Opinion ID: 573126
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Pay/Owe Sheet

Text: 16 Suarez contends that the district court erred by admitting into evidence a pay/owe sheet found at the San Juan Capistrano apartment. He claims the pay/owe sheet constitutes inadmissible hearsay not falling within any of the exceptions allowed by the Federal Rules of Evidence. 3 Suarez further contends that, even if the pay/owe sheet falls within one of the hearsay exceptions, the government failed to lay the foundation required by United States v. Ordonez, 737 F.2d 793 (9th Cir.1983). Specifically, Suarez contends that the government failed to establish that he had authored or was in any way connected to the pay/owe sheet. 17 As an alternative argument to those based on the rule against hearsay, Suarez contends that if the pay/owe sheet was properly admitted to prove the apartment was used for drug trafficking, the district court erred by permitting a government agent to testify as an expert witness that the document found was a pay/owe sheet and that a pay/owe sheet is a common form of recording drug transactions. 18 Finally, Suarez contends that the admission of the pay/owe sheet violates Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), by permitting evidence of a defendant's prior bad acts to prove his propensity to commit the crime charged. We reject all of Suarez' contentions.
19 Initially, Suarez asks too much of Ordonez, 737 F.2d 793, when he cites it for the proposition that drug-related documents are inadmissible for all purposes because they constitute hearsay. Ordonez simply holds that the rule against hearsay prohibits the admission of drug ledgers and pay/owe sheets to prove the truth of the matters asserted in them unless a proper foundation has been laid; Ordonez does not prohibit the use of the documents for all purposes. 4 Most relevant for present purposes is our statement in Ordonez that the rule against hearsay does not stand as a bar to the admission of ledgers as circumstantial evidence 'to show the character and use of the place where the [ledgers] were found....'  Id. at 799, (quoting United States v. Wilson, 532 F.2d 641, 645 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 846, 97 S.Ct. 128, 50 L.Ed.2d 117 (1976)). Cf. United States v. Crespo De Llano, 838 F.2d 1006, 1018 (9th Cir.1987) (firearms, cash, mobile telephones, and paging devices found in a house were admissible as probative of an overall narcotics trafficking conspiracy); United States v. Bernal, 719 F.2d 1475, 1477-78 (9th Cir.1983) (scale, vials, a calculator and attached notation pad, plastic bags, zip lock bags, and money admissible as evidence of narcotics trafficking). The pay/owe sheet in the present case was admitted for the specific and limited purpose of showing the character and use of the San Juan Capistrano apartment. Its role is no different from that played by the very large amounts of cash found in the same apartment. Because the pay/owe sheet's probative value for the limited purpose for which it was admitted was independent of the truth of its contents, the rule against hearsay was not implicated and the requirement of a proper foundational showing for admitting the records to prove the truth of the matters asserted was not triggered. See United States v. Lai, 944 F.2d 1434, 1444 (9th Cir.1991) (citing Ordonez, 737 F.2d at 799, 805-06). 20 Our conclusion is in accord with that of the Eighth Circuit in United States v. Wilson, 532 F.2d 641 (8th Cir.) cert. denied, 429 U.S. 846, 97 S.Ct. 128, 50 L.Ed.2d 117 (1976), a case we cited with approval in Ordonez. In Wilson, the court held that, although drug ledgers found at an apartment frequented by the defendants could not be used to prove the truth of the statements made in the ledgers, they were properly admitted as circumstantial evidence that the apartment was being used for drug trafficking. Id. at 645-46. The government was not required to prove the identity of the writer or writers. It was enough for the court that the government had established that the ledgers were found in one of the three houses the defendants frequented, even though that house was controlled by someone other than the defendants, and none of the defendants was present at the time the detective confiscated the ledger. In the present case, the government agent offered evidence that the pay/owe sheet was found in an apartment frequented by Suarez and rented to Rick Suarez, and that other evidence such as vehicle registration slips belonging to Suarez were present in the apartment. The government's expert testified as to the nature of the document. This was enough of a showing to permit the pay/owe sheet to be admitted; the jury could consider the facts that the pay/owe sheet was evidence of drug-related activity, that it was linked to the San Juan Capistrano apartment, and that Suarez was also linked to the apartment. 21 In holding that drug-related documents may properly be admitted to prove the character and use of the place where found, we recognize the risk that the government or jury may erroneously rely on the document for the truth of the matters asserted therein. 5 See Lai, 944 F.2d at 1444. The trial court here was equally aware of the risk, and clearly instructed the jury that the sheet was being admitted for the limited purpose of showing the character and use of the place where it was found and not for the truth of any matters asserted or whatever is on there says. The judge gave a similar instruction at the close of evidence. We conclude that the trial court adequately guarded against the risk of unfair prejudice.
22 Suarez contends that the district court erred by allowing an expert witness to testify about the pay/owe sheet. 6 Suarez presumably is arguing that the testimony did not come within the scope of Fed.R.Evid. 702. 7 The witness' testimony identifying the document as a pay/owe sheet provided specialized information to the jurors that was not readily known and that may have aided their understanding. See Fed.R.Evid. 702. The district court was well within its discretion in permitting the agent to testify. See United States v. Martin, 773 F.2d 579, 583 (4th Cir.1985) (expert witness' testimony identifying the documents as bookmaking records was a necessary foundation for admitting the documents, as they had no relevance otherwise).
23 Finally, Suarez contends that in admitting the pay/owe sheet the district court effectively permitted evidence of Suarez' prior bad acts to prove Suarez' character and propensity to commit the crime in question. See Fed.R.Evid. 404(b) 8 . This contention fails for several reasons. First, as we have already noted, the district judge gave clear instructions to the jury that they were not to use the information in the pay/owe sheet, but could consider the pay/owe sheet as evidence of the character and use of the San Juan Capistrano apartment. No individual entry on the sheet was brought to the attention of the jury. 24 Second, the agent that identified the pay/owe sheet as a drug-accounting document testified that he did not know who wrote the document or when the document was written. In other words, no evidence was presented establishing that the entries on the pay/owe sheet represented prior bad acts of Suarez. Consequently, we reject Suarez' Rule 404(b) contention. 25 Finding no merit, then, in any of Suarez' various objections to the admission of the pay/owe sheet, we affirm the district court's ruling. 26