Court Opinion

ID: 9487896
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:29:27.102231+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:32.972904
License: Public Domain

CALABRESI,. Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part:
This is a close ease, but I would affirm the conviction.
*878I agree with the majority that the district court’s instructions to the jury on Strother’s allegedly false exculpatory statements correctly described the law of this circuit, and I therefore join Part 2 of the court’s opinion.
As to Part 1, I respectfully disagree.
I do not doubt that it would have been wise to admit the Wollschleager Memorandum. It is not a business record, but it does shed some light on Wollschleager’s testimony. Still, the light it sheds is indirect, and I do not believe that it was an abuse of discretion for the district court to exclude it. The memorandum does not directly contradict Wollschleager’s trial testimony that Strother asked her to pay the CBT check when it was presented for payment. It merely fails to mention that fact. The majority says that it would have been “natural” to mention it. Perhaps, but the issue is sufficiently in doubt that I am not prepared to say that the trial judge exceeded the bounds of discretion in refusing to admit the memorandum as a pri- or inconsistent statement. ■
The Probation Memorandum is another matter. It directly contradicts Wollschleager’s statement at trial that she was aware, when she approved payment of Strother’s check, that Strother had made a deposit by check, not by wire. The problem is that Wollschleager did not write the memorandum. As the majority points out, she did discuss it with the author, Sbalcio, and signed her name at the bottom. The statement that accompanies the signature, “I have discussed this memorandum to my file,” is hardly an unequivocal adoption of the contents of the memorandum, however. At trial, Wollschleager testified that she did not know why she had signed the memorandum.
In the end, in view of her signature on the memorandum, I believe that the question of whether and to what extent Wollschleager intended to adopt the memorandum appropriately goes to the weight to be given the memorandum and not to its admissibility. I therefore conclude, with the majority, that the district court erred in declining to admit it.
But the uncertain weight to be given to the memorandum is not irrelevant to the question of whether the district court’s error was harmful. The evidence of Strother’s guilt in this ease was very strong. Against this evidence, Strother offered little in the way of a defense. The only evidence that was improperly excluded, the Probation Memorandum, was, I believe, of very uncertain weight, and the harmful effects of its exclusion, if any, were mitigated by Strother’s cross-examination of Wollschleager. The cross-examination brought to the jury’s attention the fact that the Probation Memorandum contradicted Wollschleager’s trial testimony. It may not have done so. quite as forcefully as the memorandum itself would have, but it certainly made the point. Under the circumstances, I find it hard to believe that a jury would have come to any different conclusion if the Probation Memorandum had been admitted.1
The district court’s error in excluding the Probation Memorandum was harmless in my judgment, and so I respectfully dissent.

. As for the Charge-Off Memorandum, I agree with the majority that the district court did not err in refusing to admit the memorandum in its entirety.