United States v. Ekiyor

90 F. Supp. 3d 735, 96 Fed. R. Serv. 1254, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 30281, 2015 WL 1084525
Procedural entryThis page is a short order in United States v. Ekiyor. Read the opinion of the Court — 89 F. Supp. 3d 928
District Court, E.D. Michigan·Decided March 12, 2015·No. Case No. 14-20797·Published

Opinion

OPINION AND ORDER SUSTAINING DEFENDANT’S OBJECTIONS. TO GOVERNMENT’S PROPOSED EXHIBIT 26

GERALD E. ROSEN, Chief Judge.

I. INTRODUCTION

Defendant Kemepaudor Ekiyor is charged in a December 16, 2014 indictment with one count of possession with intent to distribute cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 841(b)(l)(A)(ii), and one count of importation of cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 952 and 960(b)(1)(B). These charges stem from allegations that as Defendant was traveling in September of 2014 from Nigeria to his home in Ottawa, Canada, with connections in Amsterdam and at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, federal law enforcement agents at the Detroit airport discovered more than six kilograms of cocaine in a locked suitcase that Defendant allegedly checked at the gate before boarding his September 26, 2014 flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

As part of its proofs at trial, the Government has proposed to introduce a set of documents that it has designated as Exhibit 26. The last page of this proposed exhibit is a log of baggage transactions, which purports to list the tag number and weight of each piece of luggage that Defendant checked for the Nigeria-to-Amsterdam and Amsterdam-to-Detroit legs of his trip.1 Of particular note, this log discloses that a bag with tag number 8074318894 was checked at the gate prior to the departure of Delta Airlines Flight 251 from Amsterdam to Detroit, and the Government maintains that this is the bag that was found to contain cocaine upon Defendant’s arrival in Detroit.

[737] Prior to the commencement of his trial on March 2, 2015, Defendant objected to the admission of the Government’s proposed Exhibit 26, primarily on the ground that portions of this exhibit — most notably, the baggage log — are “testimonial” in nature under a series of Supreme Court decisions beginning with Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004), and thus are subject to exclusion under the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause absent Defendant’s opportunity to cross-examine those who made the testimonial statements captured in this exhibit. The Court addressed Defendant’s objections in open court on March 3, 2015, prior to the commencement of the second day of Defendant’s trial. For the reasons stated on the record at the March 3 hearing, as supplemented by the rulings below, the Court sustains Defendant’s objections and holds that the Government’s proposed Exhibit 26 may not be introduced at trial.2

II. ANALYSIS

A. The Supreme Court Decisions Addressing the Admissibility of Business Records Under the Confrontation Clause

In seeking to introduce its Exhibit 26 at Defendant’s trial, the Government relies on the hearsay exception for business records set forth in Fed.R.Evid. 803(6), arguing that the baggage log contained within this exhibit qualifies as a record made and kept in the course of the regularly conducted activity of the business entity that generated the log, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.3 Until fairly recently, if an exhibit satisfied the Rule 803(6) standards for treatment as a business record, it would routinely be admissible over a Confrontation Clause challenge because Rule 803(6) was deemed a “firmly-rooted” hearsay exception that sufficiently ensured the exhib[738] it’s reliability. See United States v. Waters, 158 F.3d 933, 940-41 (6th Cir.1998); see generally Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 2539, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980) (holding that a hearsay statement of an unavailable witness is admissible under the Confrontation Clause if it “bears adequate indicia of reliability,” and that the requisite reliability “can be inferred without more in a case where the' evidence falls within a firmly rooted hearsay exception” (internal quotation marks omitted)).

In Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 1374, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004), however, the Supreme Court overruled the reliability standard articulated in Ohio v. Roberts, and instead held that the admissibility of an out-of-court statement under the Confrontation Clause turns upon whether the statement is “testimonial.” In particular, the Court emphasized that “[w]here testimonial statements are at issue, the only indicium of reliability sufficient to satisfy constitutional demands is the one the Constitution actually prescribes: confrontation.” Crawford, 541 U.S. at 68-69, 124 S.Ct. at 1374. Although the Court declined to “spell out a comprehensive definition of ‘testimonial,’ ” and although Crawford itself provided no occasion for the Court to consider whether business records might fall within or outside this definition,4 the Court noted as an aside that business records “by their nature” ordinarily would be characterized as “not testimonial.” 541 U.S. at 56, 68, 124 S.Ct. at 1367, 1374 (footnote omitted).

In two of its post-Crawford decisions, the Supreme Court has more directly addressed the circumstances under which business records are testimonial, and thus trigger the constitutional guarantee of confrontation. First, in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U.S. 305, 308-09, 129 S.Ct. 2527, 2531, 174 L.Ed.2d 314 (2009), a state prosecutor sought to introduce three sworn “certificates of analysis” reporting the results of forensic tests showing that a substance seized by the police during the petitioner’s arrest was cocaine, and the Massachusetts courts allowed the admission of these certificates without requiring the laboratory analysts who performed the forensic tests to testify in person at the petitioner’s trial. The Supreme Court reversed, reasoning that the certificates made the factual assertion “that the substance found in the possession of [the petitioner] and his codefendants was, as the prosecutor claimed, cocaine,” and concluding that the certificates therefore were testimonial because they were “functionally identical to live, in-court testimony” by the laboratory analysts stating the results of their forensic tests. Melendez-Diaz, 557 U.S. at 310-11, 129 S.Ct. at 2532.

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United States v. Ekiyor, 90 F. Supp. 3d 735, 96 Fed. R. Serv. 1254, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 30281, 2015 WL 1084525 (E.D. Mich. 2015).

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