United States v. Robert Smyth Wales, AKA Larry Abbott, AKA Robert Sanders

Robert Smyth Wales entered the United States at Honolulu International Airport on a flight which he boarded in Singapore. He checked the “no” box on a customs *1325 declaration form to deny that he was carrying more than $10,000. Customs agents found he was carrying $48,000. He was arrested and charged with knowingly and willfully making a false statement on a customs declaration form he gave to an officer of the United States Customs Service, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 .

A jury found him guilty. The district court sentenced him to 14 months imprisonment, followed by supervised release for 2V2 years, a fine of $15,000 and a special assessment of $50. The sentence was imposed under Sentencing Guideline § 2S1.3(a)(l)(B) (1990), which has since been amended. See U.S.S.G.App. C, amendment 379 (1991).

On appeal, Wales contends the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction and the district court erred in several evi-dentiary rulings. He also challenges his sentence, contending that he is entitled to be resentenced under the amendment to U.S.S.G. § 2S1.3(a)(l)(B).

We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 . We affirm Wales’s conviction, but remand to the district…

concurring in part and concurring in the judgment:

Chief Judge Henry J. Friendly was a major critic of the Federal Rules of Evidence. “Evidence,” he maintained, “is not the kind of subject that lends itself to codification.” Under the pre-Rules common-law system, Judge Friendly argued, “if the appellate court believe[d] the result was just and there were no other errors, it [would] ‘find a way’ to sustain the trial judge. It will be immeasurably harder for an appellate court to reach such sensible results if the trial court has violated a black letter rule prescribed by the Supreme Court under authority from the Congress ....”

Judge Friendly needn’t have worried. Appellate courts, district judges and the bar haven’t been buffaloed by “black letter rule[s] prescribed by the Supreme Court under authority from the Congress.” One need spend only a short time in our federal courtrooms to realize that a lively common law tradition continues to flourish in matters of evidence.

This is a case in point. The government wanted to prove Wales was carrying two false driver’s licenses. The only possible purpose for this was to show Wales’s criminal propensities, something the character…

977 F.2d 1323 36 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 1408 UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Robert Smyth WALES, aka Larry Abbott, aka Robert Sanders, Defendant-Appellant. No. 91-10500. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued and Submitted Aug. 21, 1992. Decided Oct. 20, 1992. Benedict P. Kuehne, Sonnett, Sale & Kuehne, Miami, Fla., for defendant-appellant. Stuart L. Gassner, Asst. U.S. Atty., Honolulu, Hawaii, for plaintiff-appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii. Before KOZINSKI and THOMPSON, Circuit Judges, and RHOADES, District Judge. * DAVID R. THOMPSON, Circuit Judge: 1 Robert Smyth Wales entered the United States at Honolulu International Airport on a flight which he boarded in Singapore. He checked the "no" box on a customs declaration form to deny that he was carrying more than $10,000. Customs agents found he was carrying $48,000. He was arrested and charged with knowingly and willfully making a false statement on a customs declaration form he gave to an officer of the United States Customs Service, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 . 2 A jury found him guilty. The district court sentenced him to 14 months…