United States v. Strother

A federal jury convicted Richard Strother (defendant) of knowingly defrauding a financial institution by false representations. The government (plaintiff) alleged that Strother induced Christine Wollschleager, an interim manager of Connecticut Bank and Trust (CBT), to authorize payment of Strother’s check for $82,500 even though Strother’s account had insufficient funds. Wollschleager testified that in a phone call, Strother asked her to authorize the check and said he would wire the money. Wollschleager claimed that Strother never asked her to hold the check and that holding the check would have been impossible and contrary to bank regulations. Strother’s trial defense was that he had asked Wollschleager to hold the check and had never explicitly or implicitly requested that CBT pay the check. Strother argued that Wollschleager had authorized the payment due to her own mistaken belief that sufficient funds had been wired. The government conceded that if Strother had never explicitly or implicitly asked Wollschleager to pay the check, then no crime occurred. To impeach Wollschleager’s testimony, Strother proffered three internal CBT memoranda that summarized Strother and Wollschleager’s phone conversation. Strother argued that the memoranda contained Wollschleager’s prior inconsistent statements by omission because none of the memoranda mentioned that Strother had asked Wollschleager to authorize the check. The first memorandum was Wollschleager’s own account of the incident (Wollschleager’s memo). Wollschleager’s manager wrote the second memorandum to note Wollschleager’s employment probation for the incident, and Wollschleager signed it (the probation memo). Wollschleager’s manager wrote the third memorandum to explain the branch’s $82,500 loss (the loss memo). Nothing indicated that Wollschleager had adopted her alleged statements in the loss memo. The district court excluded Wollschleager’s memo and the probation memo but admitted the loss memo on other grounds after redacting Wollschleager’s alleged statements from it. Strother appealed from his conviction, primarily arguing that the trial court had erred by excluding Wollschleager’s statements as prior inconsistent statements.