Opinion ID: 511568
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the hearsay

Text: 28 A. What Transpired. The final reason of appeal need not engage our attention for long. Appellant bemoans the admission of a certain bit of testimony. During the government's case in chief, while agent Keaney was on redirect, he was asked why DEA had begun to focus on Polito. The witness replied: 29 I started an investigation based on information provided to me by [an informer] and also after my conversations and investigations with the Laconia Police Department and Agent Haskell of the FBI. 30 2 T. at 39. Keaney was then asked: What did you learn from those conversations? Id. A timely objection was overruled, and the witness replied: 31 I was advised by Detective Michael Neilson of the Laconia Police Department that Mr. Polito was of record with them as being suspected of trafficking cocaine as early as 1985 at a place called the Nashville North Night Club in the Weirs Beach section of Laconia, which was managed by Mr. Polito. 32 Id. No motion to strike was made with regard to either answer. 33 Later that day, after the prosecution had rested and outside the jury's presence, defendant moved to strike the last-quoted answer. The court responded: It's been stricken. Id. at 47. The judge went on to observe that when something is stricken, the jury disregards it and they will be instructed again at the close of the case to disregard it. Id. at 48. 5 But life was not so simple. Though all parties apparently believed that the answer had been stricken--for aught that appears, both defense counsel and the prosecutor agreeably acquiesced in the judge's stated recollection--the transcript fails to substantiate that shared belief. Insofar as we can ascertain, the jury was never told to disregard the answer. 34 B. Discussion. The testimony--though undoubtedly offered in good faith--was the rankest of hearsay. It should not have been admitted. Once introduced, it should (as the trial judge intimated) have been deleted and the jury told specifically to ignore it. Yet troubling though its presence is, we think that, viewed in the context of the entire record, the bevue was benign. The evidence against defendant was very strong; the answer was one isolated piece of readily recognizable gossip in the context of a three day trial; properly-admitted evidence of Polito's prior drug trafficking exploits circa 1980 was before the jury, e.g., 2 T. at 133-35; id. at 162, and appellant had acknowledged that activity; and counsel on both sides, in summing up, treated the offending answer as if it had been stricken. 6 Although it was brought out at oral argument that the hearsay could conceivably have undermined defendant's claim of lack of predisposition, that was an irrelevancy because, in any event, there was no proof of inducement sufficient to reach the jury. See supra Part I(B). 35 Under these idiosyncratic circumstances, we do not believe that there was any realistic possibility that admission of the evidence influenced the outcome of the trial. Despite the fact that an error occurred, it did not affect the defendant's substantial rights, and was, therefore, harmless. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(a).