Court Opinion

ID: 9491137
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:04:43.409944+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:32.089739
License: Public Domain

RONEY, Senior Circuit Judge,
specially
concurring:
I concur in the judgment of this Court affirming the district court, although I would hold there was no error in admitting the notebook into evidence. The decision on this point is, of course, dictum: a decision that need not have been made because we decide that any error was harmless. I agree with that controlling decision.
In my judgment, the notebook was admissible in this case despite the uncertainty as to its true author. The plain language of Rule 801(d)(2)(E), and of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Bourjaily v. United States, 483 U.S. 171, 175, 107 S.Ct. 2775, 2778-79, 97 L.Ed.2d 144 (1987), only required the court to determine that a conspiracy existed between the author of the notebook (whoever that might have been) and the defendant, and that the statements in the notebook were made in furtherance of the conspiracy. This did not require the court to identify which of several potential conspirators actually authored the notebook.
Our circuit and several other circuits, with the exception of the Ninth, have held that *1416anonymous documents which record the activities of a criminal conspiracy may properly be admitted under Rule 801(d)(2)(E) when there is some independent evidence corroborating the reliability of the document. See, e.g. United States v. Christopher, 923 F.2d 1545, 1551 n. 3 (11th Cir.1991). See also United States v. Smith, 918 F.2d 1501, 1510-11 (11th Cir.1990), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 849, 112 S.Ct. 151, 116 L.Ed.2d 117 (1991) (anonymous drug ledgers admissible); United States v. Dynalectric Co., 859 F.2d 1559, 1581-82 (11th Cir.1988), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1006, 109 S.Ct. 1641, 1642, 104 L.Ed.2d 157 (1989) (anonymous phone call made in course of antitrust conspiracy admissible); United States v. Mazyak, 650 F.2d 788, 791 (5th Cir. Unit B 1981), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 922, 102 S.Ct. 1281, 71 L.Ed.2d 464 (1982) (logbooks found on a vessel smuggling marijuana admissible); United States v. Postal, 589 F.2d 862, 886 n. 41 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 832, 100 S.Ct. 61, 62 L.Ed.2d 40 (1979) (same); United States v. McGlory, 968 F.2d 309, 334-38 (3d Cir.1992), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 962, 113 S.Ct. 1388, 122 L.Ed.2d 763 (1993) (handwritten notes found in defendant’s garbage admissible against co-defendants even though no handwriting expert identified their author); United States v. Helmel, 769 F.2d 1306, 1313 (8th Cir.1985) (“we do not believe that positive proof of the declarant’s identity, through handwriting analysis or otherwise, is necessarily essential to the invocation of the eoeonspirator rule”); United States v. De Gudino, 722 F.2d 1351, 1356 (7th Cir.1984) (anonymous lists of illegal immigrants admissible because “the contents of the lists clearly show that their author was familiar with the workings of the conspiracy.”). But see United States v. Gil, 58 F.3d 1414, 1420 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 969, 116 S.Ct. 430, 133 L.Ed.2d 345 (1995) (government must prove by a preponderance of the evidence the author of anonymous documents).
The anonymous notebook was found by the police in the home of Mark West, an integral member of the conspiracy, and the entries in the notebook corresponded with drug transactions proved by other evidence at trial. The notebook was properly admissible as the statement of a eoeonspirator.