Opinion ID: 4162273
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Law-Enforcement Personnel Exception

Text: Defendant argues that, even if the return of service is a record that sets out a matter observed while under a legal duty to report, it should not have been admitted under Rule 803(8)(A)(ii) because of the rule’s law enforcement exception. That exception—really, a limitation on the hearsay exception of Rule 803(8)(A)(ii)—provides that a record of “a matter observed by law-enforcement personnel” is not admissible as a public record in a criminal case. As Defendant correctly points out, (1) this is a criminal case, and (2) Officer Echevarria was a law enforcement officer. Given those two facts, the text of the law-enforcement personnel exception would seem to bar admission of the return of service. But the exception is not quite as broad as its wording suggests. “The Federal Rules of Evidence are, like many written laws, organic growths out of our common law,” United States v. Orellana-Blanco, 294 F.3d 1143, 1150 (9th Cir. 2002), and must be construed with that pedigree in mind. Rule 803(8) grew out of the common-law public records exception to hearsay, which “developed to admit the sundry sorts of public documents for which no serious controversy ordinarily arises about their truth.” Id. Considering that history, it would be natural to expect the law enforcement exception to cover only those records whose origins call into question their reliability. Indeed, we have recognized that “the purpose of the law enforcement exception is to ‘exclude observations made by officials at the scene of the crime or apprehension, because observations made in an adversarial setting are less reliable than observations made by public officials in other situations.’” Lopez, 762 F.3d at 861 (quoting United States v. Hernandez-Rojas, 617 F.2d 533, UNITED STATES V. FRYBERG 11 535 (9th Cir. 1980)). But “records of routine, nonadversarial matters made in a nonadversarial setting, reflecting ministerial, objective observations” of law enforcement personnel, Orellana-Blanco, 294 F.3d at 1150 (internal quotation marks and footnote omitted), are admissible in a criminal case, because such records are made under conditions that do not call into question their reliability, United States v. Orozco, 590 F.2d 789, 793–94 (9th Cir. 1979). Consistent with that narrow understanding of the law enforcement exception, we have held that several different types of records reflecting the observations of law enforcement personnel are admissible in criminal cases. See id. (holding that a record made by a customs inspector, stating that a car with a particular license plate had crossed the border at a particular time, was admissible as a public record); see also Hernandez-Rojas, 617 F.2d at 534–35 (holding that a warrant of deportation, which reflected an immigration officer’s observation that an alien had been deported, was admissible as a public record). We now hold that a return of service, such as the one in this case, is admissible as a public record under Rule 803(8)(A)(ii). The return of service recorded the completion of the largely ministerial task of serving Defendant with notice of a hearing.7 The observation reflected in the return 7 Serving a party with process or with notice of a hearing is generally a ministerial task. See Finberg v. Sullivan, 634 F.2d 50, 55 (3d Cir. 1980) (en banc) (noting that “the duties of the . . . sheriff in connection with the postjudgment garnishment procedures consist of issuing the writ of execution and serving it on the garnishee,” duties that “are entirely ministerial”); see also Levy Court v. Ringgold, 30 U.S. 451, 454 (1831) (“[M]arshals of the United States . . . are considered as mere ministerial officers, to execute process when put into their hands, and not made the judges whether such process shall be issued.”). 12 UNITED STATES V. FRYBERG of service—that service had taken place—was an objective one, not the type of “subjective observation[], summar[y], opinion[,] [or] conclusion[] of law enforcement personnel” that Congress intended to exclude from the scope of the public records exception. Orellana-Blanco, 294 F.3d at 1150. Finally, the return of service at issue is similar to a sheriff’s return, which was admissible at common law as a public record. United States v. Union Nacional de Trabajadores, 576 F.2d 388, 390–91 (1st Cir. 1978); see also Lavino v. Jamison, 230 F.2d 909, 911–12 (9th Cir. 1956) (“Sheriff’s returns are documents executed by public officials who normally carry out their duties properly. It is more convenient to place the burden of going forward with the evidence to show that statements in a return are inaccurate on the party so asserting than to require a sheriff to be called away from his duties in every case.”). “There is nothing to indicate that Congress meant to cut back upon the common law rule respecting sheriff’s returns” when it codified the rule in the Federal Rules of Evidence. Union Nacional de Trabajadores, 576 F.2d at 391.8