Opinion ID: 2808903
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Payne’s Statements to Carey

Text: We now consider the trial appearance of Aaron Carey, whose testimony the prosecution preemptively moved to admit on December 23, 2013. The circuit court granted the motion, whereupon Carey testified that, two days after Poindexter’s death, Payne confided having “shot somebody in a robbery.” Further, according to Payne as told to Carey, the violent episode was the result of Payne’s desire to acquire money and drugs. Payne would neither confirm nor deny Carey’s account of their conversation, invoking his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and refusing to testify at Bouie’s trial. Bouie contends that, in light of Payne’s absence, the latter’s alleged statements to Carey were admitted in contravention of Bouie’s right to confront the witnesses against him. Bouie maintains in the alternative that Carey’s hearsay testimony failed to fulfill the standards for admissibility pursuant to Rule 804(b)(3) of the West Virginia Rules of Evidence. The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment “bars the admission of a testimonial statement by a witness who does not appear at trial, unless the witness is unavailable to testify and the accused had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the witness.” Syl. pt. 6, State v. Mechling, 219 W. Va. 366, 633 S.E.2d 311 (2006) (citing 12 Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004)). It is undisputed that Payne rendered himself unavailable by the valid invocation of his Fifth Amendment privilege. See In re Anthony Ray Mc., 200 W. Va. 312, 326, 489 S.E.2d 289, 303 (1997) (“The constitutional question of unavailability is generally answered when a court determines, under the penal interest exception of Rule 804(b)(3), that a declarant has successfully invoked the privilege against self-incrimination.”). Moreover, the State does not contend that Bouie had the prior opportunity to cross-examine Payne regarding the statements related by Carey. Nonetheless, the threshold Mechling requirement is absent here, inasmuch as “only testimonial statements cause the declarant to become a witness subject to the constraints of the Confrontation Clause.” Mechling, 219 W. Va. at 373, 633 S.E.2d at 318 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, “[n]on-testimonial statements by an unavailable declarant . . . are not precluded from use.” Id.; see State v. Kaufman, 227 W. Va. 537, 550, 711 S.E.2d 607, 620 (2011). A testimonial statement is one “‘that is made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial.’” Syl. pt. 8, Kaufman, 227 W. Va. 537, 711 S.E.2d 607 (quoting syl. pt. 8, Mechling, 219 W. Va. 366, 633 S.E.2d 311). 13 We agree with the circuit court’s ruling that Payne’s statements were not testimonial, insofar as they were “made in Mr. Carey’s living room and during a friendly conversation.” No objective witness in Payne’s position could have reasonably believed that he was making any statements for purposes of a trial. Under such circumstances, Bouie’s asserted Sixth Amendment right to confront and cross-examine Payne is not implicated. Payne’s statements therefore needed only to satisfy “a firmly rooted hearsay exception” in order to be properly admitted through Carey. See syl. pt. 4, Kaufman, 227 W. Va. 537, 711 S.E.2d 607 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The circuit court thus considered the issue within established evidentiary strictures, concluding that Payne’s statements were admissible as being against his own penal interest. See W. Va. R. Evid. 804(b)(3) (providing generally that statements against interest are excepted from bar on hearsay evidence, and specifically those that “so far tended to subject the declarant to . . . criminal liability . . . that a reasonable person in the declarant’s position would not have made the statement unless he or she believed it to be true”). The circuit court’s analysis followed our established framework for evaluating such statements. See State v. Mason, 194 W. Va. 221, 460 S.E.2d 36 (1995), overruled on other grounds by Mechling, 219 W. Va. 366, 633 S.E.2d 311. In Mason, we instructed: To satisfy the admissibility requirements under Rule 804(b)(3) of the West Virginia Rules of Evidence, a trial court must determine: (a) The existence of each separate statement in the narrative; (b) whether each statement was 14 against the penal interest of the declarant; (c) whether corroborating circumstances exist indicating the trustworthiness of the statement; and (d) whether the declarant is unavailable. Syl. pt. 8, id. Of the four Mason criteria, Bouie contests only the third, maintaining that the circumstances surrounding Payne’s statements to Carey were insufficiently corroborative to indicate the statements’ trustworthiness. In particular, Carey acknowledged at a pretrial hearing that he and Payne had each been smoking marijuana, that he could not remember the precise date of the conversation, and that no one else was present. As we recalled in Anthony Ray Mc., “the very fact that a statement is ‘genuinely self-inculpatory . . . is itself one of the particularized guarantees of trustworthiness.’” 200 W. Va. at 322, 489 S.E.2d at 299 (quoting Williamson v. United States, 512 U.S. 594, 605 (1994) (internal citation and quotation omitted)). A declarant’s statements that he shot someone in the commission of a crime—and that he did so in part to obtain contraband—are “genuinely inculpatory” under even the most rigorous definition of the term. See Williamson, 512 U.S. at 603 (pointing out that a “squarely self-inculpatory confession” such as “yes, I killed X,” will ordinarily be admissible in conformance with Rule 804(b)(3)). The circumstances Bouie identifies might call into question the trustworthiness of more equivocal statements, but they do not serve here to torpedo the admissibility of Payne’s. Instead, the potential defects in Carey’s recollection and the lack of substantiation from other witnesses bear more on the proper assessment of 15 the statements’ evidentiary weight, and, indeed, Bouie cross-examined Carey on each point in front of the jury. We therefore conclude that the circuit court did not abuse its discretion in admitting Payne’s statements.