Opinion ID: 445460
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Buhajla.

Text: 78 Buhajla claims to be the innocent victim of a ruptured oil line: he testified that the King Air made an emergency landing at his airstrip in early February and that, after mechanics came and repaired it, the plane was mysteriously flown away about a week later. He denied emphatically that he was paid by his co-defendants to store the plane and insisted that he knew absolutely nothing about the theft of the plane or the importation of marijuana. Buhajla's defense consisted of his own testimony and that of four witnesses who all praised his reputation as a truth-teller and as a law-abiding citizen. In addition, he presented evidence that he had openly communicated to others that the King Air was stored on his property in early February. Leon Bibbins testified that Buhajla told many people that the King Air was at his airstrip. Similar testimony from Kay Dickson, however, was excluded on hearsay grounds. Buhajla claims on appeal that the district court erred (1) by excluding Kay Dickson's testimony that Buhajla did not conceal the existence of the King Air on his property and (2) by refusing Buhajla's request that seven witnesses be subpoened at Government expense. 79
80 Shortly before trial, Buhajla moved for issuance of subpoenas at Government expense for three witnesses from Arkansas and four witnesses from Illinois. The court granted the motion in part: Buhajla was instructed to choose four of the seven witnesses listed in his motion for whom subpoenas were issued. Buhajla now argues that the district court arbitrarily limited him to four cost-free subpoenas. We note at the outset that only three of the four witnesses for whom subpoenas were authorized testified at trial; one of the witnesses for whom a subpoena was denied testified anyway. 81 Buhajla now claims that four of the witnesses he requested were character witnesses only but that the other three were also fact witnesses. We note, however, that nowhere in the record did Buhajla indicate what he intended to prove through the seven witnesses he requested. His written motion, Record Vol. II at 238, simply lists the witnesses names and addresses; apparently, no objection or offer was made in response to the court's limitation of subpoenas. 82 Rule 17(b), Fed.R.Crim.P., governs an indigent's right to have witnesses subpoened at Government expense. Of course, the issue is not entirely procedural; it implicates both the sixth amendment right to compulsory process and the fifth amendment protection against unreasonable discrimination based upon the ability to pay. See, e.g., United States v. Hegwood, 562 F.2d 946, 952 (5th Cir.1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1079, 98 S.Ct. 1274, 55 L.Ed.2d 787 (1978). We have long held, however, that, within the limits imposed by the Constitution, [t]he decision to grant or deny a Rule 17(b) motion is vested in the sound discretion of the trial court. United States v. Bowman, 636 F.2d 1003, 1013 (5th Cir.1981). As a threshold matter, an indigent seeking a Rule 17(b) subpoena must allege facts that, if true, demonstrate the necessity of the requested witness' testimony. Hegwood, 562 F.2d at 952. The trial court may then exercise its discretion to deny the subpoenas if the Government demonstrates that the indigent's averments are untrue, United States v. Goodwin, 625 F.2d 693, 703 (5th Cir.1980), or if the requested testimony would be merely cumulative or irrelevant. Bowman, 636 F.2d at 1013. 83 Since Buhajla did not make a threshold showing on the record that the seven requested witnesses were necessary to an adequate defense, Fed.R.Crim.P. 17(b), we cannot say that the district court abused its discretion by forcing him to choose four of them. We note that even if Buhajla had made a record showing below of what he has told us on brief, we would nonetheless uphold the district court's decision. Buhajla claims that the four Illinois witnesses were exclusively character witnesses. He intended for the three Arkansas witnesses, however, to testify about his character and also about facts relevant to his defense: they could testify that Buhajla made no attempt to conceal the fact that the King Air was stored on his property. Even with the court's limitation, then, Buhajla could have subpoenaed at Government expense a total of four character witnesses while at the same time compelling attendance of the only three fact witnesses he sought. Given a district court's wide latitude in limiting cumulative character evidence, e.g., United States v. Edwards, 702 F.2d 529, 530 (5th Cir.1983), we could hardly find an abuse of discretion here. 84
85 Buhajla also complains that the district court erroneously prevented his first witness, Kay Dickson, from testifying that Buhajla told her in the presence of six other people that a King Air was stored on his property in early February of 1983. The court sustained the Government's hearsay objection to this testimony. Buhajla argues that, since the out-of-court statement he made to Kay Dickson was not offered for the truth of the matter asserted, it did not constitute hearsay. We agree. 86 Hearsay, of course, is defined as a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted. Fed.R.Evid. 801(c). Kay Dickson's testimony was not offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted by Buhajla--that a King Air was stored on his property. Rather, it was offered to support an inference of innocence: a man with guilty knowledge is not likely to advertise his possession of stolen property. 87 It is axiomatic that verbal conduct which is assertive but offered as a basis for inferring something other than the matter asserted is excluded from the federal definition of hearsay. Fed.R.Evid. 801(a) advisory committee note (1975). In United States v. Parry, 649 F.2d 292 (5th Cir.1981), for example, defendant was charged with acting as an intermediary in drug sales between undercover agents and third parties. He claimed, however, that he had acted on the good faith belief that he was assisting the undercover agents in their investigation. To bolster his theory of the case, defendant offered his mother's testimony that he told her that the telephone calls he had been receiving were from a narcotics agent with whom he was working. We held that the testimony was erroneously excluded on hearsay grounds: 88 As Parry explained to the district court, this statement was not offered to prove that the caller was a narcotics agent or that Parry was working with the agent, but to establish that Parry had knowledge of the agent's identity when he spoke. In other words, Parry offered the statement as the basis for a circumstantial inference by the jury that, if this statement was in fact made--a question which the in-court witness would testify to while under oath, before the jury, and subject to cross-examination--then Parry probably knew of the agent's identity. Using an out-of-court utterance as circumstantial evidence of the declarant's knowledge of the existence of some fact, rather than as testimonial evidence of the truth of the matter asserted, does not offend the hearsay rule. 89 Id. at 295 (emphasis supplied). Here, Dickson's testimony was offered as circumstantial evidence of the declarant's ignorance of some fact. Since the statement was offered simply to support an inference which the jury might reasonably have drawn regardless of the truth of the assertion, we think it was clearly not hearsay. 90 We are convinced, however, that exclusion of Kay Dickson's testimony was harmless error. In the past, we have applied both the harmless beyond a reasonable doubt standard of Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967), and the substantial influence standard of Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946), to erroneous hearsay rulings. Compare United States v. Martinez, 588 F.2d 495, 499 (5th Cir.1979) with United States v. Parry, 649 F.2d at 296. The error here was harmless under either standard. 91 Although Kay Dickson was not allowed to testify about Buhajla's public avowals with respect to the King Air, Buhajla himself testified about a conversation he had with Kay Dickson during which several people heard him state that a King Air was parked on his property. It is true that exclusion of Dickson's testimony deprived Buhajla of evidence corroborating this specific aspect of his own testimony. The point of this evidence, however, was simply to demonstrate that Buhajla publicly acknowledged the King Air's presence on his property; the fact that Buhajla's statement was made to Kay Dickson was not itself significant to the defense. Leon Bibbins testified without objection that Buhajla was proud that he had a King Air that landed at this short strip and that Bibbins was around many, many times when he talked about it. Record Vol. XXV at 3348. It appears, therefore, that evidence with the same exculpatory value as Kay Dickson's excluded testimony was presented to the jury. The jury obviously refused to draw the inference of ignorance that, according to Buhajla, follows from this evidence. In light of the direct testimony that Buhajla was paid $1000 a day to store the plane and that he originally told investigators, until he was shown photographs indicating the opposite, that there had never been a King Air on his property, we are convinced that Kay Dickson's testimony would not have tipped the balance in Buhajla's favor. Cf. United States v. Gonzalez, 700 F.2d 196, 202 (5th Cir.1983) (harmless error to exclude evidence of out-of-court corroborating statement where trial testimony to same effect was rejected as unbelievable). 92