Suicide Note Clearing School System Chief of Fraud Inadmissible

A former Oklahoma school superintendent failed to overturn his embezzlement conviction after the Tenth Circuit held Nov. 12 that an alleged co-conspirator’s suicide note purportedly clearing him of the crime couldn’t be admitted as evidence.

Buck Hammers’s conviction will stand because the trial court properly excluded the suicide note as hearsay, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit said. The note didn’t come under a hearsay exception as an admission against interest, the appeals court said.

Hammers was the superintendent of the Grant-Goodland Public School District in Grant, Oklahoma. After auditors found hundreds of thousands of dollars in ...