Opinion ID: 987037
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: a matter observed while under a legal duty to

Text: report, but not including, in a criminal case, a matter observed by law-enforcement personnel; or 14 UNITED STATES V . MORALES The government relied on two types of statements in the Field 826s to prove that the individuals in Morales’s car were in the country illegally: the aliens’ statements to the agents about their names and places of birth, and the aliens’ signed admissions that they were in the United States illegally. We must consider whether these statements independently qualify for an exception to the rule against hearsay. See Sana v. Hawaiian Cruises, Ltd., 181 F.3d 1041, 1045 (9th Cir. 1999). In general, statements by third parties who are not government employees (or otherwise under a legal duty to report) may not be admitted pursuant to the public records exception but must satisfy some other exception in order to be admitted. See 4 Christopher B. Mueller & Laird C. Kirkpatrick, Federal Evidence § 8:88 (3d ed. 2012) (noting that the exception allowing for a “matter observed while under a legal duty to report” in Rule 803(8) “generally does not pave the way for official records to prove conclusions resting on statements by outsiders or to prove what such outsider statements themselves assert” unless “the outsider’s statement itself fits an exception”); see also United States v. Pazsint, 703 F.2d 420, 424 (9th Cir. 1983) (“It is well established that entries in a police report which result from the officer’s own observations and knowledge may be admitted but that statements made by third persons under no business duty to report may not.”). We have applied this analysis to statements made by aliens and reported by