Opinion ID: 396196
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Harriet Gilmore's Civil Court Testimony

Text: 44 Appellants claim that the government misled both the trial court and appellants by stating in its bill of particulars that Harriet Gilmore, an employee of Euro-Swiss who allegedly made fraudulent entries in a Euro-Swiss ledger, was an unindicted co-conspirator, but abandoning this claim after trial. Appellants assert that as a result of this claimed ruse, they failed to object to the government's reading into the record of portions of Gilmore's civil court testimony, believing that this testimony was hearsay, but within the co-conspirator exception to the hearsay rule. They claim that if Gilmore was not shown to be a co-conspirator, this testimony was inadmissible. 45 The short answer to this claim is that the evidence in question is not hearsay because it was not offered for the truth of the matters asserted. See Fed.R.Evid. 801(c). The evidence was a portion of the transcript of the attachment hearing during which Coven called Gilmore to provide a foundation for the introduction of the altered Euro-Swiss ledger which he used in an attempt to defeat the order of attachment. Thus, the transcript was read into the record in the criminal trial not for the truth of Gilmore's statements, but as direct evidence of Coven's act of obstruction of justice.