Opinion ID: 458933
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: admission of summary and charts

Text: 44 The next assignment of error, in which Robinson, Wilson, and Milliken all join, concerns the admission of Government Exhibits Nos. 21 and 22. Exhibit 21 is a thirteen-page summary worksheet prepared by FBI Agent Don Oxler, listing 105 clients who applied for loans from appellants. The worksheet lists by column the following data for each loan applicant: the date of his contract; the agreed upon fees to be paid Milliken, Wilson, Robinson, or T-Plex; the borrower's gross proceeds (should the loan go through); the date of the collateral instrument letter; and the gross loan amount, the amount which the foreign source actually would have to lend for the individual borrower to receive the commission he was seeking. Exhibit 22 consists of three large charts, which contain exactly the same information as in Exhibit 21. Appellants contend that the admission of these exhibits, which came in under Fed.R.Evid. 1006, over their objections was reversible error, because no proper foundation existed for the admission of the underlying documents on which the exhibits were based; the summaries were incomplete and were introduced before all the supporting evidence for them was put into evidence; the underlying documents were not voluminous; and the summaries included all 105 loan applicants instead of just the fifteen named in the indictment. Fed.R.Evid. 1006 states as follows: 45 The contents of voluminous writings    which cannot conveniently be examined in court may be presented in the form of a chart, summary, or calculation. The originals, or duplicates, shall be made available for examination or copying, or both, by other parties at reasonable time and place. The court may order that they be produced in court. 46 The district court has considerable discretion in determining whether to send exhibits to the jury. See, e.g., United States v. Lewis, 759 F.2d 1316, 1329 n. 6 (8th Cir.1985); United States v. Wilson, 665 F.2d 825, 829-30 (8th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 456 U.S. 994, 102 S.Ct. 2279, 73 L.Ed.2d 1291 (1982); United States v. John Bernard Industries, 589 F.2d 1353, 1359-60 (8th Cir.1979). We will not reverse the district court's determination on appeal unless it has abused its discretion. 47 We find no abuse of discretion in the admission of the exhibits in question at trial. The record shows that the district court carefully considered the admissibility of the summary, and held a voir dire examination of Agent Oxler out of the presence of the jury. The court even required the Government to change the heading of a column titled Fees Paid, to Agreed Upon Fees, because the court was not satisfied that sufficient evidence existed that the fees had in fact been paid. Oxler testified that he prepared the summary from various sources: (1) a list of 105 individuals who had applied for loans through defendant Wilson, which was seized during the execution of a search warrant at Wilson's residence and was admitted as Government Exhibit No. 16; (2) two boxes obtained pursuant to the same search warrant holding ninety files, one for each non-indictment loan applicant named in Exhibit 16, each file containing the same basic contract documents needed to apply for a loan (Government Exhibits Nos. 17-A and 17-B); (3) fifteen files, containing contract documents, pulled from the boxes admitted as Exhibits 17-A and 17-B and corresponding to the fifteen loan applicants named in the indictment (Government Exhibits Nos. 1-15); (4) a computer printout of monthly financial statements for the I.W. Milliken Company for May, June, July, and August 1980 seized pursuant to a search executed at Milliken's office, showing income from consulting fees that matched up substantially by name and amount with the client files in Exhibits 1-15, 17-A, and 17-B, and with client fee agreements for the company introduced as Government Exhibit No. 19 (Government Exhibit 20); and (5) letters from Robinson to Troutman. All of these documents were admitted by the district court prior to Exhibits 21 and 22. 48 Oxler also testified that he participated in the searches of Wilson's residence and Milliken's office, and that the items seized during those searches remained in his custody and control up until the trial. Further, Oxler testified that prior to the execution of the search warrants he had attended a sales pitch at Wilson's home and had the chance to observe the loan application documents presented to prospective applicants; these documents were the same as those contained in Exhibits 1-15, 17-A and 17-B. 49 We are satisfied that a sufficient foundation was laid for the underlying documents summarized in Exhibits 21 and 22, and that the summary and charts are complete and accurate. Appellants do not contest that they had access to the documents, as required by Rule 1006. Finally, the underlying documents were sufficiently voluminous to warrant summarization under Rule 1006. The summary properly included all 105 applicants, because information regarding all of these individuals was relevant in delineating the enormous scope of the scheme, which would have required obtaining loans in excess of thirty billion dollars to fulfill all of the applicants' requests. It was necessary to show the staggering scope of the scheme in order to establish the patent impossibility of appellants' representations concerning their program. With eight documents for each of the 105 applicants, the voluminous requirement of Rule 1006 is easily satisfied; the rule does not require that the underlying documents contain complex calculations to be eligible for summation. In sum, we find no error in the admission of the exhibits. 50