Opinion ID: 510217
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Friedman: The Impeachment of Manes

Text: 178 Friedman's primary contention on appeal concerns the district court's refusal to allow the introduction of evidence that Donald Manes had lied to law-enforcement authorities about his attempt in January 1986 to take his own life. Because Lindenauer testified to numerous hearsay statements by Manes admitted as declarations of a co-conspirator in furtherance of the conspiracy under Fed.R.Evid. 801(d)(2)(E), Friedman argues that the exclusion of this evidence violated Fed.R.Evid. 806, which authorizes the introduction of evidence attacking the credibility of a hearsay declarant. We believe the evidence was properly excluded because it was simply not probative on the issue of the credibility of Manes's conspiratorial statements to Lindenauer. 179 In the early morning hours of January 10, 1986, aware that federal authorities were investigating his dealings with the PVB, Donald Manes was seen driving erratically on the Grand Central Parkway by police officers. Bleeding from slash wounds in his left wrist and left ankle, Manes was taken to a hospital in Flushing. While at that hospital, the Queens Borough President explained his wounds by telling investigators that two men hiding in the rear seat of his automobile had abducted him when he left Queens Borough Hall on the evening of January 9. On January 21, however, after having been transferred to a hospital in Manhattan, Manes read to reporters at his bedside a short statement in which he admitted that his wounds were self-inflicted and that he had fabricated the story of his abduction. 180 At trial, Friedman sought to impeach the credibility of the late Manes's hearsay declarations by presenting evidence of this false story. Specifically, Friedman offered the testimony of a Queens County assistant district attorney to whom Manes had lied, along with a videotape of Manes reading his public statement. 181 The district court excluded the proffered evidence because it had no probative value and might confuse the jury. See Fed.R.Evid. 403 (relevant evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury). The district judge announced that I don't see what [Manes's abduction story] has to do with this case, and pointed to the fact that, when the jury was being selected, he had asked each prospective juror to accept my representation that Manes' suicide has nothing whatever to do with this case. 182 Rule 806 of the Federal Rules of Evidence provides that [w]hen a hearsay statement, or a statement defined in Rule 801(d)(2), (C), (D), or (E), has been admitted in evidence, the credibility of the declarant may be attacked, and if attacked may be supported, by any evidence which would be admissible for those purposes if declarant had testified as a witness. Fed.R.Evid. 806. As the Advisory Committee's Note explains, [t]he declarant of a hearsay statement which is admitted in evidence is in effect a witness. His credibility should in fairness be subject to impeachment and support as though he had in fact testified. See Rules 608 and 609. Id. advisory committee's note. In turn, under Rule 608(b), [s]pecific instances of the conduct of a witness ... may ... in the discretion of the court, if probative of truthfulness or untruthfulness, be inquired into on cross-examination of the witness ... concerning the witness' character for truthfulness or untruthfulness. Fed.R.Evid. 608(b). Friedman argues that the district court was required to admit evidence of Manes's false abduction story because Manes could have been cross-examined on the subject under Rule 608(b) if he had lived to testify at the trial. Specifically, Friedman emphasizes that, had Manes testified, defense counsel could have sharply attacked the Queens Borough President's credibility by asking him questions about his criminally mendacious attempt to shift the responsibility to others for his self-inflicted wounds. 183 Rule 806 does not set forth a test of probative value but rather states generally the type of evidence that may be used to undermine hearsay declarations. 8 Specific issues of whether a declarant's past conduct may actually cast doubt on the credibility of [his] statements, United States v. Serna, 799 F.2d 842, 850 (2d Cir.1986), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 107 S.Ct. 1887, 95 L.Ed.2d 494 (1987), must be determined by comparing the circumstances of the past conduct with those surrounding the hearsay statements admitted into evidence. Such assessments, like determinations of relevance and rulings as to the proper scope of cross-examination, must be left to the broad discretion of the trial judge, and we will not overturn an exercise of that discretion absent a clear showing of abuse. United States v. Bari, 750 F.2d 1169, 1178 (2d Cir.1984), cert. denied, 472 U.S. 1019, 105 S.Ct. 3482, 87 L.Ed.2d 617 (1985). 184 Judge Knapp certainly did not abuse his discretion here. The evidence of Manes's false abduction story had no conceivable bearing upon the credibility of his statements to Lindenauer in furtherance of the conspiracy. When Manes was found badly wounded on that early January morning, he was a distraught man whose life was soon to be shattered by the government's investigation. Lindenauer thus testified that, as the investigation closed in around them, an uncharacteristically nervous and erratic Manes had suggested to Lindenauer the possibility of suicide to avoid prosecution. Manes's false account of his suicide attempt was obviously intended to conceal his consciousness of guilt in the face of the ongoing investigation. To suggest, as does Friedman, that this pathetic incident demonstrates that Manes as a general matter falsely blamed others for causing his wounds--as if Manes had specifically accused someone as an abductor in his false explanation of his wounds--is fanciful. There is simply no merit to the suggestion that the incident casts doubt upon the credibility of Manes's conspiratorial declarations. Those statements, which were in furtherance of the conspiracy, were not attempts to shift blame from Manes to others but directly implicated him as well as the others. Admission of the testimony and videotape, moreover, would necessarily have injected Manes's subsequent suicide into the heart of the case as evidence of the guilty state of mind that caused him to lie on the earlier occasion. There was thus no error in its exclusion. 185 We note as well that Judge Knapp was not insensitive to the commands of Rule 806. He thus properly allowed Friedman to introduce evidence attacking the credibility of a statement that Manes had made to Lindenauer thirteen years earlier about the source of the $25,000 Manes had invested in Lindenauer's psychotherapy clinic. Friedman claims that this evidentiary ruling is inconsistent with the ruling on the abduction story because the psychotherapy-clinic episode was more remote in time. The two rulings are entirely consistent, however, because the evidence concerning the $25,000 payment, unlike the evidence about Manes's suicide attempt, directly involved the credibility of Manes's out-of-court statements to Lindenauer. 186