Opinion ID: 77396
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Testimony By FBI Analyst

Text: 64 FBI Financial Analyst Norman Pete Odom (Odom), the government's primary witness at trial, testified at length concerning MCC's financial and business records. Although Odom is a trained financial analyst with twenty-three years of experience, the district court permitted Odom to testify as a lay witness. Appellants contend that Odom should have been classified as an expert witness, and that Appellants were prejudiced because prior to trial, the government did not provide Appellants with a summary of Odom's expert testimony. 12 65 The government timely disclosed to Appellants that Odom would be a government witness. Prior to trial, the government also provided to Appellants all of the evidentiary documents that would be the basis of Odom's testimony, which in any case were almost exclusively documents that Odom had acquired from Appellants in the first place. However, the government did not declare Odom as an expert witness, and did not provide Appellants with a pretrial summary of his expected testimony. Moreover, until the first day of trial, the government did not produce several summary charts the government intended to introduce during Odom's testimony. 66 Because the government produced Odom's summary charts only on the morning of the first day of trial, the district court excluded those charts from evidence. The district court asked rhetorically, [h]ow can there be a fair trial for the defendant if the defense attorney is not given a key exhibit prior to the morning of trial? Even so, over Appellants' objection, the district court allowed Odom to testify as a lay witness. Appellants contend that the district court abused its discretion because Odom effectively testified as an expert and should not have been allowed to do so without the required disclosures. 13 67 According to the Federal Rules of Evidence, [i]f scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise. . . . Fed.R.Evid. 702. Where the government plans to present expert testimony in a criminal trial, the government is required to submit to a defendant a written summary of the expected testimony. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 16(a)(1)(G). 14 68 The central purpose of Odom's testimony was to prove the fact that MCC billed Community Bank for work MCC performed for Patterson. However, Odom did not testify to this fact based on his financial expertise, nor did he express any expert opinion in his testimony. Rather, Odom simply reviewed and summarized over seven thousand financial documents, primarily MCC's Quickbooks records, time sheets, invoices, and check stubs. In his testimony, Odom factually described MCC's records and then matched a small subset of the voluminous payroll, accounting, and invoice records. 69 For example, Odom testified that MCC's time sheets recorded the number of hours worked by employees on non-Community Bank projects such as Heritage Valley Farms. Odom then explained that MCC's Quickbooks records included payroll entries for each MCC employee who worked on the non-Community Bank projects. Odom matched the hours from the employees' time sheets to identical payroll entries in the Quickbooks records. By matching these records, Odom was able to testify to the fact that in Quickbooks, MCC had coded the employees' payroll amounts to Community Bank projects rather than to the non-Community Bank projects listed on the time sheets. 70 Based on MCC's own invoices and cashed checks, Odom testified that MCC sent invoices to Community Bank for the work done by these employees, even though the time sheets showed that the work was not done for Community Bank. Odom also presented to the jury his summations of the total number of hours from the time sheets and other records. Odom calculated the labor cost to MCC for each of its projects, and then testified concerning the actual amounts MCC billed Community Bank for those projects. Odom used an Excel spreadsheet to calculate some of these figures. 71 Contrary to Appellants' contention, the government was not required to certify Odom as an expert witness and comply with Rule 16(a) with respect to Odom's testimony. To prepare for his testimony, Odom simply added and subtracted numbers from a long catalogue of MCC records, and then compared those numbers in a straightforward fashion. As Odom himself explained at trial, while his expertise and the use of computer software may have made him more efficient at reviewing MCC's records, his review itself was within the capacity of any reasonable lay person. 15 Therefore, Odom's testimony was permissible lay testimony under Rule 701 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. See Fed.R.Evid. 701 (allowing lay testimony as to opinions or inferences which are (a) rationally based on the perception of the witness, and (b) helpful to a clear understanding of the witness' testimony or the determination of a fact in issue, and (c) not based on scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge within the scope of Rule 702); see also United States v. Henderson, 409 F.3d 1293, 1299-1300 (11th Cir. 2005), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 126 S.Ct. 1331, 164 L.Ed.2d 47 (2006). 16 72 Appellants' contention that Odom should have been classified as an expert witness is indistinguishable from a similar claim rejected by the Tenth Circuit in United States v. Caballero, 277 F.3d 1235, 1247 (10th Cir. 2002). There, the Tenth Circuit concluded that an FBI financial analyst properly testified as a lay witness even where his testimony summarized business records and client lists and presented them in condensed form. . . . Caballero, 277 F.3d at 1247. As with the FBI financial analyst in Caballero, the fact that Odom is a financial expert does not in and of itself require that his testimony about financial records be treated as expert testimony. 73 Even if we were to agree with Appellants that Odom should have been classified as an expert witness and the government should have complied with Rule 16(a)'s disclosure requirements, `[v]iolations of Rule 16 will result in a reversal of conviction only if such a violation prejudices a defendant's substantial rights.' United States v. Chastain, 198 F.3d 1338, 1348 (11th Cir. 1999) (citation omitted). Even before the government formally identified Odom as a witness at trial, Appellants were aware of his role in the investigation and that he would testify to the government's central allegation that MCC had billed Community Bank for non-Community Bank work at Patterson's Heritage Valley Farms. Odom's testimony was based entirely on MCC records produced by Appellants themselves, and the district court even excluded from trial Odom's summary charts. It is difficult to see what additional information Appellants were entitled to receive prior to trial concerning Odom's testimony, or how classifying Odom as a lay witness prejudiced Appellants in any way.