{"id":7725,"date":"2009-10-31T15:31:37","date_gmt":"2009-10-31T20:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=7725"},"modified":"2009-10-31T15:50:01","modified_gmt":"2009-10-31T20:50:01","slug":"seventh-circuit-criminal-case-of-the-week-of-hearsay-and-bootstraps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/10\/seventh-circuit-criminal-case-of-the-week-of-hearsay-and-bootstraps\/","title":{"rendered":"Seventh Circuit Criminal Case of the Week: Of Hearsay and Bootstraps"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"seventhThe court staked out no new legal ground in its opinions last week, so I’ll just\u00a0briefly describe a case that nicely illustrates a classic problem in evidence law.\u00a0\u00a0Based on\u00a0information provided by a confidential informant, Milwaukee police stopped a Ford Excursion on suspicion of drug activity.\u00a0 Inside were Marc Cannon (the driver), David Harris (Cannon’s cousin), $8,900 in cash (found in Harris’s pockets), and a\u00a0brick of cocaine.\u00a0\u00a0The cash pointed to Harris’s likely involvement in the drug-dealing operation, but, without more, the evidence still\u00a0seems short of beyond a reasonable doubt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At trial, the government thus relied heavily on the testimony of the confidential informant, Anderson, who recounted a series of interactions with Cannon and Harris.\u00a0 Perhaps most damaging\u00a0to\u00a0Harris was testimony that Cannon told Anderson that his cousin was coming to Milwaukee with a signficant amount of cocaine.\u00a0\u00a0This testimony, of course, was hearsay: Cannon himself did not testify, and Harris had no ability to cross-examine him.\u00a0\u00a0In order to overcome the hearsay problem, the government relied on the exception for statements by co-conspirators.\u00a0 But this required the government to prove that Cannon and Harris were indeed co-conspirators, and the strongest evidence of that were the very statements whose admissibility was\u00a0at issue.\u00a0 The government’s argument thus had something of a boot-strapping character.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Making the argument\u00a0even more awkward on appeal,\u00a0the jury\u00a0convicted Harris of possession with intent to distribute, but actually acquitted him on\u00a0a conspiracy charge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Seventh Circuit nonetheless rejected Harris’s hearsay argument and affirmed his\u00a0conviction in\u00a0\u00a0United States v. Harris <\/a><\/em>(No. 08-4026) (Flaum, J.).<\/p>\n

In order for co-conspirator statements to be admissible, the government must prove the existence of the conpiracy by a preponderance of the evidence, not the higher beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard that governs the guilt determination at trial.\u00a0 Even so, the Seventh Circuit conceded that it was a “close question” whether the government satisfied its burden of proof:<\/p>\n

[T]he government’s evidence of the conspiracy centers around the disputed hearsay statements themselves (and while Bourjaily <\/em>permits this kind of bootstrapping, it is not the strongest evidence of a conspiracy) and Harris’s presence in the Excursion when the police officers discovered a kilogram of cocaine.\u00a0 (p. 9)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The court ultimately found the evidence sufficient, relying on the facts that Harris drove the Excursion from Arkansas to Milwaukee, Harris was carrying “an exceedingly large quantity of cash,” and\u00a0Anderson’s\u00a0statements were corroborated in a number of other respects.<\/p>\n

As an aside, it is interesting to see the court use the possession of a large amount of\u00a0cash as a basis for inferring drug activity.\u00a0 This may be perfectly appropriate in the circumstances, but I wonder to what extent drawing this sort of inference unfairly\u00a0disadvantages people who live in communities that are underserved by banks or who otherwise lack access to the sorts of financial services that many of us take for granted.\u00a0 As I discussed in an earlier post<\/a>, this is not the first time this fall that the Seventh Circuit has been confronted with the question of when criminal activity can be inferred from carrying cash.\u00a0 Notably absent from these cases is any empirical research on how commonly and in what sorts of circumstances large sums of cash are carried for lawful purposes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The court staked out no new legal ground in its opinions last week, so I’ll just\u00a0briefly describe a case that nicely illustrates a classic problem in evidence law.\u00a0\u00a0Based on\u00a0information provided by a confidential informant, Milwaukee police stopped a Ford Excursion on suspicion of drug activity.\u00a0 Inside were Marc Cannon (the driver), David Harris (Cannon’s cousin), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,88,28,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-evidence","category-criminal-law-process","category-seventh-circuit","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}