Opinion ID: 3017068
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Conversations Involving CI Rivera

Text: The District Court also ruled that the United States could 8 For example, if the United States urges that a particular Title III recording is admissible as a coconspirator statement, the District Court must determine, inter alia, that the statement was made “‘in furtherance of’” the conspiracy. United States v. Ellis, 156 F.3d 493, 496 (3d Cir. 1998) (quoting and construing Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(2)(E)). We take no position on whether the District Court should undertake such inquiries prior to trial, or during the course of trial as the various objections arise. 15 not introduce conversations between CI Rivera and various of the Defendants. Although occasionally a telephone conversation between Rivera and one of the Defendants was caught in a Title III wiretap, the conversations that fall within this heading are face-to-face conversations that were recorded by Rivera wearing a taping device provided by the Government. It cannot be disputed that CI Rivera knew of the Government’s surreptitious recording and documentation of these conversations. The District Court noted that, “[i]n discussing the ‘core’ class of statements that are considered testimonial, the . . . [Crawford] Court specifically included ‘. . . pretrial statements that declarants would reasonably expect to be used prosecutorially.’” J.A. at 68 (quoting Crawford, 541 U.S. at __, 124 S. Ct. at 1364). The District Court reasoned that because CI Rivera was working with the Government for the very reason of obtaining evidence against the Defendants for use in the Government’s investigation and prosecution, the conversations fell within the rule of Crawford. The District Court’s analysis is not without some appeal. Insofar as they contain the statements of CI Rivera, the conversations reasonably could be categorized as involving statements that Rivera expected to be used prosecutorially; obtaining evidence for the prosecution is, after all, the raison d’être of being a confidential informant. 9 However, the Crawford decision cites with approval Bourjaily v. United States, 483 U.S. 171 (1987), a case in which the Court rejected a Confrontation Clause objection to the admission of a 9 Of course, the various defendants and coconspirators, as the other half of the conversational equation, certainly did not realize that their statements were going to be used prosecutorially. And, as explained in the above text, because they constitute admissions unwittingly made, the defendants and coconspirators’ portions of the CI Rivera conversations are clearly nontestimonial statements and are thus not subject to the Crawford rule. See United States v. Saget, 377 F.3d 223, 229-30 (2d Cir. 2004) (“We . . . conclude that Beckham’s statements to the CI were not testimonial, and Crawford does not bar their admission.”). 16 conversation between a co-defendant and a confidential police informant. Indeed, the Crawford Court referenced Bourjaily as an example of a case in which nontestimonial statements were correctly admitted against the defendant despite the lack of a prior opportunity for cross-examination. See Crawford, 541 U.S. at __, 124 S.Ct. at 1368 (citing Bourjaily, 483 U.S. at 18184). In Bourjaily, the Court addressed the admissibility of admissions made unwittingly by William Bourjaily’s codefendant (and purported coconspirator) to an informant. The Court held that even though Bourjaily had not had a prior opportunity to cross-examine his co-defendant regarding the statements, if the statements were admissible under Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(2)(E) their introduction as evidence against Bourjaily did not run afoul of the Confrontation Clause. Bourjaily, 483 U.S. at 183. The Court reached this outcome despite the fact that the co-defendant was, due to his invocation of the privilege against self-incrimination, “unavailable” to testify at trial. Bourjaily, 483 U.S. at 182. As mentioned, Crawford approved of this holding, citing it as an example of a case that is “consistent with” the principle that the Sixth Amendment permits the admission of nontestimonial statements in the absence of a prior opportunity for cross-examination. Crawford, 541 U.S. at __, 124 S.Ct. at 1367. To be sure, there is a difference between the analysis undertaken by the Court in Bourjaily and the analysis urged by the Defendants here. Specifically, in Bourjaily, the Court focused on the unavailability of the coconspirator whose conversation with a confidential informant the Government sought to introduce. In contrast, the Defendants here emphasize the unavailability of the confidential informant. Stated otherwise, although the Bourjaily Court addressed the Confrontation Clause implications of the admission of conversations with a government informant, it focused on the non-informant half of the conversation. During oral argument before us, the United States conceded that it was not seeking to introduce the statements of 17 CI Rivera for their truth and thus correctly argued that the introduction of his statements would present no hearsay problem. See Fed. R. Evid. 801(c). As recognized by the Crawford Court, the Confrontation Clause likewise “does not bar the use of testimonial statements for purposes other than establishing the truth of the matter asserted.” Crawford, 541 U.S. at __, 124 S. Ct. 1369 n.9; see also United States v. Trala, 386 F.3d 536, 54445 (3d Cir. 2004) (finding no Confrontation Clause violation where reliability of out-of-court statements was not at issue and where the statements were not introduced for their truth). Therefore, even if we were to hold that CI Rivera’s statements within the conversations are themselves testimonial, an issue we need not reach, such an outcome would not preclude the United States from introducing CI Rivera’s statements for a purpose other than establishing the truth of the matters contained therein. Due to the Crawford Court’s reaffirmation of Bourjaily, we conclude that the party admission and coconspirator portions of the disputed CI Rivera conversations are nontestimonial and thus, assuming compliance with the Federal Rules of Evidence, are admissible. See also Saget, 377 F.3d at 229-30. Stated otherwise, Crawford presents no bar to the admission of the statements of Defendants or their coconspirators made in the conversations with CI Rivera that he surreptitiously recorded. Under these circumstances, we conclude that the Government should be permitted to introduce the balance of the conversations, i.e., the statements of CI Rivera which, as the Government argues, put the statements of the other parties to the conversations “into perspective and make them intelligible to the jury and recognizable as admissions.” United States v. McDowell, 918 F.2d 1004, 1007 (1st Cir. 1990) (internal citations and quotations omitted); see also United States v. Stelten, 867 F.2d 453, 454 (8th Cir. 1988) (per curiam); United States v. Gutierrez-Chavez, 842 F.2d 77, 81 (5th Cir. 1988); United States v. Murray, 618 F.2d 892, 900 (2d Cir. 1980); United States v. Lemonakis, 485 F.2d 941, 948-49 (D.C. Cir. 1973). We thus hold that if a Defendant or his or her 18 coconspirator makes statements as part of a reciprocal and integrated conversation with a government informant who later becomes unavailable for trial, the Confrontation Clause does not bar the introduction of the informant’s portions of the conversation as are reasonably required to place the defendant or coconspirator’s nontestimonial statements into context. Accordingly, the District Court’s ruling to exclude the conversations involving CI Rivera on the basis of Crawford was error. Nonetheless, as we stated above in respect to the Title III recordings, on remand the District Court must determine on an individualized basis whether each of the disputed conversations is indeed authentic and otherwise admissible under the Rules of Evidence and the decisional law thereon.