Opinion ID: 535304
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Hearsay objection to testimony

Text: 4 On appeal, Enterline challenges the testimony of Edward Satterfield, a Special Agent of the F.B.I., based in Little Rock, Arkansas. Satterfield participated in the investigation of the scheme, and was present at Enterline's residence in Fayetteville on August 8, 1987, when law enforcement officers executed a search warrant. As part of that search, officers from the auto theft unit of the Tulsa Police Department seized several vehicle identification number plates, as well as shipping manifests, from vehicles on Enterline's property. Satterfield then ran a computer check on the identification numbers, and found that several of the vehicles had been reported stolen. Satterfield testified that the computer report indicated that three vehicles not charged in the indictment, but present on Enterline's property, had been reported stolen, and that two vehicles not charged had been renumbered. Trial Transcript, vol. 2, at 155-56. While this portion of Satterfield's testimony did not concern vehicles charged in the indictment, Enterline argues on appeal not that the testimony was inadmissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), but that the testimony was hearsay and not admissible through any exception in the rules. 1 We disagree, since Satterfield's testimony from the computer report, while hearsay, was admissible under the public records exception, Federal Rule of Evidence 803(8)(B). 5 Satterfield derived his conclusion that several cars on Enterline's property were reported stolen from a computer report comparing the identification numbers given to Satterfield with vehicle identification numbers from all cars reported stolen. The computer report is clearly hearsay, since it is an out of court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted--that the cars on Enterline's property were reported stolen. The report nevertheless qualifies as a public record within Rule 803(8)(B). 2 The hearsay exception for public records is based on both the necessity for admitting such records and their inherent trustworthiness. See 4 J. Weinstein & M. Berger, Weinstein's Evidence Sec. 803(8), at 803-233 (1989); United States v. Quezada, 754 F.2d 1190, 1193 (5th Cir.1985). Indeed, were the computer record not admissible as a public record to prove that the cars were reported stolen, the difficulty of proving that simple fact would be enormous. Thus, this circuit has admitted, for example, under Rule 803(8), certified documents from the Missouri Department of Revenue to prove ownership of an automobile. See United States v. King, 590 F.2d 253, 255 (8th Cir.1978), cert. denied, 440 U.S. 973, 99 S.Ct. 1538, 59 L.Ed.2d 790 (1979). Our concern is thus not whether the public records exception applies in this case, but whether the computer report falls within the exclusion found in Rule 803(8)(B) for matters observed by law enforcement officers in a criminal case. We hold that it does not. 6 It is clear that the exclusion concerns matters observed by the police at the scene of the crime. Such observations are potentially unreliable since they are made in an adversary setting, and are often subjective evaluations of whether a crime was committed. See Quezada, 754 F.2d at 1193-94; United States v. King, 613 F.2d 670, 673 (7th Cir.1980); United States v. Orozco, 590 F.2d 789, 793 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 442 U.S. 920, 99 S.Ct. 2845, 61 L.Ed.2d 288 (1979). The exclusion seeks to avoid admitting an officer's report of his observations in lieu of his personal testimony of what he observed. In adopting this exception, Congress was concerned about prosecutors attempting to prove their cases in chief simply by putting into evidence police officers' reports of their contemporaneous observations of crime. Orozco, 590 F.2d at 794 (quoting United States v. Grady, 544 F.2d 598, 604 (2d Cir.1976)). Similarly, this circuit explained, in dictum, that Rule 803(8)(B) contains an exclusion for criminal cases because police reports are not reliable evidence of whether the allegations of criminal conduct they contain are true. United States v. Bell, 785 F.2d 640, 644 (8th Cir.1986). 7 Thus, the subject matter of the public record or report determines its admissibility; the exclusion applies only to matters observed by police officers and other law enforcement personnel. Other circuits have found that reports not containing matters observed by officers in an adversarial setting do not fall within the exclusion to Rule 803(8)(B). In Orozco, the Ninth circuit considered a computer report that the car in which defendants were arrested had crossed the Mexican border on the night of the arrest. The computer report was made by United States Customs officials at the border, who, as standard procedure, enter vehicle license numbers into a computer to determine whether the same vehicle has crossed the border within a seventy-two hour period. The Ninth Circuit held the computer report admissible, finding it significant that the simple recordation of license numbers of all vehicles which pass [the] station is not of the adversarial confrontation nature which might cloud [an official's] perception. Orozco, 590 F.2d at 793. Thus, the situation provided little opportunity for an inaccurate report. Id. 8 Similarly, in Quezada, the Fifth Circuit admitted a warrant of deportation in a proceeding in which defendant was charged with illegal re-entry into the United States following his deportation. The warrant contained a record made by the agent that the defendant had departed the country. The Fifth Circuit found that the information in the warrant required no more of the law enforcement officer than to mechanically register an unambiguous factual matter. Quezada, 754 F.2d at 1194. Thus, [i]n the case of documents recording routine, objective observations, made as part of the everyday function of the preparing official or agency, the factors likely to cloud the perception of an official engaged in the more traditional law enforcement functions of observation and investigation of crime are simply not present. Id. Cf. United States v. Hernandez-Rojas, 617 F.2d 533, 534-35 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 864, 101 S.Ct. 170, 66 L.Ed.2d 81 (1980) (notation of departure on warrant has none of the features of the subjective report made by a law enforcement official in an on-the-scene investigation, which investigative reports lack sufficient guarantees of trustworthiness because they are made in an adversary setting.); United States v. Puente, 826 F.2d 1415, 1417-18 (5th Cir.1987) (admitting computer report made at Mexican border on same rationale as Orozco and Quezada ). 9 Similarly, the facts of this case are not within the purpose of the exclusion. The computer report does not contain contemporaneous observations by police officers at the scene of a crime, and thus presents none of the dangers of unreliability that such a report presents. Rather, the report merely contains, and is based on, facts: that cars with certain vehicle identification numbers were reported to have been stolen. Neither the notation of the vehicle identification numbers themselves nor their entry into a computer presents an adversarial setting or an opportunity for subjective observations by law enforcement officers. The officers were not recording their observations of crime, but were recording facts presented to them. Thus, the computer compilation, while hearsay, is simply not a report susceptible to the dangers which the exclusion set forth in Rule 803(8)(B) was designed to avoid. Cf. United States v. Johnson, 722 F.2d 407, 409-10 (8th Cir.1983) (admission of certified document containing a serial number report from the manufacturer of a gun on grounds that report was not a matter observed by law enforcement personnel). Accordingly, we find no error in the district court's admission of Satterfield's testimony.