Opinion ID: 2320924
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Riley's Sixth Amendment Right of Confrontation

Text: At this court's request, all of the parties filed supplemental memoranda after oral argument discussing the effect on this case of the recent Supreme Court decision in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004). In his memorandum, Riley asserts that Crawford represents a course correction and that, taken together with Bruton, [20] Gray, [21] and Cruz, [22] the Crawford opinion demonstrates a significant shift in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence concerning the admissibility in joint trials of police obtained confessions. Although we agree that the Crawford case dramatically transformed Confrontation Clause jurisprudence, Thomas v. United States, 914 A.2d 1, 5 (D.C.2006), we think Riley reads the Crawford opinion too broadly. Initially, Riley relies on Cruz to argue that all three appellants' confessions in this case were not properly sanitized under Gray (and Bruton ). He asserts that [the] jurors only needed to insert the word `we' for `I' to conclude that Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Marks implicated Mr. Riley in their statements, and the interlocking nature of the statements was an open invitation to do so. Cruz does not support this argument. In Cruz a co-defendant's confession was held to be inadmissible, even though the defendant against whom it was admitted had confessed as well, because it was unredacted. Cruz, 481 U.S. at 193, 107 S.Ct. 1714. In the present case, by contrast, the confessions of Muhammad and Marks were redacted to eliminate any mention of Riley. Furthermore, in Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 107 S.Ct. 1702, 95 L.Ed.2d 176 (1987), decided on the same day as Cruz, the Supreme Court clarified that if the prosecution in Cruz had redacted the confession to remove any mention of the co-defendant, there would have been no Confrontation Clause problem. See Richardson, 481 U.S. at 211, 107 S.Ct. 1702. Because the co-defendants' confessions in this case were redacted to omit any mention of Riley, Cruz does not apply. Riley also contends that the inferences that could be drawn from the interlocking nature of Marks' and Muhammad's statements violated his Sixth Amendment right of confrontation. This contention fails under established Supreme Court precedent. In Richardson the Court instructed that, when determining whether a confession expressly implicates a co-defendant, courts should restrict their examination to determining whether the confession is incriminating on its face and should not consider whether it is incriminating when linked with evidence introduced later at trial. Richardson, 481 U.S. at 208, 107 S.Ct. 1702; see Plater v. United States, 745 A.2d 953, 960-962 nn. 11 & 12 (D.C.2000) (noting that the Supreme Court in Gray ruled out the consideration of other evidence when determining whether a statement inferentially incriminates a defendant). Inferences that are considered offensive to Bruton's principles are those that allow the jury to infer from the redactions themselves that the co-defendant was a part of the criminal enterprise, even were the confession the very first item introduced at trial  such as using the word deleted instead of a specific individual's name, which obviously refer[s] directly to someone. Plater, 745 A.2d at 961 n. 11. Nothing like that happened in this case. An examination of Muhammad's and Marks' statements, as admitted into evidence, reveals that they were properly redacted and did not implicate Riley, standing alone; thus the statements, as admitted, did not violate the teachings of Bruton and its progeny. Riley also relies on Crawford to argue that the introduction of his co-defendants' confessions violated the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment. In Crawford the Supreme Court held that the admission of an out-of-court testimonial statement by the defendant's wife which incriminated her husband infringed his Sixth Amendment rights because he did not have a prior opportunity to cross-examine her. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354. [23] The wife's statement was both facially incriminating and introduced against the defendant challenging the statement. United States v. Cuong Gia Le, 316 F.Supp.2d 330, 338 (E.D.Va.2004). Here, by contrast, the confessions of Riley's co-defendants were redacted to eliminate all references to the other defendants' participation in the murders; thus they could not facially incriminate Riley. Furthermore, those statements were not admitted as evidence against Riley. Crawford, therefore, is not pertinent to Riley's appeal, because Marks' and Muhammad's confessions were properly redacted in accordance with Bruton, Richardson, Gray, and Plater. In addition, the court gave a proper limiting instruction to resolve any questions that the jurors might have had about how the statements could be used. See Richardson, 481 U.S. at 211, 107 S.Ct. 1702. Thus Riley had no right based on the Bruton line of cases, or on Crawford, to confront his co-defendants through cross-examination because their statements did not implicate Riley's Confrontation Clause rights.