ELR Citation: ELR 20012
No(s). 07-3874 (7th Cir. Jan 15, 2009)

The Seventh Circuit upheld the conviction of a liquid waste treatment facility and its president for making materially false statements in reports the facility was required to file under its national pollutant discharge elimination system permit. The defendants argued that the district court erred in admitting into evidence copies of certain electronic spreadsheets that recorded test results that were not charged in the indictment but were in conflict with what the facility had reported. They asserted that the test results are evidence of prior bad acts that should have been excluded under Federal Rules of Evidence 404(b). But evidence of uncharged offenses could not be feasibly separated out from evidence for the charged offenses. The defendants were charged with misrepresenting results of tests conducted between January and October 2004. This was the same period covered by the spreadsheets in question. It would have been infeasible to separate out this evidence so as to eliminate any hint that the defendants had also falsified other test results. In addition, the jury instructions were proper, and the district judge did not abuse his discretion in imposing a prison sentence on the facility's president.