driving with Betancourt and they pulled up next to Gonzalez' car in the parking lot of a Burger King. As appellant began to relate what was said between Betancourt and Gonzalez, the government objected strenuously, arguing that the admission of the hearsay statements would be particularly unfair because both declarants were dead. -12- At sidebar, counsel proffered that the conversation was about weapons, but that he was not offering it for the truth of the matter asserted. The testimony was admissible, he argued, to show defendant's awareness of firearms dealing. He apparently wanted to bolster appellant's later testimony that his understanding of the purpose of the fatal confrontation with Gonzalez was to collect a debt. However, there was no proffer that the excluded conversation shed any light on the financial dealings of Betancourt and Gonzalez. At the conclusion of the colloquy on this point, the court gave counsel the opportunity to identify another basis for admission, which we discuss below. Assuming the earlier nonhearsay argument was preserved, we have no difficulty in holding harmless any error in refusing to admit the conversation. Appellant was permitted to testify later as to his state of mind, and the proffered conversation lacking specifics would not have added significantly to appellant's case. Once it became clear that appellant was not going to prevail on his non-hearsay argument, defense counsel proposed to have the firearms statements admitted under Federal Rule of Evidence 804(b)(3)3, which permits the introduction of hearsay 3 The rule defines statement against interest in part as [a] statement which . . . at the time of its making . . . so far tended to subject the declarant to civil or criminal -13- testimony where a declarant unavailable to testify had exposed himself to criminal liability in the out-of-court statement. See Williamson v. United States, 512 U.S. 594, 599 (1994) (Rule 804(b)(3) is founded on the commonsense notion that reasonable people, even reasonable people who are not especially honest, tend not to make self-inculpatory statements unless they believe them to be true.). Whenever offered to exculpate the accused, such statements must be corroborated to clearly indicate the[ir] trustworthiness. Fed. R. Evid. 804(b)(3); see also United States v. Mackey, 117 F.3d 24, 29 (1st Cir. 1997) (the requirement for corroboration is not unrealistically severe but does go beyond minimal corroboration) (internal quotation marks omitted). District courts have 'a substantial degree of discretion' in determining whether a hearsay statement against penal interest offered to acquit the accused has been sufficiently corroborated to be admissible. Mackey, 117 F.3d at 29 (quoting United States v. Barrett, 539 F.2d 244, 253 (1st Cir. 1976)). liability . . . that a reasonable person in the declarant's position would not have made the statement unless believing it to be true. A statement tending to expose the declarant to criminal liability and offered to exculpate the accused is not admissible unless corroborating circumstances clearly indicate the trustworthiness of the statement. Fed. R. Evid. 804(b)(3). -14- The district court apparently assumed without deciding that the statements of Betancourt and Gonzalez were against their respective penal interests, but ruled appellant's testimony about the conversation inadmissible because its trustworthiness had not been sufficiently corroborated. We find no error with this ruling. The only corroborative evidence offered was the testimony of appellant's cousins, Margarita and Jessica Esquilin, who reported an occasion, prior to the carjacking, when they observed appellant and Betancourt follow a white car after being paged and then return irked because they had been shortchanged money. Appellant argues that the court should have inferred that it was Gonzalez who paged them, that the white car was Gonzalez' and that their vexation over the money had to do with illegal firearms. We agree with the district court that these inferences were too remote to corroborate Gonzalez' hearsay statement. The Esquilins' testimony lacks sufficient detail to lend much assistance to the reliability of the Gonzalez-Betancourt conversation. Because appellant sought to testify to the substance of that conversation and because that substance could not be adequately corroborated, appellant's proffered testimony about illegal firearms dealing was properly excluded as inadmissible hearsay. -15-