United States v. Saada

Isaac Saada and his son, Neil, were convicted of fraud charges arising out of a scheme to cheat an insurance company. They staged a flooding in the warehouse of their business - Scrimshaw Handicrafts, Inc. - by intentionally breaking a sprinkler head. Yaccarino, who was the vice president of Scrimshaw, was there when the sprinkler was broken. Yaccarino runs into the office kitchen screaming, "Oh my God, Neil did something stupid, [threw] something, now he has got a mess. . . . I can't believe it. It is so stupid. He threw it. He is stupid, he is dumb." Saada sought to introduce Yaccarino's statement, because it helped show that the breaking of the sprinkler head was accidental. The prosecution sought to impeach Yaccarino by having the Court take judicial notice of Supreme Court decisions of having Yaccarino's removal from the bench for unethical conduct.

Extrinsic evidence of a hearsay declarant's prior bad acts are not admissible for impeachment purposes even when those declarant's are unavailable to testify. Federal Rule of Evidence 806 does not modify Federal Rule of Evidence 608(b)'s ban on extrinsic evidence of prior bad acts in the context of a hearsay declarant, even when those declarants are unavailable to testify. Federal Rule of Evidence 608(b) disallows extrinsic evidence to prove specific instances of conduct and only allows it if you can prove specific instances of conduct through cross-examination. Since Yaccarino was dead, there was no way to cross-examine and therefore the appellant's argue that taking judicial notice was improper under the language of Federal Rule of Evidence 608(b). The Government argued that Federal Rule of Evidence 806 allows a party against whom a hearsay statement is admitted to call the declarant as a witness as if under cross-examination. And thus, if Yaccarino had been alive, they would have been able to inquire into Yaccarino's misconduct through cross-examination. However, since Yaccarino is now dead, they argue that they should be allowed to enter extrinsic evidence to show his misconduct. Essentially, the government is arguing that when a hearsay declarant is unavailable to testify, they should be allowed to prove specific instances of misconduct through extrinsic evidence. However, the court disagrees with this.

Impeachment | Character of the Witness | Prior Bad Acts