Opinion ID: 1285479
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: S00A0028 HILL v. STATE.

Text: 1. The evidence presented at trial was sufficient to authorize a rational trier of fact to find Michael Hill guilty of the crimes for which he was convicted. [10] 2. Hill argues that the admission in evidence of Davis's statement to police which inculpated Hill in the murder violated his Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses under Bruton v. United States. [11] In addressing this issue we must first determine whether the admission of Davis's statement violated Hill's confrontation clause rights, [12] and, if so, whether the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. [13] Bruton held that the admission of a statement of a non-testifying co-defendant which inculpates the defendant unconstitutionally deprives that defendant of the Sixth Amendment right to cross-examine witnesses, even where the jury is instructed to limit its consideration of the statement to the co-defendant who made it. While a non-testifying co-defendant's statement which is redacted so that it eliminates any reference to the existence of the defendant will withstand scrutiny under Bruton so long as it is accompanied by instructions limiting its use to the case against its maker, [14] a non-testifying co-defendant's statement which is redacted by merely replacing the defendant's name with a blank or symbol violates Bruton regardless of whether limiting instructions are given. [15] As the U.S. Supreme Court held, to replace the defendant's name with an obvious blank will not likely fool anyone. [16] Instead statements which, despite redaction, refer directly to a person whom the jury may infer to be the defendant run afoul of the confrontation clause even w[h]ere the confession [is] the very first item introduced at trial. [17] In Hanifa v. State [18] this Court applied these authorities, holding that unless the statement is otherwise directly admissible against the defendant, the Confrontation Clause is violated by the admission of a non-testifying co-defendant's statement which inculpates the defendant by referring to the defendant's name or existence, regardless of [whether there are] limiting instructions or of whether the incriminated defendant has made an interlocking incriminating statement. [19] In Hanifa the non-testifying co-defendant's confession had been redacted to describe the participation of Hanifa and her other co-defendants in the crime by use of the words someone or others or they. This Court held that despite the use of these generic terms, the jury was notified that a person's name had been redacted, and therefore admission of the statement constituted a violation of Bruton. In this case Davis made a pre-trial statement to police naming Hill as the person who repeatedly shot the victim, and Guy as the person who hit the victim in the head with a gun. Davis did not incriminate himself in this statement other than to admit presence at the scene. Thereafter Davis responded to a series of police questions regarding Hill's role in the murder. The state redacted Davis's statement and responses to police questioning by substituting someone and anybody for the names of Hill and Guy. Both Davis's redacted statement and redacted interview were offered in evidence. The trial court did not instruct the jury that this evidence should be considered only with regard to Davis. As read to the jury, Davis's redacted statement maintained that someone kept shooting at Ray, someone kept shooting til the gun was empty ... and then someone reloaded a gun and shot Ray one more time. Neither Davis, Hill nor Guy testified at trial. Because Davis's statement was admitted in evidence after the state's eyewitnesses identified Hill as the shooter and testified that after firing his gun multiple times he reloaded it, it is likely that the jury immediately recognized Hill as the someone whom Davis contended shot the victim until the gun was empty and then reloaded. The likelihood that the jury attributed these actions to Hill is increased by the fact that although the eyewitnesses identified three men involved in the murder, Davis did not implicate himself in his statement or his interview. Thus, Davis's statement left the jury to choose between Hill and Guy as the shooter. Additionally, in his redacted responses to the interview, Davis informed the police that they already possessed the murder weapon, seized in a prior arrest in which they locked someone up. Shortly after Davis's redacted statement and interview were admitted in evidence, an investigator for the state testified that this portion of Davis's interview led him to obtain an arrest report for Michael Hill which was unrelated to the murder charges, and that this arrest report led him to recover a gun seized in this arrest. The state offered evidence that this gun was the murder weapon. Thus, any doubt the jury may have had that Hill was the someone whom Davis maintained committed the murder was eradicated by testimony the state deliberately elicited from its own witness. Because Hill had no opportunity to cross-examine Davis's inculpatory statements against him, his Sixth Amendment rights were violated. [20] Further, upon review of the entire record, we cannot say that this error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, and therefore reverse Hill's conviction. Hill did not give an inculpatory statement or testify, but instead exercised his right to remain silent. His co-defendants did not testify at trial and therefore were not subject to cross-examination. Because Davis's statement referred to only two active participants in the crime and did not inculpate Davis, it was likely that the jury connected Hill with the someone Davis maintained shot the victim, particularly in view of the fact that the statement did not come in until after eyewitnesses testified that Hill was the only one of three participants who fired a weapon. The state magnified the error in admitting Davis's statement by the order in which it presented its case, and by eliciting testimony from one of its witnesses that Michael Hill was indeed the someone referred to in Davis's statement who was arrested in possession of the murder weapon. Further, the trial court did not instruct the jury to consider the redacted statement solely as evidence against Davis. We are unable to say that in arriving at its verdict the jury disregarded the obvious connection between Hill and the someone whom Davis maintained committed the murder, or the impact of the investigator's testimony linking Hill to Davis's statement. Because the error was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, Hill's conviction is reversed. By contrast we note that other cases in which a Bruton violation has been held not so harmful as to require reversal were decided on the basis of factors not present in this case: in many instances the defendant against whom the redacted inculpatory statement was offered admitted limited participation in the crime; [21] or in addition to the inculpatory statement, co-defendants testified against the defendant at trial and were subject to cross-examination; [22] or there were so many other participants in the crime that it was less likely that the jury associated the redacted name in the erroneously admitted statement with the defendant. [23] Additionally, in Hanifa, supra, this Court noted that because the erroneously admitted statement came into evidence prior to the testimony of her co-indictees and because the trial court instructed the jury to consider the redacted statement only against its maker, there was less likelihood that the jury connected Hanifa to the someone in the statement, and therefore less likelihood that this error contributed to the verdict. [24] Because the remaining errors enumerated in Hill's appeal are likely to recur at any retrial of this case, we address them. 3. Some hours after the murder took place Hill was observed by a police patrol walking with a third party. When the third party threw down a marijuana cigar the police arrested him. According to police testimony, Hill was under the influence of alcohol and began swearing at the officers. When Hill attempted to prevent his companion's arrest, he was also arrested. During a search of his person, a .357 magnum was found. Henry Davis's police interview thereafter linked this gun to the murder of Ray Barlow. On appeal Hill concedes the evidentiary relevancy of the gun seized from his person, [25] but argues that the state impermissibly injected his character in evidence by offering testimony that he was intoxicated and obstreperous. Because the gun seized from Hill during this arrest was highly relevant to the state's case, limited testimony regarding other circumstances of this arrest was not error, even though it may have incidentally placed Hill's character in issue. [26] The admission of this evidence lay within the sound discretion of the trial court, and we find no abuse of that discretion. [27] 4. The pre-trial photo array shown Rochelle Caldwell, an eyewitness to the shooting, was not impermissibly suggestive simply because Hill was the only person depicted with dreadlocks. [28] Ms. Caldwell testified that she knew Hill from her neighborhood and recognized him when he entered the Henderson home. The officer who displayed the photo array to Ms. Caldwell testified that she immediately picked out Hill's photo. Further, because Ms. Caldwell testified that Hill was wearing a hat at the time of the shooting it is unlikely that Hill's hairstyle was a factor in her pre-trial identification. The fact that the photos were dated and that at least one of the photos was five years old does not make the line-up impermissibly suggestive given Ms. Caldwell's testimony that she did not notice the dates on the photos or any differences in the ages of the participants, but selected Hill because she knew him prior to the shooting and recognized him as one of the three perpetrators. 5. Hill's contention that the pattern jury charges on credibility of witnesses are in conflict and misleading to the jury has been decided adversely to him. [29] Judgment affirmed in Case No. S00A0027 and reversed in Case No. S00A0028.