Opinion ID: 691979
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: admissibility of records under fed.r.evid. 803(8)

Text: 63 The appellants contend that the district court erred in admitting various records from the Wise County sheriff's office, including jail cards, arrest reports, record bail books, and jail logs. All three appellants objected to the admission of these records, complaining that they were not admissible under Rule 803(8) because the public records exception explicitly excludes in criminal cases matters observed by police officers and other law enforcement personnel. The appellants cited United States v. Cain, 615 F.2d 380, 382 (5th Cir.1980), which held that reports excluded by Rule 803(8) may not be admitted merely because they satisfy the regularly-kept-records exception of Rule 803(6). 64 Relying on United States v. Quezada, 754 F.2d 1190 (5th Cir.1985), the court below overruled their objection and admitted the records from the sheriff's office. In Quezada, this Court explained that: 65 The law enforcement exception in Rule 803(8)(B) is based in part on the presumed unreliability of observations made by law enforcement officials at the scene of a crime, or in the course of investigating a crime.... Thus, a number of courts have drawn a distinction for purposes of Rule 803(8)(B) between law enforcement reports prepared in a routine, non-adversarial setting, and those resulting from the arguably more subjective endeavor of investigating a crime and evaluating the results of that investigation. 754 F.2d at 1193-94. 19 66 The government contends that the records at issue were properly admitted under Quezada as routine, objective observations made as part of the everyday function of the preparing official, and were not made for the purposes of prosecuting the individual being described in the report. Thus, the government argues, the concerns of the law enforcement clause are not implicated. We find this reasoning persuasive. The law enforcement clause has no applicability in that it was designed to protect the arrested individual from being convicted based on unreliable hearsay, e.g., the police officer's perceptions in an adversarial investigation. In contrast, in the instant case, the records were admitted against the officers and the co-conspirators who were keeping the records. Viewed in that light, the records were more akin to an admission than unreliable hearsay. The use of the records certainly do not implicate the concern of Quezada as the records from the sheriff's office were not made pursuant to the investigation of the instant offenses. The district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the records from the sheriff's office.