United States v. Stone

A federal jury convicted Louis Stone and Denise Sienhausen (defendants) of conspiring and attempting to manufacture methamphetamine. Over various pretrial motions and defense objections, the district court allowed the prosecution (plaintiff) to present two audio tapes of conversations between Stone, Sienhausen, and an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent, Norris Rogers. The tapes were recorded through a concealed transmitter Rogers wore; however, a heavy thunderstorm interfered with reception of the transmission, rendering large parts of the tapes very difficult to understand. Rogers wrote transcripts of the tapes. Before trial, the district court compared one of the tapes to its accompanying transcript and determined that the tape was not so unintelligible that someone familiar with the conversation could not have accurately transcribed it. At trial, the district court admitted the transcripts for the limited purpose of aiding jurors: jurors could read the transcripts as the tapes were played but could not bring the transcripts into the jury room. The court carefully instructed the jury that the transcripts were not evidence and represented only what the government believed was on the tapes and that jurors must form their own interpretations of what they heard. Stone and Sienhausen appealed from their convictions, arguing in part that the district court had erred by admitting the unintelligible tapes and allowing the use of transcripts.