Court Opinion

ID: 9465080
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:35:01.933372+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:57.593732
License: Public Domain

McKAY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting as follows:
The trial court permitted a government agent to testify concerning an out of court oral statement of an absent and unavailable alleged coconspirator which was inculpatory of appellant. When appellant attempted to introduce a written statement of the same declarant, which contradicted the oral statement, the court refused admission on the ground that appellant’s proffered evidence did not fall within the technical confines of the conspiracy exception to the hearsay rule. The written statement bore on the only substantial issue in the case — whether appellant had guilty knowledge.
Here again we are confronted with the government’s use of the sweeping and relatively undisciplined law of conspiracy to expand its own powers at the expense of constitutional and evidentiary proscriptions. The Supreme Court repeatedly has condemned these expansions.1 What pushes *522this case beyond the pale of even our prior relaxed standards of admissibility in conspiracy cases is not that the government’s admitted evidence did not qualify under the conspiracy exception, but that the trial court, at the government’s insistence, cut off appellant’s attempt to confront the absent witness against him with such material as was available under the circumstances— another hearsay and contradicting statement of the truant witness.
At risk here is the further erosion of a criminal defendant’s Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to “due process,” “to be confronted with the witnesses against him,” and to present “witnesses in his favor.” The one-way resort to long-standing exceptions to the hearsay rules to justify circumvention of direct confrontation while at the same time applying technical hearsay rules to prevent the nearest substitute for cross-examination — presentation of a contradicting statement — does violence both to the general concept of due process and its more specific elements, confrontation and the right to present witnesses in one’s favor. Whatever can be said about the admission of the hearsay report of the inculpatory statement in this case, it cannot be said by any stretch of the imagination that rejecting the absent declarant’s exculpatory statement satisfies the pure concept of “confrontation” or its derivative notion of “cross-examination.”2 In addition, this one-way process permitted the government to have the benefit of the absent “witness in [its] favor” while denying the defendant the same opportunity as to the same witness.
The combination of these denials constitutes a clear breach of the standard of due process and fair trial articulated in Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 302, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 1049, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973): “[W]here constitutional rights directly affecting the ascertainment of guilt are implicated, the hearsay rule may not be applied mechanistically to defeat the ends of justice.” In Chambers, the Supreme Court reversed a conviction because the defendant was precluded by state evidentiary rules from introducing hearsay confessions of a witness and from impeaching that witness. The witness had previously confessed to the crime for which the defendant was charged but later denied in court that he committed the crime. The Court held that this mechanistic application of the voucher and hearsay rules deprived the defendant of a fair trial. The Court recognized that the right to confront may not be absolute but declared that “its denial or significant diminution calls into question the ultimate ‘integrity of the fact-finding process’ and requires that the competing interest be closely examined.” Id. at 295, 93 S.Ct. at 1046 (quoting Berger v. California, 393 U.S. 314, 315, 89 S.Ct. 540, 21 L.Ed.2d 508 (1969)). The “interest” requiring close examination in this case is the hearsay rule’s foundational policy of precluding the admission of unreliable evidence in the “fact-finding process.”
Both the confrontation clause and the hearsay rule are based on the above policy. Dutton v. Evans, 400 U.S. at 86, 88, 91 S.Ct. 210. The conspiracy exception, like other hearsay exceptions, exists because evidence covered by the exception is believed to be sufficiently reliable to assist the trier of fact. Proof of admissibility under an exception, however, is not sufficient to show compliance with the confrontation clause. The Supreme Court has declared:
While it may readily be conceded that hearsay rules and the Confrontation Clause are generally designed to protect similar values, it is quite a different thing to suggest that the overlap is complete and that the Confrontation Clause is nothing more or less than a codification of the rules of hearsay and their exceptions as they existed historically at com*523mon law. Our decisions have never established such a congruence; indeed, we have more than once found a violation of confrontation values even though the statements in issue were admitted under an arguably recognized hearsay exception.
California v. Green, 399 U.S. 149, 155-56, 90 S.Ct. 1930, 1934, 26 L.Ed.2d 489 (1970); see Dutton v. Evans, 400 U.S. at 81-82, 91 S.Ct. 210. Compliance with the confrontation clause must be tested on a case by case basis by examining all the circumstances to determine whether “the trier of fact [has] a satisfactory basis for evaluating the truth of the prior statement.” California v. Green, 399 U.S. at 161, 90 S.Ct. at 1936; see Dutton v. Evans, 400 U.S. at 89, 91 S.Ct. 210; United States v. King, 552 F.2d 833, 845 (9th Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 430 U.S. 966, 97 S.Ct. 1646, 52 L.Ed.2d 357 (1977); United States v. Rogers, 549 F.2d 490, 500 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 918, 97 S.Ct. 2182, 53 L.Ed.2d 299 (1976).
Through application of the conspiracy exception, the government admitted an inculpatory statement of a witness who was unavailable for direct confrontation. To insure the best possible protection of confrontation rights, all available bases for evaluating a witness’ truthfulness should be provided to the jury. Certainly, “a satisfactory basis for evaluating the truth” cannot refer only to positive indications of credibility. While there was some direct evidence in this case bearing on the inculpatory statement’s reliability, by exclusion of the letter the jury was deprived of significant assistance in weighing the believability of the absent witness. Even if the conspiracy exception on its face might be found not to violate the Sixth Amendment, the mechanistic application of the hearsay rules to bar what little confrontation as was here available cannot be permitted. In fairness to a defendant who is subjected to hearsay accusations admitted by a questionable skirting of the confrontation clause, statements from the accusing declarant ought to be admissible to enable the jury more adequately to judge the credibility of the original statement.
Additionally, there were numerous indicia of the exculpatory statement’s reliability. It was clearly against the declarant’s penal interest as it established his guilty knowledge that the vehicle was stolen. The corroborating circumstances arguably established the statement’s trustworthiness sufficiently to find it admissible as a statement against interest under Rule 804(b)(3) of the Federal Rules of Evidence. It is unlikely that the declarant would seek to establish an untrue record of appellant’s innocence by penning an admission of his own guilt, particularly when he had not been caught and was not even charged. The letter predated the indictment and arrest warrant by nearly a month. Record, vol. 4, at 387. Further, there is no risk here of a tale bearer inaccurately or untruthfully presenting the hearsay to the jury since the original document was available. Even if these indicia of credibility were insufficient to qualify the hearsay letter for admission under Rule 804(b)(3), its exclusion when coupled with the prior statement’s admission is clearly repugnant to the Constitution.
The only case on point disclosed by independent research is United States v. Benveniste, 564 F.2d 335 (9th Cir. 1977). In that conspiracy case the Ninth Circuit reversed a conviction because the trial court admitted an inculpatory, extrajudicial statement but rejected exculpatory hearsay statements of the same witness after she refused to take the stand. Applying the Chambers approach, the court found that the excluded statements arguably fell within the statement against interest exception to the hearsay rule. The court concluded “that the rejection of the exculpatory hearsay was in error, particularly in view of the fact that accusatory hearsay was admitted.” 564 F.2d at 342. I agree with the Benveniste decision.
I do not argue here for expansion of the general hearsay exceptions. What concerns me is the trial court’s duty to protect appellant’s right to confront and to present witnesses once the government is permitted to breach the hearsay wall. Due process can*524not stand idly by while the government, having' first opened the evidentiary door, then seeks through a “mechanistically” applied hearsay rule to close the door to what is left of the opportunity for appellant to confront the witness3 against him or to present the same witness in his favor.
If trial courts are to continue the use of hearsay statements at the behest of the government they must begin to develop solid rules to minimize the recognized offense to the Fifth and Sixth Amendments as mandated by Chambers. This would be a good ease in which to begin. I would reverse and remand for a new trial.

. “Prior cases in this Court have repeatedly warned that we will view with disfavor attempts to broaden the already pervasive and wide-sweeping nets of conspiracy prosecutions.” Grunewald v. United States, 353 U.S. 391, 404, 77 S.Ct. 963, 974, 1 L.Ed.2d 931 (1957); see Dutton v. Evans, 400 U.S. 74, 83, 91 S.Ct. 210, 27 L.Ed.2d 213 (1970); Krulewitch v. United States, 336 U.S. 440, 443-44, 69 S.Ct. 716, 93 L.Ed. 790 (1949); Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 776, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946).

. Cross-examination has long been held to be a cornerstone of confrontation. “[A] major reason underlying the constitutional confrontation rule is to give a defendant charged with crime an opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses against him.” Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 406-07, 85 S.Ct. 1065, 1069, 13 L.Ed.2d 923 (1965); see Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 126, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968).

. It should go without saying that the principal witness in question under the Sixth Amendment is the one the government relies on to prove a substantive fact, not the reporting witness who says what the first witness witnessed. Otherwise, as all admit it cannot be, the government could establish rules permitting entire trials based on affidavits qualified for admission by live notaries even though “the paradigmatic evil the Confrontation Clause was aimed at [was] trial by affidavit.” Dutton v. Evans, 400 U.S. at 94, 91 S.Ct. 222 (Harlan, J., concurring). This does not derogate the rule that appellant is also entitled to confront the witness who reports the hearsay on the stand.