Opinion ID: 2298987
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admission of Baxter's Unredacted Confession.

Text: Dobbins asserts that the trial court erred by failing to sua sponte sever his trial from that of his co-defendants because he was prejudiced by the admission of Baxter's unredacted confession in which he inculpated Dobbins in Muldrow's murder. On appeal, the government concedes that Baxter's unredacted statement should not have been admitted. See Brisbon v. United States, 957 A.2d 931, 953-54 (D.C. 2008). The government contends, however, that because defense counsel failed to move for severance or to object to the admission of Baxter's unredacted confession on this precise ground, plain error review applies; appellant does not argue otherwise. There was no plain error, the government argues, because there was other powerful evidence that was properly admitted against Dobbins, and the trial court cautioned the jury not to use Baxter's confession against any other co-defendant. Based on our review of the record, counsel arguably preserved the objection, in which case the proper standard of review would be for harmless error under Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 756, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946). Our decision does not turn on the standard of review, however. We conclude that although the trials should have been severed, or only a redacted version of Baxter's confession admitted, we can say with fair assurancein light of the trial court's instructions, the evidence arrayed against Dobbins, and the jury's verdict that the erroneous admission of Baxter's unredacted confession did not substantially sway the jury to convict Dobbins of unarmed second-degree murder. Id. Baxter made his statement on March 22, 2001, when he was taken to the police station to discuss Muldrow's murder. Baxter initially denied having any knowledge of Muldrow's murder, but later admitted limited involvement in the assault. According to Baxter's statement, Muldrow stole money from him at Simpkins's apartment. On the evening of December 8th, Baxter encountered Muldrow on the street and a fight ensued over the stolen cash. Baxter struck Muldrow with his fist four times; he then withdrew from the fight and had no further contact with Muldrow. This part of the statement coincided with this testimony at trial. In the statement he gave to police, however, Baxter added that he then saw Matthew Ingram, Ingram, and Dobbins punch Muldrow; that Dobbins jumped several times from a railing onto Muldrow's head, struck Muldrow with a vacuum cleaner, and continued to beat him with it; that Matthew Ingram then got a stick from Simpkins's apartment, which he used to beat Muldrow and then shoved into Muldrow's butt. Baxter's statement to the officers was videotaped. At a pre-trial hearing, the government requested that it be allowed to introduce Baxter's unredacted statement in its case-in-chief. In response, Dobbins's counsel, along with counsel for a number of the other defendants, filed motions in limine to preclude admission of Baxter's statement, to sever their trials from Baxter's trial, or to redact the statement. [10] Defense counsel argued that admission of Baxter's statement would create a Bruton violation because Baxter's confession would implicate his co-defendants in Muldrow's murder and Baxter would not be available for cross-examination. See Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968) (reversing conviction where co-defendant's confession was admitted but declarant did not take the stand and was thus not available for cross-examination, in violation of the co-defendant's Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him). The court and the parties agreed to work to produce a redacted transcript of Baxter's statement that could be admitted in the government's case-in-chief. The government, however, chose not to use Baxter's redacted transcript in its case-in-chief. Baxter then took the stand in his own defense. At trial, Baxter reiterated part of what he had said in this original statement with respect to his own involvement, that he had punched Muldrow only a few times; but he recanted his earlier statement implicating Dobbins and Ingram in the vicious assault. He tried to explain away the contradictions between his videotaped statement and his trial testimony, by saying that he initially gave the police the same version he had testified to at trial, but they refused to accept it. He said that the police simply fed him the information about the other co-defendants, which he felt pressured to repeat in his own statement. After Baxter testified, the prosecutor said the government intended to use Baxter's unredacted videotaped statement in cross-examination, pointing out that because Baxter had taken the stand, redaction of the statement (what the prosecutor called a  Brutonized version) was no longer an issue. At that point, counsel objected, saying, that's not the way I see[] it ... and argued that the videotape should not be admitted because at the pretrial hearing, the trial court had given the government a choice, whether it wanted to use a transcript or a videotape, and the government had chosen to use a redacted transcript. Counsel renew[ed his] objection,... renew[ed his] motion to suppress the statement. [11] The trial court, having had plenty of time to consider the situation the previous evening after Baxter had taken the stand, allowed the government to use the unredacted videotape. For purposes of error preservation, objections at trial must be made with reasonable specificity; the judge must be fairly apprised as to the question on which he is being asked to rule. Paige v. United States, 25 A.3d 74, 81 (D.C.2011) (citation omitted). Counsel had clearly stated a Confrontation Clause objection in the pretrial motion in limine, and counsel continued to object even after Baxter took the stand and became available for cross-examination, because the government had already opted to present a redacted transcript instead of the videotape. To the extent defense counsel did not alert the judge to the precise (and legally proper) basis for their continuing objection that we now discuss, it should have been apparent to the prosecutor, as well as to the court, that Baxter's unredacted confession inculpating the co-defendants was inadmissible in a joint trial even after Baxter became available for cross-examination. Baxter's taking the stand obviated a Bruton issue, but the confession was nonetheless inadmissible because under the traditional rules of evidence, it constitutes inadmissible hearsay and has no legitimate probative force against the non-confessing codefendant. Carpenter v. United States, 430 A.2d 496, 500 (D.C. 1981) (en banc) (citing Sousa v. United States, 400 A.2d 1036, 1043 (1979)). The trial court, in exercising its discretion to sever, must weigh prejudice to the defendant caused by the joinder against the important considerations of economy and expedition of judicial administration. Id. at 502. Although some amount of prejudice will be permitted in favor of judicial economy and the concomitant expedition of cases[,] ... once a severance issue is presented the court has a continuing duty to take adequate measures to guard against unfair prejudice from joinder. Id. at 500-1; see Schaffer v. United States, 362 U.S. 511, 516, 80 S.Ct. 945, 4 L.Ed.2d 921 (1960); United States v. Wilson, 434 F.2d 494, 499-500 (1970). Specifically, the trial court must take appropriate steps to ensure that a defendant is not prejudiced by testimony as to a confessing co-defendant's out-of-court statement. Carpenter, 430 A.2d at 500-501. The court has two options: to redact the statement to delete all references to the non-confessing co-defendant, or to sever the trials. Id. at 502 (citing Smith v. United States, 312 A.2d 781, 788 (D.C.1973)). We emphasized again in Geter v. United States, 929 A.2d 428 (D.C.2007), that the court must either redact the testifying co-defendant's confession to eliminate all incriminating references to the codefendant, or the codefendant's motion [to sever] must be granted whether or not the defendant who made the statement takes the stand and testifies, id. at 431 (applying Carpenter to use of unredacted statement in cross-examination), and we have reversed convictions where the defendant was prejudiced by admission of a co-defendant's unredacted confession. See id.; Brisbon, 957 A.2d at 954-957. Here, the trial court clearly erred in allowing Baxter's videotaped confession to be played in its entiretywithout redacting the parts that inculpated his co-defendantsas part of the government's impeachment of Baxter. The trial court did take care to instruct the jury on three separate occasions that it could consider the statement only as impeachment evidence against Baxter. [12] But we have cautioned that limiting instructions will almost never [be] an acceptable alternative to redaction or severance, because confessions and admissions that are powerfully incriminating present an especially great risk that limiting instructions will not be followed at potentially great prejudice to the non-confessing co-defendant. Brisbon, 957 A.2d at 954 (internal quotation and citations omitted). We repeat that caution here. This, however, is the unusual case where we can conclude that the non-confessing co-defendant was not prejudiced by the admission of a co-defendant's unredacted inculpating confession in a joint trial. There was overwhelming evidence presented by eyewitnesses who knew Dobbins and directly implicated him in the murder. [13] The government's key witness, Hawkins, had a front-row seat from which he viewed the attack from his apartment window and gave a play-by-play account of Muldrow's murder, starting from the time when Muldrow was initially being beaten, and culminating with the sodomy that marked the last minutes of Muldrow's life. Hawkins testified that he saw Dobbins wildly punching and kicking Muldrow. Unlike other witnesses, Hawkins was not impeached for drug or alcohol use on the night of Muldrow's murder. Hawkins's testimony was corroborated by Hankins and Williamson. In addition, the jury's verdict suggests that in this case the jury followed the trial court's repeated instructions not to consider Baxter's statement in determining Dobbins's guilt. If the jury had accepted Baxter's statement, and used it improperly against the co-defendants, the jury would have come to the conclusion that Dobbins, by using the vacuum cleaner as a weapon (as Baxter said in the videotaped statement), was guilty of an armed attack on Muldrow, and that Matthew Ingram (who Baxter claimed in his statement was the person who shoved a pole into Muldrow's rectum) was guilty of sexual assault. Given that Dobbins was convicted only of unarmed second-degree murderamply supported by Hawkins's testimonyand Matthew Ingram was acquitted of all charges, the jury's verdict clearly indicates that jurors were not swayed by Baxter's confession in considering the co-defendants' guilt, either because they followed the trial court's instructions, or simply because they disregarded Baxter's videotaped confession as unreliable, a self-serving attempt to shift blame to his co-defendants for the more gruesome aspects of the assault. We, therefore, conclude that the error in failing to sever the trials or redact Baxter's confession was harmless. [14]