Court Opinion

ID: 9463906
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:19:54.849813+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:21.350614
License: Public Domain

MANSFIELD, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent on the ground that the double hearsay identification of the getaway car admitted by the trial court lacked any guarantee of trustworthiness entitling it to admission under the residual hearsay exception, FRE 804(b)(5), relied upon by the majority. In the absence of any such guarantee or of an opportunity to test the reliability of the proof through cross-examination, the admission of this evidence in my view constituted an abuse of discretion and the error was not “harmless.” Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946). I would therefore reverse and remand for a new trial.
The sole issue in this trial was the identification of appellant as one of two robbers of a Chemical Bank branch in Queens, New York. On this issue the license plate number and description of the alleged getaway car was a critical element, which the government sought to prove through William Carmody, a bank employee. Carmody, however, did not see the car himself. He obtained the information from a man he recognized as a bank customer, but who was neither identified by name nor located for trial. Nor did the customer, according to Carmody, see the getaway car. He, in turn, had obtained the license number and description some five minutes after the robbery from a “young man” seated in a car outside the bank, who also could not be identified or located for the trial. Carmody testified that the young man relayed the license number and description to the customer who shouted through the closed bank door to Carmody, who wrote the information down on his checkbook. Carmody furnished the description after referring to the checkbook to refresh his recollection.
Serious problems are presented as to the trustworthiness of this hearsay, which indicate that it should not qualify as falling within any exception to the hearsay rule.1 Since the license number and identification were obtained during the armed robbers’ hurried flight from the scene of the crime, the young man in the car may well have erred due to excitement, poor eyesight, poor lighting conditions or visual obstructions. Indeed it is possible that the young man may have been sufficiently confused or frightened to have identified a car that was not the getaway vehicle at all. This type of eyewitness identification has long been considered
“peculiarly riddled with innumerable dangers and variable factors which might seriously, even crucially derogate from a fair trial. The vagaries of eyewitness identification are well-known; the annals of criminal law are rife with instances of mistaken identification.” United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 228, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 1933, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967).
Yet, because the evidence was admitted from Carmody rather than from the out-of-court declarant himself, the defendant was deprived of the opportunity to cross-examine the declarant, which might have significantly reduced the reliability of the evidence in the eyes of the jury.
It is further evident that some of the same factors which might have interfered with the young man’s direct identification of the vehicle might well have prevented the bank customer from correctly relaying the young man’s description, including faulty hearing, background noise, excitement, and similar circumstances. Yet, because the bank customer was also unavailable to be cross-examined, the accuracy of his statement could not be tested.
The record in the present case reveals that fears of distortion in this crucial identification testimony are not unjustified. Carmody testified, for instance, that the getaway car was' a “Brown Valiant,” which would indicate a Plymouth. His checkbook, which was admitted into evidence, noted that the car was not Brown, but “tan,” and *320was a “Dodge Valiant,” a non-existent model. William Carióla, a corroborating witness, testified that the car driven to and from his job by Medico was an “off white Dodge.” Thus significant errors in perception or communication found their way into the evidence, even without the presence of the out-of-court declarants for cross-examination.
The unreliability of the hearsay testimony identifying the getaway car was increased by the government’s disclosure of a bizarre circumstance. The key witness relied upon by the government to link appellant to the getaway car was Carióla, appellant’s former co-worker. Even though the two were only casual acquaintances, Carióla, in testimony which, according to the majority, “strains credulity,” was able to remember the exact license number of the car which appellant had driven to work on occasion. This number turned out to be the same as that of the getaway car, as identified by Carmody’s double hearsay testimony.2 More important, in offering this testimony the government advised the trial judge in a side bar conference of the extraordinary fact that the automobile had actually been registered in the name of Carióla himself rather than that of appellant. Although appellant’s counsel apparently failed to grasp and exploit the implications of this disclosure, it raises a serious question, particularly in view of Cariola’s criminal record, as to whether the failure of the young man or the bank customer (who had been seen frequently at the bank before the robbery but not thereafter) to come forward and testify may not have been attributable to efforts by the conspirators or others to protect against full disclosure of the robbers’ identity. Since neither the young man nor the bank customer was produced for cross-examination, their motives, biases and possible connections with appellant or Carióla could not be explored. Neither, therefore, could be compelled to “stand face to face with the jury in order that they may look at him and judge by his demeanor upon the stand and the manner in which he gives his testimony whether he is worthy of belief.” Mattox v. United States, 156 U.S. 237, 15 S.Ct. 337, 39 L.Ed. 409 (1895).
It is to guard against just such possible consequences that the hearsay rule evolved, with exceptions for nonhearsay only where there are circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness in lieu of cross-examination. In my view it was a serious error for the trial judge to resort to the residual hearsay exception found in FRE 804(b)(5) as the basis for admitting the double hearsay in the present case.3 The effect is to emasculate the hearsay rule and violate the fundamental purposes underlying it. In formulating the residual exception, the drafters of the Federal Rules of Evidence cautioned that it should be used sparingly:
“It is intended that the residual hearsay exceptions will be used very rarely, and only in exceptional circumstances. The committee does not intend to establish a broad license for trial judges to admit hearsay statements that do not fall within one of the other exceptions contained in rules 803 and 804(b).” S.Rep.No. 1277, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. 18-20 (1974), U. S. Code Cong. & Admin. News 1974, p. 7066.
The admission of the double-hearsay identification of the getaway car in the present case violated both the spirit and purpose of FRE 804(b)(5) as thus expressed, since the evidence failed to satisfy any of the basic conditions for exceptions to the *321hearsay rule. It lacked any circumstantial guarantee of trustworthiness, it was hardly “more probative on the point for which it is offered than any other evidence which the proponent can procure,” and its admission did not serve “the interests of justice.” Not only was there danger of serious error in perception on the part of the young man and the bank customer but Cariola’s testimony purporting to provide the essential link to the appellant was far from being free of doubt and suspicion. As the Supreme Court said in Wade, supra, a criminal defendant’s “most basic right” is that of a “fair trial at which the witnesses against him might be meaningfully cross-examined.” 388 U.S. at 224, 87 S.Ct. at 1930.
“For two centuries past, the policy of the Anglo-American system of evidence has been to regard the necessity of testing by cross-examination as a vital feature of the law. The belief that no safeguard for testing the value of human statements is comparable to that furnished by cross-examination, and the conviction that no statement (unless by general exception) should be used as testimony until it has been probed and sublimated by that test, has found increasing strength in lengthening experience. . . . [I]t is beyond doubt the greatest legal engine for the discovery of truth.” 5 Wigmore on Evidence § 1367.
No authority supports the application of the 804(b)(5) residual hearsay exception in a case like the present one when serious questions of reliability have been raised in the absence of cross-examination. On the contrary, one circuit has refused to apply the exception because it poses serious constitutional problems. United States v. Yates, 173 U.S.App.D.C. 308, 524 F.2d 1282 (1975).
The cases relied on by the majority are readily distinguishable. In United States v. Iaconetti, 540 F.2d 574 (2d Cir. 1976), we found support in the residual hearsay exception for admission of rebuttal testimony by two witnesses (Stern and Goodman) as to statements of a previous witness (Lioi) regarding the defendant Iaconetti’s request for money. But the significant difference is that there the declarants (Stern, Goodman, Lioi, and Iaconetti) were all available for cross-examination and the jury was allowed to resolve a conflict in credibility among witnesses who were present and whose demeanor could be judged. In admitting statements similar to those in Iaconetti, it has often been stated that where the declarant is present and on the witness stand, present cross-examination provides a sufficient protection against unreliable out-of-court statements. California v. Green, 399 U.S. 149, 158, 90 S.Ct. 1930, 26 L.Ed.2d 489 (1970); DiCarlo v. United States, 6 F.2d 364, 368 (2d Cir.) (L. Hand, J.), cert. denied, 268 U.S. 706, 45 S.Ct. 640, 69 L.Ed. 1168 (1925). No such protection was available in this case.
The availability of the out-of-court declarants for cross-examination at the trial was expressly relied upon in United States v. Leslie, 542 F.2d 285, 288 (5th Cir. 1976), the only other criminal case to uphold the introduction of testimony under the residual hearsay exceptions. There, FBI agents corroborated written statements by the defendants which were recorded by the agents and introduced at trial, after the defendants had taken the stand and denied the truth of those statements. Thus, in that case both the defendants and the agents, whose credibility had to be determined by the jury, were available and present at the trial.4
In the present case neither of the out-of-court declarants upon whose reliability and accuracy the identification of the getaway car was based was available, with the result that their credibility could not be tested by appellant. Moreover, not only were there indications that distortions had occurred in the substance of the visual identification, *322but the linking evidence supplied by Carióla was so suspicious as to undermine the entire theory of the identification.
For these reasons I would reverse.

. The foundation for all hearsay exceptions is circumstantial trustworthiness in the absence of cross-examination. See 5 Wigmore, Evidence §§ 1420-22 (Chadbourne rev. 1974); Advisory Committee Notes, Introductory Note: The Hearsay Problem.

. By separately resolving the issues raised by Cariola’s connection with the alleged getaway vehicle and the admission of Carmody’s testimony, the majority conveniently ignores the serious effect of the revelations concerning Carióla on the probative value and trustworthiness of the identification testimony.

. At best, the majority’s conclusion that Carmody’s testimony would be admissible under the exception for present sense impressions, FRE 803(1), would only cover the first stage of the double hearsay, the statement from the “young man” to the bank customer, because only the “young man” was perceiving the startling event he was describing, i.e., the getaway of the robbers. Moreover, it is difficult to conclude that the license number and description of the vehicle would be a description or explanation of the “event,” within the meaning and common usage of FRE 803(1).

. In other cases which have applied the residual hearsay exceptions the reliability of the evidence admitted was not in question. Muncie Aviation Corp. v. Party Doil Fleet, 519 F.2d 1178, 1184 (5th Cir. 1974) (admitting national air safety codes and recommendations); Ark-Mo Farms v. United States, 530 F.2d 1384, 1386-87 (Ct.Cl.1976) (admitting Corps of Engineers’ hydrological study).