Opinion ID: 1657407
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: Duan Gaines's Testimony

Text: Blanche also argues that his Sixth Amendment rights were violated when Duan Gaines testified that Bernard said to Blanche, We should have got out. You saw whoopty fall. We disagree with the postconviction court's conclusion that Gaines's statement was so nebulous that the jury could not possibly infer that the statement meant something to the effect that Bernard and Blanche should have gotten out of the car before shooting at Scott so as to have avoided hitting Phillips. [4] Further, we do not subscribe to the notion that Bruton's protections only cover statements that are formal confessions, such as those in which the defendant directly admits guilt in the context of a formal statement. Therefore, we conclude that the admission of Gaines's statement over Blanche's objection was error. At worst, however, this testimony was cumulative and therefore harmless. If the jury's verdict was in any part based on Gaines's testimony, his testimony included other statements, which were admissible against Blanche and in which Blanche identified himself as a shooter. See U.S. v. Payne, 923 F.2d 595 (8th Cir.1991) (holding that admission of a redacted statement in violation of Bruton was harmless error where other evidence made the statement largely cumulative). Therefore, we conclude that the error was harmless because the guilty verdict was surely unattributable to the error.