Arteaga

We travel the poorly-charted byways of the hearsay rule in a case where the trial judge — facing a barrage of defense objections — ruled that much of the prosecution’s evidence could not be considered by the jury for the truth of the matters asserted.

Background

Appellants Jose Fernando Arteaga and Jenny Arrango-Laverde were convicted of money laundering, 18 U.S.C. § 1956 (a) (1) (A) (i), as part of a scheme in which proceeds of cocaine sales in Alaska were wired to California. 1 They challenge the sufficiency of the evidence against them. The record contains sufficient proof that Ar-teaga was involved in a conspiracy to sell cocaine; that any funds he wired to Laverde were proceeds of that operation; and that Laverde was aware that the money was “dirty.” 2 It is not, however, clear that the defendants were involved in the transactions charged in the indictment. The government — -inexplicably—offered no proof that the writing on the relevant documents was the defendants’, nor did any witness place defendants at locations where the transfers were initiated or completed.

*391 The evidence of the transactions consisted mainly of Western Union records, including a series of…