Opinion ID: 149119
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Merits of Confrontation Clause Claim

Text: Having disposed of the issue of AEDPA deference, the majority examines Miller's Confrontation Clause claim de novo and finds it meritorious. As I have stated, I would review Miller's claim applying AEDPA deference, and under that standard, I would find her claim without merit. However, even under de novo review, I would find Miller's Confrontation Clause claim unpersuasive.
First, under AEDPA, we are constrained to inquire whether the state court decision is contrary to or an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent at the relevant juncture. Even assuming arguendo that the relevant time frame is when Miller's conviction became final (i.e., applying the Stevens rule), Miller cannot meet this standard. In Crawford, the Supreme Court established that testimonial hearsay from an unavailable witness violated the Confrontation Clause, but pointedly le[ft] for another day any effort to spell out a comprehensive definition of `testimonial.' 541 U.S. at 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354. All that Crawford clearly established with respect to what constitutes testimonial hearsay is that [w]hatever else the term covers, it applies at a minimum to prior testimony at a preliminary hearing, before a grand jury, or at a former trial; and to police interrogations i.e., the modern practices with closest kinship to the abuses at which the Confrontation Clause was directed. Ibid. While the Crawford Court listed various generalized definitions of testimonial proposed by the petitioner, an amicus, and a concurrence by Justice Thomas, it did not select among them; nor did it state that those were the only possible definitions. The type of hearsay at issue herea suicide note, in a sealed envelope, addressed to one's parentswas obviously not directly at issue in Crawford. Nor does it fall into any of the classes of hearsay which the Crawford Court conclusively identified as testimonial. As for the Court's three proposed definitions of testimonial, the suicide note qualifies under at most one (and even this is doubtful, as I discuss below)statements that were made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial. Id. at 52, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (quoting Brief for Nat'l Ass'n of Criminal Defense Lawyers et al. as Amici Curiae at 3). However, in light of the open-endedness of the Court's holding, it would not be an unreasonable application of Crawford to use one of the other two proposed definitions, or another definition entirely, under which the suicide note would not qualify. Under AEDPA, our inquiry ends here.
I believe that Miller's Confrontation Clause claim fares little better under de novo review. Without the strictures of AEDPA, we are free to consider post- Crawford case law from both the Supreme Court and this court. The only such decision directly on point is United States v. Cromer, 389 F.3d 662 (6th Cir.2004), in which a panel of this circuit adopted something close to one of the Crawford Court's several proposed definitions of testimonial. In Cromer, however, we said two somewhat contradictory things in direct succession. We first said that the proper inquiry . . . is whether the declarant intends to bear testimony against the accused. 389 F.3d at 675 (emphasis added). This sentence obviously focuses on the declarant's actual intent. The very next sentence abandons the focus on subjective intent, stating that the intent  may be determined by querying whether a reasonable person in the declarant's position would anticipate his statement being used against the accused in investigating and prosecuting the crime. Ibid. (emphasis added). [4] This second sentence resembles the Crawford Court's broadest proposed definition of testimonial statements (i.e., those made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial), [5] with the notable substitution of the still broader phrase use[] ... in investigating and prosecuting the crime for the Crawford Court's phrase use at ... trial. [6] The Cromer panel's standard leads immediately to a number of unanswered questions. The first involves the multiple meanings of intend and anticipate. Cassaday obviously intended that his parents understand that his committing suicide had to do with the murder. The majority places considerable emphasis on Cassaday's background as a police officer, and uses that to attempt to divine what he could anticipate might happen as a result of his note. However, that very argument demonstrates the slipperiness of the term anticipate. Does that term mean that a reasonable declarant would believe it very likely that something will happen as a direct result of his actions? Or only somewhat likely? Or simply barely possible? [7] Consider, for example, a series of hypotheticals involving other possible iterations of Cassaday's suicide note. Suppose that the note had been written, but then thrown in the wastebasket. Certainly, as a police officer, Cassaday could anticipate that in the wake of his suicide (and the previous murder, to which he knew that suspicion would attach, at a minimum, as a result of his briefcase evidence), his house and trash might be searched by family or police. Or suppose he had written the note and then torn it into little pieces and left it in his briefcase (as occurred with the Vince Foster suicide note). Or suppose he had written the note on a pad but then completely destroyed the note, leaving, however, the impression of his words on the next page of the pad (which he did not destroy); as an officer, he would know of the means of recovering such indented writing. In each of these cases, perhaps in descending order of probability, Cassaday might have anticipate[d] that the actions of police or of his family would eventually lead to the information being made available to authorities. [8] When we move to attempting to assess the facts of this case under the relatively vague standard in Cromer, I come to a different conclusion than the majority. In particular, I would note that Cassaday penned three suicide notes, all directed in sealed envelopes to various persons to whom he wished to explain himself. As near as we can tell from the evidence, only one of those three notes in fact made it into the hands of the police or into court testimony. While I cannot glean definitively from the record, it certainly seems to be the case that the other two notes either were not voluntarily produced to the police; were not subpoenaed; or, in contradistinction to the notes to the parents, did not contain incriminating information. In any event, those facts lead me to see each of the notes as having been driven entirely by personal considerations. Cassaday obviously understood how to provide evidence to authorities, with a good chain of custody to enhance its usability as evidence. The material in the briefcase was clearly designed for the use of the police. There is no evidence of sealing or date-stamping of the briefcase that would have prevented him from placing the suicide note in the briefcase to ensure that it, too, would go to the authorities. Further, the one letter out of the three which is known to usthe letter to Cassaday's parentsspeaks of his taking completely independent steps for the purposes of revenge and law enforcement (I'm sending [the evidence of Miller's involvement] to the police. She will get what is coming.). It says nothing directing or anticipating that the note itself be given to the police, and the phrasing of the note suggests that Cassaday did not view it as part of the evidence against Miller. For all of these reasons, I would not hold under the first, subjective half of the Cromer standard that Cassaday intended to bear testimony through the note. Nor would I hold that Cassaday's note meets the second, objective half of our Cromer standard. In particular, I note that the cases applying the Cromer standard cited by the majority seem to follow a more narrow interpretation of anticipate. See Maj. Op. at 924 (citing United States v. Mooneyham, 473 F.3d 280, 286-87 (6th Cir.2007); United States v. Johnson, 440 F.3d 832, 843 (6th Cir.2006); United States v. Barry-Scott, 251 Fed.Appx. 983, 989-90 (6th Cir.2007)). Only in Barry-Scott (an unpublished case) was a statement found testimonial, and in that case, it was made directly to police. In the other two cases, statements were held not to be testimonial when made to private citizens, even though a reasonably prudent person should certainly anticipate that anyone he talks to about his unlawful activity is a potential witness against him.