Opinion ID: 3165795
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Confessions

Text: Espinoza and Argueta next argue that the district court abused its discretion in allowing the government to introduce their confessions at trial, where neither defendant testified. In particular, Espinoza challenges the admission of Argueta’s confession regarding the hotel shooting, and Argueta challenges the admission of Espinoza’s confession regarding the nightclub shooting. Relying on Bruton, the defendants argue that, although their confessions did not directly implicate each other, the confessions served as proof of overt acts in furtherance of the RICO conspiracy, thus triggering a confrontation right under the Sixth Amendment. The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment guarantees the right of a criminal defendant “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” U.S. Const. 24 Case: 14-11890 Date Filed: 12/28/2015 Page: 25 of 30 amend. VI. “Ordinarily, a witness whose testimony is introduced at a joint trial is not considered to be a witness ‘against’ a defendant if the jury is instructed to consider that testimony only against a codefendant.” Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 206 (1987). In Bruton, the Supreme Court carved out a “narrow exception” to this principle. Id. at 207. There, the Court held that the admission of a codefendant’s confession, which on its face inculpated the defendant at their joint trial, violated the Confrontation Clause despite a curative instruction given to the jury. Bruton, 391 U.S. at 125-26. The Court concluded that because of the substantial risk that the jury, despite instructions to the contrary, would consider the facially incriminating, extrajudicial statements in determining the defendant’s own guilt, admission of such confessions violated the Sixth Amendment. Id. at 135. “Since Bruton, the Supreme Court has cautioned against blind application of the Bruton rule: ‘The Confrontation Clause has never been held to bar the admission into evidence of every relevant extrajudicial statement made by a nontestifying declarant simply because it in some way incriminates the defendant.’ ” United States v. Arias, 984 F.2d 1139, 1142 (11th Cir. 1993) (quoting Parker v. Randolph, 442 U.S. 62, 73 (1979)). Only those statements by a non-testifying defendant that directly inculpate or powerfully incriminate the codefendant give rise to a constitutional violation. Id. No Bruton problem exists 25 Case: 14-11890 Date Filed: 12/28/2015 Page: 26 of 30 where the statement “was not incriminating on its face, and became so only when linked with evidence introduced later at trial.” Marsh, 481 U.S. at 208. The district court did not err in admitting Espinoza’s and Argueta’s statements. Neither defendant’s statement directly inculpated, powerfully incriminated—or even mentioned—the other defendant. Arias, 984 F.2d at 1142. Here, one defendant’s statement incriminated the other only when linked with additional RICO enterprise evidence and specific evidence of the other’s role in MS-13. In other words, absent additional evidence linking Espinoza or Argueta to the MS-13 RICO enterprise, the confession of one codefendant had no incriminating effect on the other. Accordingly, in this case, admitting one codefendant’s statements as evidence against the other did not violate Bruton. We reject the defendants’ argument that because the confessional statements may be proof that a RICO enterprise existed, which is a necessary element of the RICO conspiracy charged against both defendants, the statements trigger a confrontation right under Bruton. If the defendants were correct, then any incriminating statement made by one nontestifying coconspirator would be inadmissible against the other, whether or not the statement facially incriminated 26 Case: 14-11890 Date Filed: 12/28/2015 Page: 27 of 30 the other codefendant. Bruton’s narrow exception to the general rule of admissibility does not extend this far.11