Opinion ID: 194696
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Maxine Yefsky

Text: Maxine Yefsky acted as bookkeeper for her husband's and son's firms. She testified that she had no accounting training and had problems filing correct Forms 1099 with the IRS. The district court barred her from testifying about a conversation she had had with Coogan in January 1981 about these forms. Ms. Yefsky would have testified that Coogan had told her not to file the forms for him because his office would. The court excluded Coogan's statement as hearsay. Yefsky contends that the court erred in excluding Coogan's statement as hearsay. Yefsky urges that the evidence was not hearsay because he sought to introduce it only to demonstrate his wife's reliance on the statement and his own lack of intent to help Coogan evade taxes. See United States v. Hicks, 848 F.2d 1, 3 (1st Cir. 1988) (evidence not offered for its truth is not hearsay). The government agrees on appeal that the testimony wrongly was excluded. We must consider, however, whether the error harmed Yefsky. Lubanski v. Coleco Indus., Inc., 929 F.2d 42, 47 (1st Cir. 1991). -25- Our inquiry depends on the centrality of the evidence excluded and the prejudicial effect of the exclusion. Id. at 46 (citations omitted). Yefsky argues that the error was highly prejudicial because it effectively prevented him from presenting a defense to the tax fraud conspiracy. His defense was that he had no knowledge of and no intent to assist Coogan's wrongdoing but was merely a pawn. Our review of the record convinces us that the error was harmless. This evidence was relevant only to the tax fraud objective of the conspiracy count. As we have found sufficient evidence of Yefsky's participation in the engineering fraud objective, see Section II supra, the erroneous exclusion of Ms. Yefsky's testimony did not affect Yefsky's conviction on Count