Opinion ID: 161817
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: admission of cellmate’s affidavit

Text: On appeal, Sours claims that the district court erred by refusing to admit into evidence a corroborating affidavit from a cellmate. Although the cellmate witnessed the November 27 incident, his whereabouts at the time of trial were unknown. Sours sought to admit the affidavit, which precisely mirrored his account of the incident, under the residual or catch-all exception to the hearsay rule, Fed. R. Evid. 807. (Rule 807 is a recent recodification of former Rules 803(24) and 804(b)(5).) The defendants objected on the ground that Sours had not complied with the notice requirements set forth in the rule. The district court sustained the objection. We review the district court’s rulings on the admissibility of evidence under the residual hearsay exception for abuse of discretion. United States v. Tome , 61 F.3d 1446, 1454 (10th Cir. 1995). “Courts must use caution when -3- admitting evidence under Rule [807], for an expansive interpretation of the residual exception would threaten to swallow the entirety of the hearsay rule.” Id. at 1452. We therefore allow its use only in limited cases: “As this court has warned, Rule [807] should be used only in extraordinary circumstances where the court is satisfied that the evidence offers guarantees of trustworthiness and is material, probative and necessary in the interest of justice.” Id. (quotation omitted). See also S. Rep. No. 93-1277 (1974), reprinted in 1974 U.S.C.C.A.N. 7051, 7066 (“It is intended that the residual hearsay exceptions will be used very rarely, and only in exceptional circumstances. The committee does not intend to establish a broad license for trial judges to admit hearsay statements that do not fall within one of the other exceptions contained in rules 803 and 804 [ ].”) Rule 807 itself sets out several requirements for admitting evidence under it. In addition to carrying circumstantial guarantees of its trustworthiness, a statement must be: (A) material; (B) probative; and (C) in the interests of justice to admit. See Fed. R. Evid. 807. There is also a notice requirement attached to the Rule: a statement may not be admitted under this exception unless the proponent of it makes known to the adverse party sufficiently in advance of the trial or hearing to provide the adverse party with a fair opportunity to prepare to meet it, the proponent’s intention to offer the statement and the particulars of it, including the name and address of the declarant . Id (emphasis added) . -4- The district court refused to admit the affidavit from Sours’s cellmate under the final clause of this notice requirement, because Sours could not provide the affiant’s address. 1 Sours does not deny this. He insists, however, that he complied with the rule’s notice requirements by alerting the defendants of his intention to use the affidavit in the pretrial order. Our review of the pretrial order confirms that the affidavit was indeed listed among the exhibits Sours hoped to admit at trial. But it also confirms that Sours did not provide the necessary address. The notice requirements of the residual hearsay rule are strictly construed. United States v. Heyward , 729 F.2d 297, 299 n.1 (4th Cir. 1984). Indeed, courts have refused to admit hearsay evidence under the rule solely because the proponent failed to provide the opposing party with the name and address of the declarant. Akzo Coatings, Inc. v. Aigner Corp. , 881 F. Supp. 1202, 1212 (N.D. Ind. 1994), aff’d in part, vacated in part by Akzo Nobel Coatings, Inc. v. Aigner Corp. , 197 F.3d 302 (7th Cir. 1999). The district court did no less here. We cannot conclude that adhering to the strict language of a rule constitutes an 1 Because Sours did not provide this court with a transcript of the district court’s ruling, we cannot be absolutely clear as to the court’s reasoning. But we are confident that, given the context, it was the lack of an address that animated the court’s decision to reject the affidavit. In their answer brief, moreover, the defendants explicitly attribute this reasoning to the court. See Answer Br. at 11. Sours does not quibble with the defendants’ characterization in his reply. -5- abuse of discretion. See Lloyd v. Prof’l Realty Servs., Inc. , 734 F.2d 1428, 1433-34 (11th Cir. 1984) (excluding testimony under notice provisions because “ a trial court following the strict language of the rule to exclude testimony is [not] guilty of an abuse of discretion”).