Opinion ID: 658545
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Admission of the Autopsy Report

Text: 41 With respect to the murder of Hambrick, described in Part I above, the government offered in evidence a New York City Medical Examiner's Office (Medical Examiner's Office) report on Hambrick's autopsy. The government represented that the author of the report was not available to testify at trial because he had retired and moved and the government had had a difficult time finding him. (Tr. 3874). The government argued that the report was admissible both under Fed.R.Evid. 803(6) as a business record kept in the regular course of business and under Fed.R.Evid. 803(8) as a public record. Over the objection of Hernandez, who was charged with having murdered Hambrick in order to maintain or increase his position in the Organization, the trial court allowed the government to introduce those portions of the report which contained factual observations and permitted another pathologist from the Medical Examiner's Office to testify about those observations. The court excluded so much of the report as contained the author's diagnosis and his opinions as to the manner and cause of death. On appeal, Hernandez contends that the admission of the report (a) was foreclosed by the Federal Rules of Evidence, as interpreted by this Court in United States v. Oates, 560 F.2d 45 (2d Cir.1977) (Oates ), and (b) violated his rights under the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause. For the reasons below, we reject both contentions. 42 Rule 803(8) provides that certain types of public records are not excludable under the hearsay rule in certain types of cases: 43 (8) Public records and reports.--Records, reports, statements, or data compilations, in any form, of public offices or agencies, setting forth (A) the activities of the office or agency, or (B) matters observed pursuant to duty imposed by law as to which matters there was a duty to report, excluding, however, in criminal cases matters observed by police officers and other law enforcement personnel, or (C) in civil actions and proceedings and against the Government in criminal cases, factual findings resulting from an investigation made pursuant to authority granted by law, unless the sources of information or other circumstances indicate lack of trustworthiness. 44 Fed.R.Evid. 803(8) (emphasis added). Rule 803(6) excepts from the hearsay rule records kept in the course of a regularly conducted business activity, defining business as including business, institution, association, profession, occupation, and calling of every kind, whether or not conducted for profit. Fed.R.Evid. 803(6). 45 In Oates, focusing on the provision in Rule 806(8)(B) for exclusion of observations by police officers and other law enforcement personnel and on the provision in Rule 806(8)(C) for the admissibility in criminal cases of governmental investigative factual findings only against the government, we ruled that the report and worksheet of a United States Customs Service (Customs) chemist, whose analysis had revealed that a substance seized from the defendant's companion was heroin, were inadmissible. Adopting the view that the term other law enforcement personnel in Rule 803(8)(B) should be read broadly enough to make its prohibitions against the use of government-generated reports in criminal cases coterminous with the analogous prohibitions contained in FRE 803(8)(C), Oates, 560 F.2d at 67-68, we construed that term to include, at the least, any officer or employee of a governmental agency which has law enforcement responsibilities, id. at 68. We viewed Customs chemists as law enforcement personnel for purposes of Rule 803(8)(B), because Customs had law enforcement authority and its chemists were important participants in the prosecutorial effort with responsibility for, inter alia, analyzing narcotics, preserving the chain of custody, and testifying at trial. See id. We concluded that the chemist's report and worksheet constituted factual findings resulting from an investigation made pursuant to authority granted by law within the meaning of Rule 803(8)(C), and hence were not admissible under Rule 803(8). 46 We went on to rule that the same prohibitions should be read into Rule 803(6), see 560 F.2d at 77, and we suggested that these prohibitions might preclude admission under other hearsay exceptions as well, see id. at 78, 84; but cf. United States v. Yakobov, 712 F.2d 20, 26-27 (2d Cir.1983) (admission of a certificate meeting the requirements of Rule 803(10) (absence of public record) not precluded by Rule 803(8)). 47 Notwithstanding the breadth of certain dicta in Oates, we are not persuaded that the term law enforcement personnel as used in Rule 803(8)(B) should be read to encompass employees of the Medical Examiner's Office. Unlike Customs, which has responsibility for enforcement of, inter alia, customs and narcotics laws, see 19 C.F.R. Secs. 161.0, 161.2 (1993), the Medical Examiner's Office is required simply to investigate unnatural deaths; it refers a death bearing any indicium of criminality to the appropriate district attorney and has no responsibility for enforcing any laws, see N.Y. City Charter Ch. 22 Sec. 557 (Charter). The chief medical examiner and his assistants are required to be physicians and pathologists; there is no requirement in the Charter that they be attorneys or that any employees of the office have any law enforcement training. Even when a matter is referred to the district attorney because of an indication of criminality, the Charter does not give the medical examiner any responsibility for collecting evidence or determining the identity of the perpetrator. Further, though law enforcement activities are typically accusatory and adversarial in nature, a medical examiner's reported observations as to a body's condition are normally made as part of an independent effort to determine a cause of death. Indeed,  'a medical examiner, although often called a forensic expert, bears more similarity to a treating physician than he does to one who is merely rendering an opinion for use in the trial of a case.'  Manocchio v. Moran, 919 F.2d 770, 777 (1st Cir.1990) (quoting State v. Manocchio, 497 A.2d 1, 7 (R.I.1985)), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 1695, 114 L.Ed.2d 89 (1991). Thus, there are persuasive reasons, vis-a-vis a defendant to a criminal prosecution, for treating the report of a medical examiner differently from the report of a police officer. 48 The legislative history of Rule 803(8) lends support to the view that Congress did not mean the term police officers and other law enforcement personnel, whose reported observations were not to be admissible by way of Rule 803(8) against defendants in criminal prosecutions, to include other types of public servants such as medical examiners. As Rule 803(8) was originally proposed to Congress by the Supreme Court, though clause (C) was in its present form, the proposed clause (B) provided for the admission of public records of matters observed pursuant to duty imposed by law without carving out matters observed by law enforcement personnel. See 56 F.R.D. 183, 301 (1972). Clause (B) was amended in the House of Representatives to include, inter alia, the phrase excluding, however, in criminal cases matters observed by police officers and other law enforcement personnel. See 120 Cong.Rec. 2387-89 (1974). The Representative who offered the amendment argued that in a criminal case, only, we [sic ] should not be able to put in the police report to prove your case without calling the policeman,  id. at 2387 (emphasis added), and urged that in a criminal case the defendant should be confronted with the accuser to give him the chance to cross examine. Id. at 2388 (emphasis added). The Senate report commented that the reason for the House amendment was that observations by police officers at the scene of the crime or the apprehension of the defendant are not as reliable as observations by public officials in other cases because of the adversarial nature of the confrontation between the police and the defendant in criminal cases. S.Rep. No. 1277, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. (1974), reprinted in 1974 U.S.C.C.A.N. 7051, 7064 (emphasis added). Thus, the inclusion of the pertinent limitation in clause (B) was the result of Congressional discussion that focused exclusively on police officers, and accuser[s], and adversari[es], and there was no suggestion that the amendment to clause (B) was meant to limit the admissibility of public reports in criminal cases to the same extent as 803(8)(C). See 4 J. Weinstein & M. Berger, Weinstein's Evidence p 803(8), at 803-238 to 803-239 (1993). 49 We conclude that the assumption in Oates that the restrictions of Rules 803(8)(B) and 803(8)(C) were coterminous, an assumption made in the context of reports prepared by public officials with responsibilities for enforcing laws, should not be applied in the context of reports of public officials having different responsibilities. Accordingly, we hold that medical examiners' reported observations are admissible under Rule 803(8)(B). 50 The district court dealt properly with the Hambrick autopsy report within this framework. It allowed in evidence the report's observations, and it excluded the factual conclusions drawn from those observations as required by Rule 803(8)(C). 51 We also reject Hernandez's contention that the admission of the observations in the autopsy report violated his confrontation rights. The Confrontation Clause does not require the exclusion of hearsay evidence that has sufficient indicia of reliability. White v. Illinois, --- U.S. ----, ---- n. 8, 112 S.Ct. 736, 742 n. 8, 116 L.Ed.2d 848 (1992); Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 65-66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 2538-2540, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980); Reardon v. Manson, 806 F.2d 39, 43 (2d Cir.1986), cert. denied, 481 U.S. 1020, 107 S.Ct. 1903, 95 L.Ed.2d 509 (1987). Reliability may be established either by showing that the evidence falls within a firmly rooted exception to the hearsay rule, White v. Illinois, --- U.S. at ---- 112 S.Ct. at 743; Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. at 66, 100 S.Ct. at 2539, or by showing that the evidence has particularized guarantees of trustworthiness, id. 52 Whether or not autopsy reports fall within an exception to the hearsay rule that is firmly rooted, see generally Manocchio v. Moran, 919 F.2d at 777 (expressing doubts as to whether autopsy reports fall within a firmly rooted hearsay exception), we believe the reported observations in such reports bear sufficient indicia of reliability to satisfy the demands of the Confrontation Clause. We agree with the First Circuit's view that such observations have particularized guarantees of trustworthiness by virtue of (1) the routine and repetitive circumstances under which such reports are made, (2) the fact that the reports are made contemporaneously with the autopsy itself, (3) the existence of statutorily regularized procedures and established medical standards according to which autopsies must be performed and reports prepared, and (4) the fact that autopsies are carried out in a laboratory environment by trained individuals with specialized qualifications. Id. at 778. We conclude that the admission of the Hambrick autopsy report did not violate the Confrontation Clause.