Opinion ID: 172520
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Admission of Mendez's Statements

Text: Mr. Cesareo-Ayala contends that the district court committed reversible error by admitting evidence of statements by Edward Mendez without making the findings required for coconspirator statements to be treated as nonhearsay under Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2)(E), the so-called coconspirator exception to the hearsay rule. He asserts that the statements were both inadmissible hearsay and barred by the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment. Although he states that his challenge relates to all of Mendez's statements admitted at trial, he addresses only Mendez's statements to him in two telephone conversations. We will therefore consider only those statements. See United States v. Vazquez, 555 F.3d 923, 930 (10th Cir.2009) (We have no obligation to take on the role of [defense] counsel and review the trial transcript to see whether we can find [error].... We therefore limit our review to the specific allegations of [error] recited by the defendant.). The government contends that Mendez's statements in the two conversations are not hearsay and do not implicate the Confrontation Clause because they were not offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted. Fed. R.Evid. 801(c) (defining hearsay); see Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 59 n. 9, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004) (The Clause ... does not bar the use of testimonial statements for purposes other than establishing the truth of the matter asserted.). We agree and reject Mr. Cesareo-Ayala's arguments. [2] As a result, we need not determine whether the district court improperly admitted the statements as coconspirator statements under Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2)(E). It is unclear whether Mr. Cesareo-Ayala is challenging statements in the second conversation, but we can promptly dispose of such a challenge in any event. The conversation was as follows (with bracketed numbers added to label Mendez's statements): [1] [Mendez]: What's going on? [Mr. Cesareo-Ayala]: Where are you? [2] [Mendez]: I'm almost there; I am at the gas station. [Mr. Cesareo-Ayala]: Who do you have with you? [3] [Mendez]: A friend I ran into at the fuel station. [Mr. Cesareo-Ayala]: Oh. I'm not there yet, I'm 7 minutes away. [4] [Mendez]: Okay, me to[o]. I'll be pulling in right behind you then. [Mr. Cesareo-Ayala]: Okay. Supp. R. at 2 (internal quotation marks omitted). Statement 1What's going on?asserts nothing. It is not a hearsay declaration. Statements 2 and 4 assert Mendez's location. Even if they are inadmissible hearsay, their admission was harmless; they could not have prejudiced Mr. Cesareo-Ayala in any way. Statement 3that Mendez was with a friend whom he met at the fuel station-was not offered for its truth (indeed, it was clearly untrue, because he was with police officers); so it, too, was not hearsay. Mr. Cesareo-Ayala's principal focus is the first conversation, which we repeat: [1] [Mendez]: What's going on, Primo? [Mr. Cesareo-Ayala]: What happened?, Are you ready? [2] [Mendez]: Nothing, I had trouble at the gas station[.] [Mr. Cesareo-Ayala]: Do you have my stuff? [3] [Mendez]: Yes. I've got your money. [4] [Mendez]: [a] Do you want to meet at 7th and Central? [b] I need two more. [Mr. Cesareo-Ayala]: Two more. Alright. [5] [Mendez]: Yeah, two more of the Stuff. I'll give you your stuff and you give me two more. [Mr. Cesareo-Ayala]: I don't like 7th and Central. [6] [Mendez]: Well, you tell me where. I'll meet you where ever. You tell me and I'll be there. [Mr. Cesareo-Ayala]: Remember where we played billiards? There.... [7] [Mendez]: Okay. How much time? [Mr. Cesareo-Ayala]: 15 minutes. [8] [Mendez]: Okay. Supp. R. at 1 (internal quotation marks omitted). Statements 1 and 4(a) are questions that assert nothing, again not hearsay. [3] If 6, 7, and 8 contain any hearsay, their admission was clearly harmless; they relate only to the time and place for their rendezvous. The remaining statements, 2, 3, 4(b), and 5, were not hearsay because they were not offered for their truth; indeed, they were demonstrably false: Mendez did not have trouble at the gas station, he had no money for Mr. Cesareo-Ayala, and he had no intent to obtain more stuff from Mr. Cesareo-Ayala. Mr. Cesareo-Ayala, however, argues as follows: The statements by Mendez in both walkie-talkie conversations ... make indirect implicit assertions and were so intended by Mendez. Comments such as I've got your money were intended to make the inculpatory assertion that the person on the other end of the telephone was engaged in a business transaction with Mendez. I need two more is intended to assert that Mendez wished to have the person on the other end deliver additional drugs and that this was in addition to drugs delivered in the past.... Mendez, knowing that law enforcement was listening to his conversation, was intending to make assertions for their benefit about the identity of the person on the telephone and the nature of their relationship. It was these implicit assertions and the truth of those assertions which made these conversations relevant and useful to the Government's case. Aplt. Reply Br. at 2-3. This argument misconceives what it means to say that a statement is offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted. Fed. R.Evid. 801(c). It appears to say that if a statement is used as evidence of a proposition, the declarant has asserted that proposition and the statement is therefore hearsay. But that is not correct. To give an obvious counterexample, a statement may be offered simply to prove that the speaker was physically able to speak, or could speak the language in which the statement is uttered. In that circumstance the truth of the statement is immaterial, and the statement is not offered for a hearsay purpose, even though it may well support an assertion of the prosecution. The conversation between Mendez and Mr. Cesareo-Ayala helped prove that the two men had a business relationship, but that relationship is established by the general subject matter of their discussion, without regard to the truth of anything that either man asserted. The probative value of the conversation derived not from any implicit assertion made by Mendez for the benefit of the officers but from the statements by Mr. Cesareo-Ayala, both in initiating the conversation and in responding to Mendez. The obvious purpose of including what Mendez said in presenting the conversation to the jury is that Mr. Cesareo-Ayala's words can be properly understood only in the context of Mendez's remarks. In context, Mr. Cesareo-Ayala's statements strongly suggest that he was involved in the (aborted) transaction with Steward and wanted to get together with Mendez to obtain the proceeds. If the jury could not hear Mendez's side of the conversation, however, it would have to speculate about what was really going on. [4] The role of the hearsay rule (and the related component of the right to confrontation) is to protect against statements that cannot be challenged by cross-examining the speaker. Cross-examination can expose problems with the speaker's perception, memory, or truthfulness. But Mendez's perception, memory, and truthfulness were irrelevant to the purpose for which the government offered his statements. A recent Sixth Circuit opinion illustrates this point. In United States v. Rodriguez-Lopez, 565 F.3d 312 (6th Cir.2009), the defendant had acted as a lookout for a heroin seller dealing with an undercover officer. See id. at 313-14. When federal agents moved in to arrest the seller, the defendant tried to drive out of the parking lot where the buy had occurred. See id. at 314. Other agents stopped him for questioning. During this questioning the defendant received multiple calls on his mobile phone. An agent answered ten of these calls; each time, the caller was a person seeking to buy heroin. See id. After the defendant was charged with conspiracy to distribute heroin, the district court granted the defendant's motion to exclude the callers' statements as hearsay. See id. The government appealed and the Sixth Circuit reversed. The government offered the statements, the court said, not for their truth, but as evidence of the fact that they were made. The fact that [the defendant] received ten successive solicitations for heroin is probative circumstantial evidence of his involvement in a conspiracy to distribute heroin. Id. at 315. Although the callers may have been implicitly asserting that the defendant was able to supply them with heroin, and although the government s[ought] to introduce the calls because they support[ed] an inference that [the defendant] was involved in dealing heroin, the calls were admissible because that inference d[id] not depend on the callers' truthfulness, memory, or perceptionthe core credibility concerns that lie behind the hearsay rule. Id. The same is true here. Given the clear nonhearsay purpose for admitting Mendez's statements, the admission of the statements violated neither the hearsay rule nor the Confrontation Clause.