Opinion ID: 1828644
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Whether the Trial Court Committed Reversible Error in Admitting Green's Statement Against Smith.

Text: ¶ 18. This Court reviews de novo a Confrontation Clause objection. See Hayden v. State, 972 So.2d 525, 535-36 (Miss.2007) (citing Baker v. State, 802 So.2d 77, 80 (Miss.2001)). ¶ 19. The United States Supreme Court has noted: [there] are few subjects, perhaps, upon which this Court and other courts have been more nearly unanimous than in the expressions of belief that the right of confrontation and cross-examination is an essential and fundamental requirement for the kind of fair trial which is this country's constitutional goal. Lee v. Ill., 476 U.S. 530, 540, 106 S.Ct. 2056, 90 L.Ed.2d 514 (1986) (quoting Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 405, 85 S.Ct. 1065, 13 L.Ed.2d 923 (1965)). The right to confrontation: (1) insures that the witness will give his statements under oath  thus impressing him with the seriousness of the matter and guarding against the lie by the possibility of a penalty for perjury; (2) forces the witness to submit to cross-examination, the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth; (3) permits the jury that is to decide the defendant's fate to observe the demeanor of the witness making his statement, thus aiding the jury in assessing his credibility. Lee, 476 U.S. at 540, 106 S.Ct. 2056 (quoting California v. Green, 399 U.S. 149, 158, 90 S.Ct. 1930, 26 L.Ed.2d 489 (1970)). [The] truthfinding function of the Confrontation Clause is uniquely threatened when an accomplice's confession is sought to be introduced against a criminal defendant without the benefit of cross-examination. Lee, 476 U.S. at 541, 106 S.Ct. 2056. ¶ 20. In Crawford v. Washington , the United States Supreme Court held that testimonial statements of witnesses absent from trial can be admitted, in accordance with common law, only where the declarant is unavailable and the defendant had a prior opportunity to cross-examine. Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 1364, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004) (emphasis added). The Supreme Court distinguished nontestimonial hearsay from testimonial hearsay. Id. Nontestimonial hearsay is subject to evidentiary rules concerning reliability rather than being subject to scrutiny under the Confrontation Clause. Id. However, testimonial hearsay must be filtered by the Confrontation Clause. Id. at 53, 124 S.Ct. 1354. ¶ 21. The Court declined in Crawford to define testimonial statements, but noted that the term, at a minimum, includes prior testimony at a preliminary hearing, before a grand jury, or at a former trial; and to police interrogations.  Id. at 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (emphasis added). Subsequently, the Court addressed the need to determine more precisely which police interrogations produce testimony. Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813, 822, 126 S.Ct. 2266, 165 L.Ed.2d 224 (2006). In Davis, the Court further distinguished statements made in response to police interrogations, explaining that: [s]tatements are nontestimonial when made in the course of police interrogation under circumstances objectively indicating that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency. They are testimonial when the circumstances objectively indicate that there is no such ongoing emergency, and that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution. Davis, 547 U.S. at 822, 126 S.Ct. 2266. Accordingly, the statements made during police interrogation in the present case are unquestionably testimonial and thus would be admissible only if the declarant was unavailable and the defendant had a prior opportunity to cross examine. See Crawford, 541 U.S. at 52, 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354. ¶ 22. Crawford cites Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 126, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 1622, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968), for the proposition that the admission of a codefendant's statement against a defendant without the opportunity to cross-examine the codefendant is a violation of the Confrontation Clause. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 57, 124 S.Ct. 1354. Following Bruton, this Court has held that the prosecution should not offer, and the trial judge should not admit, in evidence, incriminating statements of a codefendant (implicating the defendant) during the state's case-in-chief, since it could not be known whether the codefendant would testify after the state rested. Clark v. State, 891 So.2d 136, 140 (Miss. 2004) (quoting Brown v. State, 340 So.2d 718, 721 (Miss.1976)). ¶ 23. The trial court allowed the introduction of Smith's and Green's statements based on the reliability test set forth in Seales v. State, 495 So.2d 475 (Miss.1986). In Seales, at the joint trial of the defendants, out-of-court statements of each defendant made to officers while in police custody were admitted into evidence in the State's case-in-chief, relying on the Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980), indicia of reliability test. Under this test, the statement of a nontestifying codefendant was admissible when the declarant was unavailable and the statement bore adequate indicia of reliability. Seales, 495 So.2d at 480. Roberts held that reliability is sufficient where the evidence falls within a firmly rooted hearsay exception or is shown to contain particularized guarantees of trustworthiness. Roberts, 448 U.S. at 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531. Seales, in following Roberts, determined that the admission of the statements in that case was not reversible error, stating `particularized guarantees of trustworthiness' are present, that is, that the statements corroborate one another on the core details of the crime. Seales, 495 So.2d at 479. Analogizing Seales to the case at hand, the trial court found the statements reliable since both Defendants, basically, corroborated each others' story, generally, until you get to who the shooter was. ¶ 24. However, Seales and Roberts are in conflict with Crawford as they relate to the admissibility of testimonial statements. Crawford held that the Roberts reliability test, i.e., whether it falls under a firmly rooted hearsay exception or bears particularized guarantees of trustworthiness, strays unacceptably from the original intention of the Confrontation Clause. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 60, 124 S.Ct. 1354. The unpardonable vice of the Roberts test is its demonstrated capacity to admit core testimonial statements that the Confrontation Clause plainly meant to exclude. Id. at 63, 100 S.Ct. 2531. The Court found that, under the test laid out in Roberts, trial courts continued routinely to admit accomplice confessions implicating the accused and other sorts of plainly testimonial statements. Id. ¶ 25. As to the Roberts test, the Supreme Court concluded that the admission of statements upon a mere finding of reliability failed to meet the core concerns of the Confrontation Clause and failed to protect against paradigmatic confrontation violations. Id. at 60, 100 S.Ct. 2531. [w]here testimonial statements are involved, we do not think the Framers meant to leave the Sixth Amendment's protection to the vagaries of the rules of evidence, much less to amorphous notions of reliability.... Admitting statements deemed reliable by a judge is fundamentally at odds with the right of confrontation. To be sure, the Clause's ultimate goal is to ensure reliability of evidence, but it is a procedural rather than a substantive guarantee. It commands, not that evidence be reliable, but that reliability be assessed in a particular manner: by testing in the crucible of cross-examination. Id. at 61, 100 S.Ct. 2531. ¶ 26. Crawford holds that when dealing with testimonial evidence, a finding of reliability does not create an exception to the Confrontation Clause. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 61, 124 S.Ct. 1354. Where testimonial statements are at issue, the only indicium of reliability sufficient to satisfy constitutional demands is the one the Constitution actually prescribes: confrontation. Id. at 68-69, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (emphasis added). We overrule Seales and its progeny [4] to the extent that they allow admission of testimonial statements when found to be reliable under the indicia of reliability test in the absence of cross-examination. We decline to address the applicability of Seales to nontestimonial statements. ¶ 27. The trial court admitted the statements and attempted to address any confrontational issues by giving a cautionary instruction. With regard to Green's statements, jury instruction C-16 stated: [t]he court instructs the jury that statements attributed to Lewis Green have been admitted into evidence. The court instructs the jury that you are to disregard any such statement regarding Gregory Smith and his alleged involvement in an armed robbery and murder that is the subject of this trial. You are further instructed to disregard any other statement attributed to Lewis Green regarding Gregory Smith as evidence in this case against Gregory Smith. You are not permitted to use any statement attributed to Lewis Green in regard to Gregory Smith as evidence in this case against Gregory Smith. ¶ 28. The United States Supreme Court has rejected a jury instruction as a cure for the violation of the Confrontation Clause, explaining: A defendant is entitled to a fair trial but not a perfect one. It is not unreasonable to conclude that in many such cases the jury can and will follow the trial judge's instructions to disregard such information. Nevertheless, .... there are some contexts in which the risk that the jury will not, or cannot, follow instructions is so great, and the consequences of failure so vital to the defendant, that the practical and human limitations of the jury system cannot be ignored. Such a context is presented here, where the powerfully incriminating extrajudicial statements of a codefendant, who stands accused side-by-side with the defendant, are deliberately spread before the jury in a joint trial. Not only are the incriminations devastating to the defendant but their credibility is inevitably suspect, a fact recognized when accomplices do take the stand and the jury is instructed to weigh their testimony carefully given the recognized motivation to shift blame onto others. The unreliability of such evidence is intolerably compounded when the alleged accomplice, as here, does not testify and cannot be tested by cross-examination. It was against such threats to a fair trial that the Confrontation Clause was directed. Bruton, 391 U.S. at 135-36, 88 S.Ct. 1620 (internal quotations and citations omitted). Bruton found the jury instruction insufficient to cure a Confrontation Clause violation and reversed the petitioner's conviction because of substantial risk that the jury, despite instructions to the contrary, looked to the incriminating extrajudicial statements in determining petitioner's guilt. Bruton, 391 U.S. at 126, 88 S.Ct. 1620. This Court has followed Bruton. See e.g., Harris v. State, 861 So.2d 1003, 1022 (Miss.2003) (citing Bruton for the proposition that where a codefendant's statement is introduced at a joint trial which powerfully implicates the defendant in a crime, a jury instruction or redactions which naturally suggest the defendant's name has been removed is not sufficient protection of the defendant's right to confront his accuser where the codefendant does not take the stand and subject himself to cross-examination by the defendant). ¶ 29. In accordance with Bruton, this Court continues to hold that a violation of the Confrontation Clause by admission of a codefendant's out-of-court statement which implicates the defendant in a crime cannot be cured by the granting of a cautionary instruction such as the ones entered in this case. ¶ 30. Having determined that neither through establishment of reliability under Roberts and Seales, nor through the issuance of a jury instruction, were Green's statements properly admitted, we must finally determine whether, as the State asserts, the Confrontation Clause violation was harmless error. See Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 674, 106 S.Ct. 1431, 89 L.Ed.2d 674 (1986) (vacating and remanding the case for harmless-error analysis where, though the trial court committed a Confrontation Clause violation, the Delaware Supreme Court erred when it [rejected the state's argument and] declined to consider whether [the trial court] ruling was harmless in the context of the trial as a whole). ¶ 31. The United States Supreme Court has explained that a defendant is entitled to a fair trial but not a perfect one, for there are no perfect trials. Brown v. United States, 411 U.S. 223, 231, 93 S.Ct. 1565, 36 L.Ed.2d 208 (1973) (quoting Bruton, 391 U.S. at 135, 88 S.Ct. 1620 (quoting Lutwak v. United States, 344 U.S. 604, 619, 73 S.Ct. 481, 97 L.Ed. 593 (1953))). While there are some constitutional rights so basic to a fair trial that their infraction can never be treated as harmless error, Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 23, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967), most constitutional errors can be harmless. Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 8, 119 S.Ct. 1827, 144 L.Ed.2d 35 (1999) (citing Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 306, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991)). The Supreme Court has recognized a limited class of fundamental constitutional errors, structural errors, that are not subject to harmless-error analysis and require automatic reversal. Neder, 527 U.S. at 7, 119 S.Ct. 1827 (citing Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 309, 111 S.Ct. 1246). However, for all other constitutional errors, reviewing courts must apply harmless-error analysis in order to determine whether the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Neder, 527 U.S. at 7, 119 S.Ct. 1827 (citing Chapman, 386 U.S. at 24, 87 S.Ct. 824). [A]n otherwise valid conviction should not be set aside if the reviewing court may confidently say, on the whole record, that the constitutional error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. at 681, 106 S.Ct. 1431. Once the constitutional error has been established, the burden is on the State to demonstrate the error is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 296, 111 S.Ct. 1246. ¶ 32. Although this Court did hold in McCulloch v. State, 194 Miss. 851, 855, 13 So.2d 829 (Miss.1943), that [t]he violation of a constitutional right can not be harmless error, the United States Supreme Court later explained in Chapman the applicability of harmless-error analysis to constitutional violations. In accordance with Chapman, this Court has recognized that the admission of statements made by a non-testifying defendant in violation of the Confrontation Clause can be harmless error. Clark, 891 So.2d at 141; Bynum v. State, 929 So.2d 312, 314-15 (Miss.2006) (finding beyond a reasonable doubt that the trial court's error in admitting the co-defendant's statement was harmless). Clark followed Brown v. United States , which held that admission into evidence of a statement made by a non-testifying codefendant  a Bruton error  is harmless where [t]he testimony erroneously admitted was merely cumulative of other overwhelming and largely uncontroverted evidence properly before the jury. Brown, 411 U.S. at 231, 93 S.Ct. 1565; Clark, 891 So.2d at 141. See Haynes v. State, 934 So.2d 983, 991 (Miss.2006) (This Court has held errors involving a violation of an accused's constitutional rights may be deemed harmless beyond a reasonable doubt where the weight of the evidence against the accused is overwhelming.) ¶ 33. The State asserts that in the present case the facts constituting the elements of murder committed during the commission of a robbery were established by overwhelming evidence and through the use of proper means; thus, the error of admitting Green's statements was harmless. Smith was charged with capital murder committed during the commission of a robbery. Mississippi Code Annotated § 97-3-19(2)(e) (Rev.2006) defines capital murder as: (2) The killing of a human being without the authority of law by any means or in any manner will be capital murder in the following cases: .... (e) When done with or without any design to effect death, by any person engaged in the commission of the crime of... robbery ... or in any attempt to commit such felonies.... (emphasis added). The underlying crime charged in this case was robbery. The elements of robbery are: (1) felonious intent, (2) force or putting in fear as a means of effectuating the intent, and (3) by that means taking and carrying away the property of another from his person or in his presence. Walker v. State, 913 So.2d 198, 223 (Miss.2005) (quoting Caldwell v. State, 481 So.2d 850, 853 (Miss.1985)). ¶ 34. The State argues that the facts constituting the elements of murder committed during the commission of a robbery were established by overwhelming evidence and through the use of proper means. ¶ 35. Outside of Green's erroneously admitted statements, the only evidence that ties Smith to the crime are the statements Smith made during his interrogation which was presented to the jury through the disc recordings and transcripts of those interrogations. While we have determined that Smith's statement would have been inadmissibile against Green, it is admissible against Smith himself. [W]hile Crawford certainly prohibits the introduction of a codefendant's out-of-court testimonial statement against the other defendants in a multiple-defendant trial, it does not signal a departure from the rules governing the admittance of such a statement against the speaker-defendant himself, which continue to be provided by Bruton, Richardson [v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 107 S.Ct. 1702, 95 L.Ed.2d 176 (1987)], and Gray [v. Maryland, 523 U.S. 185, 188, 118 S.Ct. 1151, 140 L.Ed.2d 294 (1998)]. United States v. Ramos-Cardenas, 524 F.3d 600, 609-10 (5th Cir.2008). See also United States v. Rodriguez-Duran, 507 F.3d 749, 768-70 (1st Cir.2007) (under Crawford, in a joint trial, even though a defendant's statement is inadmissible against codefendants, it can be admissible as to him); Bruton, 391 U.S. at 127, 88 S.Ct. 1620 ([Bruton's codefendant's] oral confessions were in fact testified to, and were ... legitimate evidence against [his codefendant] and to that extent [were] properly before the jury during its deliberations). ¶ 36. Smith told Havard and Boswell during interrogation that he went to the house where Scott was murdered in order to commit robbery, that he acted as the lookout, that Green shot Scott, and that he received some of the stolen money. We note that Smith made no effort to suppress his own statements and the only objection made to the introduction of his statement was his joining Green's objection on the grounds of hearsay and confrontation. No objection was made which would challenge either the truthfulness, or the voluntariness, or the reliability of Smith's statements. Smith's confession was the most probative and damaging evidence admitted against him, and it constituted direct evidence of the facts related to Scott's murder. Smith's own statements concerning his participation in the robbery and murder of Scott were uncontradicted and unchallenged. Therefore, we find that the evidence in the record was overwhelming and was sufficient to support the jury's verdict, and that the introduction of Green's statement was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.