Opinion ID: 213686
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Crawford's Clear Prohibition

Text: An unreasonable application of federal law is different from a merely incorrect application of federal law. See Williams, 529 U.S. at 410, 120 S.Ct. 1495. Generally, a state court unreasonably misapplies controlling Supreme Court precedent when it identifies the correct governing legal rule from [the] Court's cases but unreasonably applies it to the facts of the particular state prisoner's case. Id. at 407, 120 S.Ct. 1495. An unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent may also occur when a state court unreasonably refuses to extend a governing legal principle to a context in which it should have controlled, Ramdass v. Angelone, 530 U.S. 156, 166, 120 S.Ct. 2113, 147 L.Ed.2d 125 (2000) (plurality), or unreasonably extends a principle to a situation in which it should not have controlled, see Williams, 529 U.S. at 408, 120 S.Ct. 1495 (noting that latter formulation may perhaps be correct). In applying this formulation of the unreasonable application standard, a court should be mindful of the Supreme Court's warning that this formulation has problems of precision that may make it difficult to apply. Williams, 529 U.S. at 408, 120 S.Ct. 1495. We must consider whether the state court's application of clearly established federal law was objectively unreasonable. Id. at 409, 120 S.Ct. 1495; see Harrington v. Richter, ___ U.S. ___, 131 S.Ct. 770, 786-87, 178 L.Ed.2d 624 (2011) (As a condition for obtaining habeas corpus from a federal court, a state prisoner must show that the state court's ruling on the claim being presented in federal court was so lacking in justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.). Here, the state court of appeals correctly identified the governing legal rules in Crawford but unreasonably applied those rules to the facts of Jones' case. The state court applied a course of investigation exception to Jones' case so excessively broad as to allow the admission of testimonial hearsay whenever a defendant attempts to challenge the strength of the evidence or the veracity of the prosecution's witnesses against him. In doing so, the state court of appeals also failed to follow the limitations that Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968), and Tennessee v. Street, 471 U.S. 409, 105 S.Ct. 2078, 85 L.Ed.2d 425 (1985), place on the admissibility of statements such as Lewis', the substance of which was Parks' confession of his own involvement in the murders, a confession that also directly implicated Jones in the crimes.
In an attempt to justify the state appellate court's treatment of the Lewis statement, the State notes our decisions holding that an informant's out-of-court statement to law enforcement is not hearsay if that statement is offered into evidence as an explanation of why the [subsequent] investigation proceeded as it did. E.g., United States v. Eberhart, 434 F.3d 935, 939 (7th Cir.2006). Applying this exception, we have rejected Sixth Amendment claims premised on such statements on the grounds that non-hearsay use of such statements does not violate the Confrontation Clause. See id.; United States v. Akinrinade, 61 F.3d 1279, 1283 (7th Cir. 1995). From these decisions, the State argues, the state appellate court could reasonably (if erroneously) have inferred that the introduction of Lewis' statement into evidence to show the course of the investigation did not violate Jones' Confrontation Clause rights. [4] In making this argument, the State has displayed so egregious a misunderstanding of our cases that the subject requires some explanation. United States v. Reyes, 18 F.3d 65, 70 (2d Cir.1994) (reversing convictions after district court allowed hearsay confessions implicating defendants on trial). Although an out-of-court statement offered to show the reason a police investigation proceeded as it did could be said not to be [inadmissible] hearsay, the reasons for [an] investigation [are] most assuredly not something the Government [has] to prove to carry its burden of proof in a criminal trial. Mancillas, 580 F.2d at 1309-10. Aside from those limited details necessary to show that the evidence [found] is actually relevant, United States v. Tanner, 628 F.3d 890, 903 n. 5 (7th Cir.2010), the details of an investigation are generally of only minimal consequence to the determination of the action. Mancillas, 580 F.2d at 1310 (quotation marks omitted); see United States v. Linwood, 142 F.3d 418, 426 (7th Cir.1998) (questioning relevance of such testimony); Reyes, 18 F.3d at 71 (noting that the history of [an] investigation is a useful narrative device, but is not relevant to the guilt or innocence of the defendant); Teague v. State, 252 Ga. 534, 314 S.E.2d 910, 912 (1984) (At heart, a criminal prosecution is designed to find the truth of what a defendant did and, on occasion, of why he did it. It is most unusual that a prosecution will properly concern itself with why an investigating officer did something.); 2 McCormick on Evidence § 249 (6th ed.) (The need for this evidence is slight. ...). By the same token, the probative value of a tip on which an investigation was based is marginal, at best, absent perhaps a (relevant) allegation of police impropriety. United States v. Lovelace, 123 F.3d 650, 653 (7th Cir.1997); see also United States v. Silva, 380 F.3d 1018, 1020 (7th Cir.2004) (noting in dicta that such a tip may perhaps be relevant to dispel an accusation that the officers were officious intermeddlers staking out [a defendant] for nefarious purposes); Reyes, 18 F.3d at 70 (observing that such evidence might constitute appropriate rebuttal to initiatives launched by the defendant). Even when the police have been accused of acting improperly, however, the relevance of law enforcement's reasons for investigation remains questionable. See Mancillas, 580 F.2d at 1310. While such course of investigation evidence usually has little or no probative value, the dangers of prejudice and abuse posed by the course of investigation tactic are significant. More than thirty years ago, we cautioned that the testimonial repetition of a declarant's out-of-court charge that the defendant would engage or was engaged in specific criminality would seem to create too great a risk of prejudice and confusion than can be justified simply to set forth the background of the investigation. Mancillas, 580 F.2d at 1310. More recently, we pointed out that an unthinking, expansive application of the course of investigation exception would effectively undermine the Confrontation Clause: Allowing agents to narrate the course of their investigations, and thus spread before juries damning information that is not subject to cross-examination, would go far toward abrogating the defendant's rights under the sixth amendment and the hearsay rule. Silva, 380 F.3d at 1020. Consistent with these observations, then, the use of out-of-court statements to show background has been identified as an area of `widespread abuse.' United States v. Sallins, 993 F.2d 344, 346 (3d Cir.1993); see 2 McCormick on Evidence § 249 (One area where abuse may be a particular problem involves statements by arresting or investigating officers regarding the reason for their presence at the scene of a crime.). Such statements offered to show background or the course of the investigation can easily violate a core constitutional right, are easily misused, and are usually no more than minimally relevant. Courts asked to admit such statements for supposed non-hearsay purposes must be on the alert for such misuse. See Lovelace, 123 F.3d at 653. A trial court should not accept without scrutiny an offering party's representation that an out-of-court statement is being introduced for a material non-hearsay purpose. Sallins, 993 F.2d at 346 (reversing conviction). Our colleagues on the Second Circuit have explained in reversing a conviction on these grounds: the mere identification of a relevant non-hearsay use of such evidence is insufficient to justify its admission if the jury is likely to consider the statement for the truth of what was stated with significant resultant prejudice. The greater the likelihood of prejudice resulting from the jury's misuse of the statement, the greater the justification needed to introduce the background evidence for its non-hearsay uses. Reyes, 18 F.3d at 70. For this reason, the course of investigation exception is most readily applied to admit only those brief out-of-court statements that bridge gaps in the trial testimony that would otherwise substantially confuse or mislead the jury. See Silva, 380 F.3d at 1020 (noting that this exception may apply if a jury would not otherwise understand why an investigation targeted a particular defendant). In Eberhart, for example, we allowed DEA agents to testify that an informant had identified his cocaine supplier as a man known only as E. 434 F.3d at 937. Otherwise, it would have been largely unclear why the agents had asked that informant to call E, who turned out to be defendant Eberhart. Id. at 939 & 940 n. 1. Similarly, in Akinrinade, we allowed testimony regarding an informant's unsuccessful attempt to telephone his accomplices because that testimony helped explain why that informant had been directed ... to place [additional] telephone calls to Nigeria and Chicago. 61 F.3d at 1283. For such limited purposes, however, only a small amount of information is legitimately needed in all but the rarest cases. Under the course of investigation exception, we typically allow only the briefest out-of-court statements. See, e.g., United States v. Taylor, 569 F.3d 742, 748 (7th Cir.2009) (finding no plain error in admitting, without any objection, witness' statement that defendant just took a gun across the street to explain officers' actions); United States v. Breland, 356 F.3d 787, 791-92 (7th Cir.2004) (informant's statement that a `black male with a bald head' [was] dealing drugs from the residence under surveillance); United States v. Martinez, 939 F.2d 412, 415 (7th Cir. 1991) (government agent's statement that he had information that `a man' had offered to sell an informant one-half kilogram of cocaine). A legitimate non-hearsay purpose most certainly does not open the door for law enforcement officers to narrate the course of their investigations, and thus spread before juries damning information that is not subject to cross-examination. Silva, 380 F.3d at 1020. Nor is it necessary to put before the jury extensive eyewitness accounts of bad acts by the defendant that the jury would not otherwise have heard. United States v. Price, 458 F.3d 202, 210 (3d Cir.2006). Unless the testimony at issue clarif[ies] noncontroversial matter without causing unfair prejudice on significant disputed matters, Reyes, 18 F.3d at 70, the best course of action is to exclude the evidence altogether. If some brief item is truly necessary, the court should redact a lengthy out-of-court statement to the extent needed to ensure that its actual evidentiary function is only the legitimate one for which it is being admitted. Price, 458 F.3d at 210; see 2 McCormick on Evidence § 249 ([A] statement that an officer acted `upon information received,' or words to that effect, should be sufficient.). Although the Indiana Court of Appeals invoked the course of investigation exception to reject Jones' Confrontation Clause claim, it took none of these considerations into account. Certainly, none of the incriminating substance of Lewis' statement was necessary to bridge an otherwise-inexplicable gap in the trial testimony or to prevent the jury from being confused about some material issue. See, e.g., Silva, 380 F.3d at 1020. To whatever extent the prosecution feared that the jury would be confused if it did not know exactly why the police started investigating Jones, that fear could have been assuaged by as little as a bare-boned statement that the police acted on information received from Jeffrey Lewis. See 2 McCormick on Evidence § 249. Yet the trial court made no effort to exclude or redact any incriminatory details of Lewis' double-hearsay statement. See Silva, 380 F.3d at 1020; Price, 458 F.3d at 210. The Indiana Court of Appeals also failed to appreciate that, although it invoked the course of investigation theory, its stated reasons for allowing Lewis' statement into evidence make sense only if that statement was considered for the truth of its contents. As the appellate court majority explained, it felt that Lewis' statement was necessary to prevent the jury from believing Jones' claim that Aaron, whose credibility was in question, was the only source of evidence against him. Jones I, No. 45A03-0407-CR-339, at 9. As Chief Judge Kirsch said so well in his dissent, the majority essentially concluded that because the admissible evidence against Jones was weak, and Jones' counsel noted such fact, it was proper to admit otherwise inadmissible evidence. Id. at 16. If the majority's reasoning were correct, Judge Kirsch continued, any hearsay statement to police during the course of their investigation would be admissible whenever a defendant makes any comment on the evidence. Id. at 17. For all of these reasons, the course of investigation exception could not be reasonably applied to admit the detectives' detailed testimony about what Lewis told them he had heard from Parks.
The Indiana Court of Appeals also failed to recognize the significant Sixth Amendment interests implicated when, as here, the out-of-court statement offered under the course of investigation exception (or for any other purported non-hearsay purpose, for that matter) is the confession of a non-testifying accomplice. The Supreme Court's jurisprudence on this subject reveals that the Sixth Amendment imposes important limits on a court's ability to admit such a statement even when it can be introduced for a non-hearsay purpose. The hearsay evidence here was very similar to the accomplice confession in Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968). (The difference here is that there is one extra layer of hearsay, since Parks, who supposedly confessed to Lewis, did not talk directly with the detectives who testified.) In Bruton, the Supreme Court showed just how difficult it is to offer at trial a non-testifying accomplice's confession accusing the defendant of wrongdoing. In that case, Bruton and his accomplice Evans were convicted of armed postal robbery. Id. at 124, 88 S.Ct. 1620. At their joint trial on that charge, a postal inspector testified that Evans had confessed that he and Bruton had committed the robbery. Id. On appeal, the appellate court set aside Evans' conviction because his confession had been obtained without proper Miranda warnings, but affirmed Bruton's conviction because the trial court had instructed the jury that although Evans' confession was competent evidence against Evans it was inadmissible hearsay against [Bruton] and therefore had to be disregarded in determining [Bruton's] guilt or innocence, id. at 125, 88 S.Ct. 1620. [5] The Supreme Court reversed Bruton's conviction because the introduction of Evans' confession into evidence violated Bruton's own Sixth Amendment right to confront Evans regarding the substance of that confession. The Court pointed out that Evans' confession was legitimate evidence against Evans and ... was properly before the jury during its deliberations. Id. at 127, 88 S.Ct. 1620. As a result, there existed a substantial likelihood that the jury believed that Evans had made the statements and that they were true not just the self-incriminating portions but those implicating [Bruton] as well. Id. Plainly, the Court concluded, the introduction of Evans' confession added substantial, perhaps even critical, weight to the Government's case in a form not subject to cross-examination, since Evans did not take the stand. Id. at 127-28, 88 S.Ct. 1620. In reversing Bruton's conviction, the Court made clear the extraordinary dangers posed when an accomplice's confessionone directly implicating the accused in wrongdoingis put before a jury without affording the accused an opportunity to cross-examine that accomplice. Not only are [such] incriminations devastating to the defendant but their credibility is inevitably suspect, a fact recognized when accomplices do take the stand and the jury is instructed to weigh their testimony carefully given the recognized motivation to shift blame to others. Id. at 136, 88 S.Ct. 1620. That inherent unreliability is intolerably compounded when the alleged accomplice... does not testify and cannot be tested by cross-examination. It was against such threats to a fair trial that the Confrontation Clause was directed. Id. Bruton makes clear that the protections of the Confrontation Clause are at their zenith whenever, as is the case here, the prosecution offers into evidence a non-testifying hearsay declarant's confession that names the accused as his partner in crime. [6] The Supreme Court's decision in Tennessee v. Street, 471 U.S. 409, 105 S.Ct. 2078, 85 L.Ed.2d 425 (1985), illustrates the point and shows just how difficult it is to introduce such a confession into evidence without running afoul of the Confrontation Clause. In that case, the prosecution had relied heavily on Street's detailed confession as evidence that he had murdered his neighbor in the course of a robbery. Id. at 411, 105 S.Ct. 2078. At trial, Street testified that his so-called confession was not his own, but had been derived from a written statement that alleged accomplice Peele had previously given to law enforcement. Id. To rebut this specific accusation, the prosecution had one of its witnesses read Peele's statement to the jury to illustrate the differences between that statement and Street's confession. Id. at 411-12, 105 S.Ct. 2078. In rejecting Street's claim that the testimony concerning Peele's statement had violated his constitutional right to confront Peele, the Supreme Court noted that the  nonhearsay aspect of Peele's confession not to prove what happened at the murder scene but to prove what happened when [Street] confessedraises no Confrontation Clause concerns. Id. at 414, 105 S.Ct. 2078. ( Street is most commonly cited for this principle. See, e.g., Crawford, 541 U.S. at 59, 124 S.Ct. 1354 n. 9.) The Court acknowledged that Peele's statement could have been misused by the jury as hearsay evidence, but the Court rejected this possibility because the jury had been pointedly instructed by the trial court `not to consider the truthfulness of [Peele's] statement in any way whatsoever.' Id. at 414-15, 105 S.Ct. 2078 (alteration in original). This conclusion was in obvious tension with the Court's decision in Bruton, which Street distinguished on the grounds that, unlike the situation in [that case], there were no alternatives [here] that would have both assured the integrity of the trial's truth-seeking function and eliminated the risk of the jury's improper use of evidence. Street, 471 U.S. at 415, 105 S.Ct. 2078. In particular, the Court noted that it simply was not possible to have edited [Peele's confession] to reduce the risk of jury misuse without detracting from the alleged purpose for which the confession was introduced. Id. (quotation omitted). By editing that statement, the Court noted, the trial court would have undercut the theory of defense by creating artificial differences between [Street's] and Peele's confessions. Id. at 416, 105 S.Ct. 2078. Street teaches that the non-hearsay use of a statement generally does not implicate the protections of the Confrontation Clause, but that another person's out-of-court confession directly implicating the accused is nevertheless so inherently prejudicial that its misuse as hearsay remains a strong possibility. To negate that possibility, a court admitting such a statement should always pointedly instruct the jury that the confession is to be used not for its truth, but only for a non-hearsay purpose. See id. at 414-15, 105 S.Ct. 2078. Before admitting the confession for a non-hearsay purpose, the court must exclude or redact the confession to whatever extent it is possible to do so without detracting from the alleged [non-hearsay] purpose for which the confession was introduced. See id. at 415, 105 S.Ct. 2078 (quotation omitted); Gray v. Maryland, 523 U.S. 185, 192, 118 S.Ct. 1151, 140 L.Ed.2d 294 (1998) (Unless the prosecutor wishes ... to abandon use of the confession, he must redact the confession to reduce significantly or to eliminate the special prejudice that the Bruton Court found.). Such exclusion or redaction, if possible, can go a long way to ensure that a confession's irrelevant or inflammatory details do not distract the jury from the narrow purpose for which it might legitimately consider that confession and to ensure that the jury will follow a limiting instruction. See Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 211, 107 S.Ct. 1702, 95 L.Ed.2d 176 (1987) (holding that the Confrontation Clause is not violated by the admission of a non-testifying accomplice's confession if a proper limiting instruction has been given and the confession is redacted to eliminate not only the defendant's name, but any reference to his or her existence). Street also teaches that a non-testifying accomplice's confession can be admitted only if, in light of the inherent unreliability of accomplice confessions implicating the accused, see Bruton, 391 U.S. at 136, 88 S.Ct. 1620, the asserted nonhearsay purpose actually advances the compelling interests at the heart of the Court's analysis in that case: the integrity of the trial's truth-seeking function and the accuracy of the truth-determining process. See Street, 471 U.S. at 415, 105 S.Ct. 2078 (quotation omitted). This final consideration is easily the most important. Under the very unusual circumstances in Street, the only way to rebut Street's (false) allegations of fabrication was to introduce the substance of the accomplice's confession that implicated Street in the murder to show the differences. Bruton and Street help demonstrate that the Indiana Court of Appeals unreasonably applied Crawford to the facts of Jones' case. Lewis' statementthe recitation of a confession he purportedly received from his brotherwas actually offered into evidence to prove the truth of its contents. Bruton makes clear that Jones' right to confront Lewis and Parks about that confession was violated by Lewis' and Parks' failure to testify at trial and to subject their testimony to the crucible of cross-examination. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 61, 124 S.Ct. 1354; see United States v. Souffront, 338 F.3d 809, 828 (7th Cir.2003). The need for cross-examination was compelling here. The already inherent unreliability of a confession casting blame on another, see Bruton, 391 U.S. at 136, 88 S.Ct. 1620, is only magnified when, as here, the confession is filtered through two layers of hearsay: Parks to Lewis, Lewis to Detectives Jackson and Davis, and then Jackson and Davis to the jury. Even if Lewis' statement had actually been offered by the prosecution to prove only a collateral issue, not as direct evidence of Jones' guilt, that statement was clearly inadmissible under Street. First, the trial court's meager instructions to the jury were lacking. Limiting instructions were given in regard to only three specific answers by Jackson. Tr. 1334, 1353, 1390. None were given at all regarding Davis' testimony. Tr. 571-607. Such a halfhearted effort to instruct the jury properly could not be construed as a pointed instruction that the jury not consider Lewis' statement for its truth. See Street, 471 U.S. at 414-15, 105 S.Ct. 2078. [7] More fundamental, unlike the trial court in Street, the court here did not face a rare circumstance in which testimony regarding the substance of Lewis' statement was needed to preserve the integrity of the trial's truth-seeking function. See id. at 415, 105 S.Ct. 2078. As explained above, the reasons the police began investigating Jones were not relevant to the issue of Jones' guilt or innocence. Even if they were somehow relevant, those reasons could have been adequately explained by as little as a brief statement that the officers had acted on information received from an informant. The trial court simply made no effort to limit the testimony about Lewis' statement to prevent the jury from considering that statement as substantive evidence of Jones' guilt. See id.; Richardson, 481 U.S. at 211, 107 S.Ct. 1702. Rather, it allowed the prosecution free rein to introduce as much of Lewis' statement as it saw fit, even going so far as to give Jones' attorney the shocking warning that, if she continued asking questions that call [the police] investigation into question ... pretty soon all of the information they arrived at ... in the course of [that] investigation is going to end up coming in. Tr. 1434 (emphasis added). In deeming Crawford inapplicable, the Indiana Court of Appeals rested its analysis on a profound misunderstanding of both the record and the course of investigation exception it purported to apply. As a result of that misunderstanding, the state court so broadened that exception as to effectively allow inadmissible hearsay into evidence whenever a defendant challenges the weight or credibility of the admissible evidence against him. The state court also disregarded the teachings of Bruton, which flatly bars the admission of accomplice confessions such as Parks' absent an opportunity for cross-examination, and of Street, which sharply limits the circumstances in which such a confession may be introduced into evidence for a nonhearsay purpose. The state court's failure to apply Crawford to the facts of this case was so lacking in justification as to constitute an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement, as required for habeas relief under AEDPA. See Harrington, 131 S.Ct. at 786-87.