USA v. Neadeau

• Decision Date: 07 April 2011
• Docket Number: No. 10-2106,10-2106
• Parties: United States of America, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. Marcus James Neadeau, Defendant - Appellant.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (8th Circuit)

United States of America, Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
Marcus James Neadeau, Defendant - Appellant.

No. 10-2106

United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

Submitted: December 17, 2010
Filed: April 7, 2011

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota.

Before LOKEN and BYE, Circuit Judges, and MARSHALL,^* District Judge.

MARSHALL, District Judge.

A jury convicted Marcus Neadeau of conspiring to distribute (and possess with the intent to distribute) at least 50 grams of crack cocaine and at least 500 grams of powder cocaine. Neadeau had a prior felony drug conviction. This fact increased the mandatory minimum sentence from ten to twenty years; and the district court^**

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sentenced Neadeau to that minimum. 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A) (2006 & Supp. II 2008). Nedeau appeals his conviction, arguing that the district court abused its discretion by admitting at trial the detention-hearing testimony of Vanessa Sagataw—Nedeau's wife and later co-defendant. He also appeals his twenty-year sentence, arguing that it violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

1. The district court stumbled a bit on the evidentiary issue, but the error was harmless. Sagataw testified for her husband at his detention hearing. She was later indicted and tried with him. In the face of her Fifth Amendment-based decision not to testify at trial, the United States offered her detention-hearing testimony as a prior inconsistent statement. The court admitted it on this basis.

Sagataw's earlier testimony, however, was not a prior inconsistent statement because it was missing an essential ingredient: she did not testify inconsistently at trial. Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(1)(A). She did not testify there at all. Sagataw's detention-hearing testimony thus does not qualify as this kind of non-hearsay. Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(1)(A) and advisory committee notes.

But "we are not bound by the grounds on which the district court admitted the evidence, as it is a well-settled principle that we may affirm a district court's judgment on any basis supported by the record." United States v. Bercier, 506 F.3d 625, 629-30 (8th Cir. 2007) (internal quotation omitted). The United States tries to salvage the admission of Sagataw's detention-hearing testimony by arguing that it was not hearsay to begin with. Her testimony, the Government says, was not offered for its truth. Fed. R. Evid. 801(c); see generally 6 John Henry Wigmore, Evidence in Trials at Common Law § 1766 at 250-251 (Chadbourn rev. 1976). With one exception, this view of the record is correct, and we affirm on Bercier's authority.

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Sagataw testified, for example, that her husband was not a drug dealer,...