Opinion ID: 2206409
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Statements Made Outside of Police Interrogation

Text: Accordingly, the question remains how to determine whether statements are testimonial when they are made outside this context. We believe that the only proper focus is on the declarant's intent: Would the objective circumstances have led a reasonable person to conclude that their statement could be used against the defendant? The Davis Court's focus on the interrogator's motive when the statements are the product of police interrogation is not inconsistent with focusing on the intent or motive of the declarant in other cases. See, e.g., State v. Scacchetti, 711 N.W.2d 508, 513 (Minn.2006) (central question is `whether either a declarant or a government questioner is acting, to a substantial degree, in order to produce a statement for trial'), quoting State v. Bobadilla, 709 N.W.2d 243, 252 (Minn.2006). Davis itself made clear that even with regards to questions elicited in the course of a police interrogation, it is in the final analysis the declarant's statements, not the interrogator's questions, that the Confrontation Clause requires us to evaluate. Davis, 547 U.S. at ___ n. 1, 126 S.Ct. at 2274 n. 1, 165 L.Ed.2d at 237 n. 1. Moreover, it is important to remember that in Davis the Court was dealing only with statements produced in response to police questioning. The Court clearly left for another day any discussion of rules for evaluating whether and when statements made to someone other than law enforcement personnel ( Davis, 547 U.S. at ___ n. 2, 126 S.Ct. at 2274 n. 2, 165 L.Ed.2d at 238 n. 2) or statements made in the absence of any interrogation ( Davis, 547 U.S. at ___ n. 1, 126 S.Ct. at 2274 n. 1, 165 L.Ed.2d at 237 n. 1) might be testimonial. We believe that by focusing on the interrogator's intent, the Court was most likely acknowledging the reality that when a declarant is supplying information in response to direct police questioning, the declarant is rarely in the driver's seat. Although ultimately it is the declarant's intent to which the confrontation clause looks, it is governmental abuse against which the clause is designed to guard. Thus, given that the ultimate question is whether the statement is being made `for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact' ( Crawford, 541 U.S. at 51, 124 S.Ct. at 1364, 158 L.Ed.2d at 193, quoting 1 N. Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828)), like what a witness does on direct examination (emphasis omitted) ( Davis, 547 U.S. at ___, 126 S.Ct. at 2278, 165 L.Ed.2d at 242), it is the government's motives that are paramount when the government is directly involved in eliciting the statements at issue. This does not determine the proper focus when evaluating statements other than those produced by a government interrogation, however. Before Davis was decided, many authorities concluded that the declarant's intent was paramount in all evaluations of whether a statement was testimonial. Authorities have noted that at least two of the three proposed definitions of testimonial in Crawford focus on the declarant's perspective in giving the statement. See, e.g., M. Raeder, Remember the Ladies and the Children Too: Crawford's Impact on Domestic Violence and Child Abuse Cases, 71 Brook. L.Rev. 311, 318 (2005); cf. People v. Vigil, 127 P.3d 916, 925 (Colo.2006) (the `common nucleus' shared by the Supreme Court's three formulations of testimonial evidence [citation] centers upon the declarant's reasonable expectations). The declarant-centered approach is favored by Professor Richard Friedman of the University of Michigan Law School, one of the scholars whose works Crawford relied upon (see, e.g., Crawford, 541 U.S. at 61, 124 S.Ct. at 1370, 158 L.Ed.2d at 198) in framing its re-definition of the Confrontation Clause. United States v. Cromer, 389 F.3d 662, 673 (6th Cir.2004). Friedman, who has been closely associated with the testimonial approach to the confrontation clause ( Cromer, 389 F.3d at 673), argues in favor of a definition of testimonial based on the declarant's anticipation that the statement would likely be used in prosecution. Friedman, 71 Brook. L.Rev. at 251-52, 255-59. Friedman asserts: To be testimonial, it must appear from the perspective of the witness that the statement is transmitting information that will, to a significant probability, be used in prosecution. Friedman, 71 Brook. L.Rev. at 259. An earlier version of this definition was adopted by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cromer. After referring to pre- Crawford work by Friedman, Cromer concluded that his proposed definition of testimonial was both well-reasoned and wholly consistent with the purpose behind the Confrontation Clause. Cromer, 389 F.3d at 674. According to Cromer, the proper inquiry in a testimonial analysis is whether the declarant intends to bear testimony against the accused. Cromer, 389 F.3d at 675. This intent, Cromer held, 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. Cromer, 389 F.3d at 675. See also Vigil, 127 P.3d at 925 (quoting favorably Cromer's explanation of this proper inquiry) (collecting cases). We agree with Professor Friedman and the Cromer court that outside of the context of statements produced in response to government interrogation, it is the declarant's perspective which is paramount in a testimonial analysis.