U.S. v. Grant, 56 M.J. 410

Core Criminal Law Subjects: Evidence: Confessions and Admissions › Corroboration

1. military judge did not abuse his discretion by admitting a drug screen report on the issue of whether or not appellant’s confession was worthy of belief where he expressly stated that he was admitting the report for the limited purpose of corroborating the confession and instructed the members accordingly; the fact that there are additional foundational requirements for admitting a urinalysis offered on the substantive issue of wrongful use does not change the law of evidence pertaining to the admissibility of a business record offered to corroborate a confession
2. although a chain of custody is a foundational prerequisite for admitting real or tangible evidence on a substantive issue in the case, a drug screen, introduced to corroborate appellant’s confession, was not offered to show the actual state of the urine sample or commission of a substantive offense; appellant’s confession was the evidence offered on his wrongful use during the period charged
3. a confession must be corroborated by independent evidence justifying sufficiently an inference of truth of the essential facts admitted in order to ensure that the confession is not false
4. the quantum of evidence needed to corroborate a confession may be very slight
5. the drug screen report as corroboration evidence indicated the actual presence of the substance in appellant’s system in late November, and raised an inference that appellant had recently used the very substance he had confessed to using over the previous five or six weeks

Core Criminal Law Subjects: Evidence: Hearsay › Business entries

1. courts have generally held that a document prepared by a third party is properly admitted as part of a second business entity’s records if the second business integrated the document into its records and relied upon it in the ordinary course of its business
2. a record incorporated by a second entity may be admitted under Mil.R.Evid. 803(6) on the testimony of a "qualified witness" of the incorporating entity alone if the following criteria are met: (1) the incorporating entity must obviously procure and keep the record in the normal course of its business; (2) the entity must show that it relies on the accuracy of the incorporated record in its business; and (3) there must be other circumstances indicating the trustworthiness of the document
3. a laboratory test result incorporated by a hospital into its own records was properly admitted under Mil.R.Evid. 803(6) where: (1) qualified witnesses provided sufficient foundation to show that the lab report had been incorporated by the hospital as its own business record; (2) the treating physician testified as to his familiarity with Air Force medical testing and stated that he and presumably other physicians rely on such results to be accurate in order to make the appropriate treatment in cases where the patient is unresponsive to pain stimuli; (3) the treating physician’s reliance on the report speaks directly to its trustworthiness; (4) presumably, those responsible for conducting the test and providing the results at the lab were aware that an incorrect result may lead to a patient’s failure to receive proper medical treatment, which could be potentially followed by serious medical consequences or even death; and (5) there was no evidence in the record that suggests the hospital had received false or erroneous results from Armstrong in the past

Core Criminal Law Subjects: Evidence: Relevance

1. regardless of the purpose for which it is admitted, all evidence must be authentic, relevant, and otherwise competent

Trial Stages: Appeals: Standards of Review, Burdens, etc.

1. a military judge’s ruling admitting or excluding evidence is reviewed for an abuse of discretion