06-4091 U.S. v. Burgos

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Criminal Procedure
Confrontation Clause

An alien's warrant of deportation and CNR are nontestimonial business records not subject to the requirements of the Confrontation Clause.

"These documents have many attributes in common with business records. A warrant of deportation records the movement of a deported alien; the signing witness attests to the alien's departure from the country. The warrant's primary purpose is to memorialize the deportation, not to prove facts in a potential future criminal prosecution."

"Similarly, a CNR certifies that a government official searched the database of the Department of Homeland Security and failed to find any record permitting a deportee's return to this country. Although prepared in anticipation of trial, a CNR simply memorializes the contents of the Department database, maintained in the ordinary course of business-or, more particularly, the absence of a certain sort of record in that database. This, we noted in Ellis, was 'too far removed from the examples of testimonial evidence provided by Crawford.' 460 F.3d at 926. In other words, because the database underlying the CNR is not maintained for the primary purpose of proving facts in criminal prosecutions, the CNR itself, attesting to the absence of a record within that database, is a nontestimonial business record."

Affirmed.

06-4091 U.S. v. Burgos

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Clevert, J., Sykes, J.

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