Opinion ID: 1246974
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: aranda-bruton error

Text: Bruton v. United States (1968) 391 U.S. 123 [20 L.Ed.2d 476, 88 S.Ct. 1620], held that a defendant's right of cross-examination is violated when he is inculpated by the introduction of an extrajudicial statement of a jointly tried codefendant in spite of an instruction that the jury consider the statement only against the codefendant. As the majority concede, Bruton must apply to statements introduced by a codefendant at the penalty phase of a capital trial. The majority also concede that People v. Aranda, 63 Cal.2d 518 [47 Cal. Rptr. 353, 407 P.2d 265], applies to statements introduced by a codefendant at a penalty trial, so that a trial judge faced with the likelihood that such a statement will be introduced must either grant a motion for separate penalty trials or see to it that all references to the nondeclarant defendant are effectively deleted without prejudice to the declarant. ( Id., at p. 530.) When Dr. Tweed took the stand, Floyd's counsel asked him to repeat Floyd's version of the crime. Dr. Tweed's response mentioned the gun and Floyd's admission that he shot the bus driver. Floyd's counsel then initiated the following dialogue: Q Did he say where he had gotten the gun? A Yes, he said he had gotten the gun from some friend. Q Did he say where he was taking it? A He stated he was taking it to a relative of this friend from whom he had gotten the gun. The jury was already aware from prior evidence that the gun was found in the home of Milton's half-brother, and the necessary implication of Dr. Tweed's testimony is that Milton had supplied Floyd with the murder weapon. The majority concede that Milton's Aranda rights were violated by the introduction of the portion of Dr. Tweed's testimony quoted above, and that the jury conceivably could have inferred that Milton was the `friend' who, according to Floyd, gave Floyd the gun, ... Nonetheless, the majority deem this error nonreversible because Milton's counsel failed to object to the offending questions and because the majority conclude any error was insubstantial ( People v. Hines, 61 Cal.2d 164, 168-170 [37 Cal. Rptr. 622, 390 P.2d 398]) and harmless beyond reasonable doubt. ( Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24 [17 L.Ed.2d 705, 710, 87 S.Ct. 824, 24 A.L.R.3d 1065].) Milton's counsel did not object to the questions of Dr. Tweed as to where Floyd obtained the gun or where he was taking it. Counsel did not move to strike the answers, but at the next recess out of the presence of the jury, he moved for a mistrial. The court denied the request, but ultimately instructed the jury that the psychiatrist's testimony during this penalty trial `which disclosed defendant's statements should be considered only for the purpose of exposing the information upon which the psychiatrist based his opinion and not as evidence of the truth of the statements.' The record shows that Milton's counsel did all that can reasonably be required to prevent this error and that under the settled principles relating to errors committed in the penalty trial, the error was reversible. Immediately prior to the penalty trial, Milton's counsel raised the possibility that Dr. Tweed would testify as to a confession by Floyd which inculpated Milton. After extended discussion and some research, the trial judge denied Milton's request for a separate penalty trial while instructing Floyd's counsel to see to it that Dr. Tweed would not refer to Milton, and directing the prosecutor to avoid any such reference in cross-examination. When Milton's counsel suggested that it would be impossible effectively to delete such references, the trial judge indicated that he would meet this issue clearcut at the time I am confronted with it. The failure to object to the specific questions asked of Dr. Tweed may not be held to constitute a waiver of the Aranda error. The court had expressly and without equivocation directed Floyd's counsel to admonish Dr. Tweed to delete all references to Milton. Thus, when Floyd's counsel asked the doctor did Floyd say where he had gotten the gun? Milton's counsel could reasonably have assumed that the court's instruction would be obeyed and that the response would not refer to Milton. In fact, such an assumption would have been correct; Dr. Tweed replied simply that Floyd received the gun from some friend. Similarly, when Dr. Tweed was asked whether Floyd said where he was taking the gun, Milton's counsel could again reasonably have assumed that the court's instruction would be obeyed and that the response would not refer to Milton. For example, counsel could have assumed that Dr. Tweed, who was not purporting to quote Floyd, would have answered that Floyd was taking the gun to another friend. Hence, prior to Dr. Tweed's second response, Milton's counsel was fully justified in relying upon the court's instruction and in foregoing the tactical risks of objecting. In fact, however, Dr. Tweed's second response  that Floyd was taking [the gun] to a relative of this friend from whom he had gotten the gun  connected this dialogue with Milton because the jury already knew the gun was found in the home of Milton's half-brother. Even though pretrial discussion left open the possibility that the court would have to resolve problems posed by unavoidable references to Milton when they arose, there is nothing in the record suggesting that this reference to Milton was unavoidable. Hence Milton's counsel cannot be expected to have anticipated the reference. To hold, as the majority do, that failure to object should preclude Milton from raising the Aranda error would mean that Milton's counsel, in order to protect his client's rights, would have had to object to every question of Dr. Tweed where there was any possibility of reference to Milton. In view of the court's order to delete all reference to Milton, it is manifestly unfair to place such a burden upon Milton's counsel. [6] Such a requirement would be purely formalistic and serve no useful purpose. The majority do not claim that the failure to move to strike Dr. Tweed's testimony constituted a waiver by Milton of his right to confrontation, and it would be improper to so hold. A motion to strike the answers was not necessary to alert the trial judge and other counsel to Milton's right to have all references to him excluded or to his assertion of that right. He had previously asserted the right and the judge had seemingly vindicated it by his order directing deletion of all such references. More importantly, the granting of a motion to strike or a limiting instruction, as recognized by Aranda and Bruton, would not have eliminated the harmful results of the error, and therefore the requirement of a motion to strike is not applicable. ( People v. Varnum, 70 Cal.2d 480, 488 [75 Cal. Rptr. 161, 450 P.2d 553].) Critical to both Aranda and Bruton is the recognition that the erroneous admission into evidence of a confession implicating both defendants is not necessarily cured by an instruction that it is to be considered only against the declarant. ( Bruton v. United States, supra, 391 U.S. at p. 133, fn. 9 [20 L.Ed.2d at p. 483], quoting People v. Aranda, supra, 63 Cal.2d at p. 526.) It was precisely because of the inherent inefficacy of such an instruction when the jury has already heard a confession implicating a nondeclarant defendant that Aranda established the alternatives of separate trials or effective deletions of all references to the nondeclarant. ( People v. Aranda, supra, 63 Cal.2d at pp. 528-531.) And, [b]y effective deletions, we mean not only direct and indirect identifications of codefendants but any statements that could be employed against nondeclarant codefendants once their identity is otherwise established. ( Id., at p. 530; footnote omitted.) Here the deletions were ineffective. The evidence that the murder weapon was found in the home of Milton's half-brother was an important part of the prosecution's case at the guilt trial and undoubtedly made an indelible impression upon the jury. When coupled with this evidence, Dr. Tweed's repetition of Floyd's statement clearly implied Milton had supplied the gun to Floyd. As soon as the questions were asked, Milton's counsel was put in the very dilemma Aranda sought to prevent. An objection or motion to strike would only have served to crystallize the damaging implications of Dr. Tweed's testimony, and a limiting instruction might also have done more harm than good. In my view, it is absurd to condition the raising of an error upon an objection when the whole theory of the violated rule is premised upon the inefficacy of objection. The majority's application of harmless error rules is as unsatisfactory as their invocation of the requirement of objection. The majority seek to depress the prejudicial effect of Dr. Tweed's implication that Milton gave Floyd the murder weapon by pointing to Milton's prior armed robberies, two of which were committed with Floyd. Although nothing has altered our ignorance as to just what factors prompt a particular jury to return a death verdict in any given case, we now have empirical evidence that certain factors generally have a significant impact on the penalty verdicts of California juries. ( A Study of the California Penalty Jury in First-Degree-Murder Cases, supra, 21 Stan.L.Rev. 1297, 1420.) This study supports the majority's implication that the introduction of a defendant's criminal record significantly increases the likelihood that a death verdict will be returned against him. ( Id., at pp. 1326-1330.) On the other hand, the circumstance that a defendant did not personally kill a victim strongly reduces the likelihood that a death penalty will be returned; in fact, only 4 of the 52 defendants included within the study's sample of 238 penalty trials who did not personally commit an act of homicide were condemned to death by a penalty jury. ( Id., at pp. 1348-1349.) More important for the case before us, the study found a significant relationship between a defendant's status as a non-triggerman and life sentence verdicts after eliminating the effects of other factors  including the introduction of prior offenses. (Compare id., at pp. 1348-1349 with id., at pp. 1316-1326.) In other words, the fact that a defendant is a non-triggerman by itself significantly increases his chance of obtaining a life verdict, even assuming that his priors are introduced at the penalty trial. In sum, Dr. Tweed's testimony furnished the sole basis for an inference that Milton supplied Floyd with the murder weapon. Since it is impossible for us to know whether this inference affected the decision of the particular jury which condemned Milton to die, and since this inference tends to negate Milton's status as non-triggerman  a status which generally weighs heavily in favor of a life sentence regardless of a prior record  this court is in no position to declare that the conceded Aranda error did not contribute to Milton's death verdict. If Floyd's admissions were believed, it is not at all unlikely that any tendency of the jury to distinguish for purposes of punishment between Floyd and Milton was neutralized by the showing that Milton was at least equally involved in the use of the gun in the robbery. Although the majority concede Aranda error, their discussion of Bruton leaves me uncertain whether they have concluded that there was harmless error or that there was no Bruton error. In my view there was such error, and it was prejudicial. In concluding that any Bruton error was not prejudicial, the majority deny that Dr. Tweed's testimony created a substantial risk that the jury would ignore the court's instruction. In so doing the majority have intertwined the incidents of Bruton error with rules designed to determine whether a conceded error is reversible because prejudicial. I think a fair reading of the Bruton language cited by the majority [7] indicates Bruton was concerned not with the question of harmless error, but rather with defining a context in which a limiting instruction cannot cure error. The court's conclusion was that because extrajudicial statements of a codefendant which inculpate a nondeclarant defendant are inherently powerfully incriminating, the introduction of such statements when the declarant does not take the stand presents a context in which the risk that the jury will not, or cannot, follow instructions is ... great, and that therefore in the context of a joint trial we cannot accept limiting instructions as an adequate substitute for petitioner's constitutional right of cross-examination. ( Bruton v. United States, supra, 391 U.S. at pp. 135-137 [20 L.Ed.2d at pp. 484-485].) Thus Bruton deems erroneous the mere context presented by the introduction of a statement by a codefendant who does not testify when that statement inculpates a jointly tried nondeclarant defendant. The court's discussion of the incriminating nature of such statements and of the risk that a jury will ignore a limiting instruction explains the rule, but does not establish factual prerequisites to a finding that the rule has been violated. Even if findings of incrimination and of risk are prerequisite to establishing Bruton error, however, it is perfectly clear that these findings do not determine the question whether an error  like the one here  is reversible. Bruton acknowledged the impossibility of determining whether in fact the jury did or did not ignore a limiting instruction. ( Id., at p. 136 [20 L.Ed.2d at p. 485].) Thus, once both incrimination and risk are established, it must be assumed the jury did not follow the instruction: The effect is the same as if there had been no instruction at all. ( Id., at p. 137 [20 L.Ed.2d at p. 485].) Here, incrimination is established by Dr. Tweed's testimony, which furnished the sole basis for the inference that Milton supplied the murder weapon. The risk that the jury improperly used that testimony against Milton is even greater than in Bruton. In Bruton, the jury was clearly instructed not to consider the codefendant's confession as evidence against the nondeclarant. ( Id., at pp. 125, fn. 2, 137 [20 L.Ed.2d at pp. 479, 485].) Here the jury was never given a clear and unambiguous instruction that it could not use Dr. Tweed's testimony concerning Floyd's statements against Milton. Instead, the jury was told it could consider those statements `only for the purpose of exposing the information upon which [Dr. Tweed] based his opinion and not as evidence of the truth of the statements.' The jury might have adhered to the literal meaning of this instruction by considering the evidence that the gun was found in the apartment of Milton's half-brother as proof of the truth of the statements which were exposed by Dr. Tweed  and by considering the resulting inference that Milton supplied the murder weapon as evidence in aggravation of the penalty. Hence the fact of Bruton error as to Milton seems clear. But the critical question remains whether that error was reversible. (E.g., In re Hill, supra, 71 Cal.2d 997, 1013-1015.) It cannot be disputed that Bruton was a constitutional decision, or that a conviction must not be sustained in the face of constitutional error unless an appellate court can declare that it is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the error did not contribute to the verdict. ( Chapman v. California, supra, 386 U.S. at p. 24 [17 L.Ed.2d at p. 710].) The California harmless error rule for all penalty trial errors is stated by People v. Hines, supra, 61 Cal.2d 164. In that case, we examined the unique aspects of penalty trials which render inapposite the reasonably probable harmless error rule which is applicable to guilt errors. Because of the absolute discretion afforded a jury presented with a mass of material, because [t]he precise point which prompts the penalty in the mind of any one juror is not known to us and may not even be known to him, and because `[t]o attempt to assess the effect of error in this legal vacuum is to superimpose one untestable surmise upon another,' we reaffirmed the rule that `any substantial error occurring during the penalty phase of the trial, that results in the death penalty, since it reasonably may have swayed a juror, must be deemed to have been prejudicial.' ( Id., at pp. 168-170, and cases cited.) My view of the relationship between the Hines and Chapman tests in the context of a penalty trial constitutional error is that they are perfectly consistent: it is impossible to declare beyond reasonable doubt that any substantial error did not contribute to a death verdict. In any case, we are bound by the supremacy clause to apply the Chapman test here, and to reverse the penalty verdict unless we can say beyond a reasonable doubt that the implications of Dr. Tweed's testimony did not contribute to Milton's death verdict. I submit such a declaration would fly in the face of reality  especially in view of the factors discussed at length in Hines. Accordingly, I would reverse Milton's penalty verdict because of prejudicial Bruton error in the penalty trial below.