United States v. Cornett
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
195 F.3d 776 (1999)
The federal government (plaintiff) prosecuted Wendell Cornett and Mary Galloway (defendants) for conspiracy to distribute illegal drugs. The government's case against Galloway rested almost entirely on a recorded fifty-minute bowling-alley conversation between two other coconspirators, mostly about bowling, in which one of them, Boutte, mentioned that Galloway had taken over Boutte's old role of counting and storing cash from Cornett's drug sales, seemingly in the context of Boutte's romantic jealousy over Galloway. The trial court admitted the tape as a coconspirator statement made in furtherance of the conspiracy, and the jury convicted Galloway, who appealed the admission of the tape as inadmissible hearsay.
Whether a coconspirator's out-of-court statement is admissible as nonhearsay against a party only when the coconspirator made the statement to actually advance the conspiracy, rather than merely referencing it during an unrelated conversation.