Paguio

This ease turns on Federal Rule of Evidence 804(b)(3), the hearsay exception for inculpatory statements by unavailable witnesses.

I. Facts

Appellants Gil Manuel Paguio, Jr. and Angelica D. Acosta, husband and wife, were convicted of false statements to a bank to influence action on a loan application, under *930 18 U.S.C. §§ 2 & 1014. Paguio Jr.’s father, Gil Paguio, Sr., initiated the loan process. The father approached the institution’s loan officer about a $204,000 loan so that his son, Paguio Jr., and Acosta, could buy property next to his house. The loan officer gave the father the application, and the father returned the handwritten loan application with what purported to be the son’s and the fiancee’s signatures.

The application was fraudulent. It showed that Paguio Jr. and Acosta made $1,900 and $1,300 a month in self-employment income from the father’s insurance company. That, was not true. As part of its routine for loan processing, the bank had to verify employment and income by examining W-2 Forms, or for self-employed people, copies of tax returns. As “verification” the father showed the bank fictitious 1988 and 1989 tax returns and 1099 forms for Paguio…