Opinion ID: 222602
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Agent Brazao's Testimony

Text: Finally, Penaloza argues that the district court should not have admitted Agent Brazao's testimony about her confession because it lacked foundation. She contends that Brazao was not the officer who interrogated her, did not author the investigative report documenting the traffic stop, and was not sufficiently specific about which agents and what questions elicited her incriminating statements. In addition, she claims that Brazao's testimony, when coupled with the evidence improperly linking her to a conspiracy led by Gutierrez, unfairly prejudiced the jury against her. Brazao's testimony about Penaloza's confession was a routine and entirely permissible introduction of a nonhearsay admission by a party-opponent. FED. R.EVID. 801(d)(2)(A) (A statement is not hearsay if ... [t]he statement is offered against a party and is the party's own statement, in either an individual or representative capacity....). Brazao was present when Penaloza confessed; it is immaterial that he was not the interrogating officer or the author of the investigative report. Penaloza's contention that the government needed to provide a stronger foundation for the testimony is meritless. [N]o rule of evidence requires a `foundation'; `foundation' is simply a loose term for preliminary questions designed to establish that evidence is admissible. A.I. Credit Corp. v. Legion Ins. Co., 265 F.3d 630, 637-38 (7th Cir.2001). It may be good practice and orderly procedure for a witness to establish that a conversation occurred at a particular time and place and between the witness and someone else before the witness ... testif[ies] to the conversation's content, but Brazao's testimony covered these foundational facts. Id. at 638. Nothing more was required. See id. (witness's testimony about a conversation was specific enough to demonstrate the conversation's occurrence and relevance and therefore admissible, even if the witness did not identify all the participants in or the exact date of the conversation). Penaloza also suggests that Brazao's testimony was unfairly prejudicial because by the time the jury heard it, the jury had already been inculcated with the notion that she was a part of an international drug conspiracy. This is nothing more than a redundant objection to the background evidence about the Gutierrez investigation and Penaloza's call to Gutierrez, which, as we have explained, the district court properly admitted. AFFIRMED.