## Facts

- Paciano Lizarraga-Tirado was arrested near the United States–Mexico border and charged with illegal reentry after removal under 8 U.S.C. § 1326.
- He claimed he never entered the United States and argued agents mistakenly crossed into Mexico before arresting him due to darkness and the remote location.
- Border Patrol agents testified they were familiar with the area and arrested him north of the border.
- One agent recorded the arrest location’s coordinates using a handheld GPS device.
- To show the location, the government introduced a Google Earth satellite image and a digital “tack” marking the entered GPS coordinates; the image also displayed standard Google Earth map labels (e.g., border, towns, roads).
- The defendant objected to the image and tack on hearsay grounds; the district court admitted the exhibit, and the jury convicted.

## Issues

1. Whether a Google Earth satellite image and an automatically placed, coordinate-labeled digital tack constitute hearsay under Federal Rule of Evidence 801 when offered to prove the arrest occurred in the United States.
2. If the exhibit is hearsay, whether admitting it violates the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit affirmed the conviction.
- The satellite image was not hearsay because, like a photograph, it made no assertion by a person.
- The automatically generated tack and coordinate label were not hearsay because the relevant assertion (accurate placement at the entered coordinates) was produced by the program rather than a human declarant.
- Because the evidence was not hearsay, its admission did not implicate the Confrontation Clause.
- Reliability concerns about machine-generated outputs were matters of authentication, not hearsay, and the defendant did not pursue an authentication objection at trial.

## Legal Principles

- Hearsay under Rule 801 requires a “statement” made by a human “declarant”; machine-generated output, without human assertion, is not hearsay.
- A satellite image used as a depiction of a location is treated like photographic evidence and is generally non-assertive for hearsay purposes.
- A digital marker automatically placed and labeled by software based on entered coordinates is not a human assertion; by contrast, a manually placed or manually labeled marker may contain human assertions and can raise hearsay issues.
- Confrontation Clause protections apply to testimonial statements by persons; non-hearsay machine output does not trigger a right to confrontation.
- Challenges to the accuracy of machine-generated evidence are ordinarily addressed through authentication and related evidentiary safeguards rather than hearsay doctrine.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit held that Google Earth satellite imagery and an automatically generated GPS-coordinate tack are not hearsay because they are not statements by a human declarant, and admitting them does not violate the Confrontation Clause; questions about the accuracy of such machine outputs belong to authentication, not hearsay.


United States v. Lizarraga-Tirado, 789 F.3d 1107 (9th Cir. 2015)