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Costello v. United States | 350 U.S. 359 (1956)

Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, hearsay evidence generally isn’t admissible at a criminal trial. However, the rules of evidence don’t apply at indictment proceedings, so a grand jury may hear evidence that would likely be inadmissible at trial, including hearsay. But is an indictment valid if hearsay was the only evidence presented before the grand jury? The Supreme Court faced that question in Costello versus United States.

In Nineteen Fifty-Five, Frank Costello was charged with fraudulently reporting his taxable income for three years and indicted for tax evasion. Costello filed a pretrial motion to dismiss the indictment. He attached an affidavit stating that he’d paid taxes on all of his income and therefore that the grand jury couldn’t have heard any valid evidence. The district court denied the motion.

At trial, the government presented extensive evidence to prove that Costello received more income than he reported. The government’s final witnesses were three government agents who summarized the government’s evidence and introduced computations concluding that Costello’s income far exceeded what he reported. After cross-examination established that the three agents were the sole witnesses to testify before the grand jury, Costello filed another motion to dismiss the indictment. Costello argued that because the three agents had no firsthand knowledge of the transactions supporting their computations, he was indicted solely on hearsay evidence. The district court denied Costello’s motion, and he was convicted. The Second Circuit affirmed Costello’s conviction, and the Supreme Court granted cert.

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