Opinion ID: 220788
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: DeJesus's Confession in the Context of Pabon's Joint Trial

Text: Pabon's codefendant DeJesus confessed to the crime (from the conspiracy to murder Vargas through payment he received for the murder) in a statement recorded by Detective McDermott. The relevant portion of DeJesus's confession that Detective McDermott read to the jury at trial follows: Question, José, when the shootings happened, how many times did you shoot? Answer, like a good twelve times. I was standing in front of [Vargas]'s car shooting into it. Question, did you see a female standing near [Vargas]'s car when you were shooting? Answer, yeah. She was on the side of the car. I screamed at her, yo, get the fuck out of here. She moved away, and that is how I know I didn't hit the girl. I am standing real close to [Vargas]'s car, so I know that everything I shot was at [Vargas]. How could I miss, I was so close. Question, do you know how the two females who were standing on Franklin Street were shot ? Answer, no, I didn't even see them. . . . Question, José, is there anything you would like to add to your statement? Answer, Yeah. I know that I didn't shoot the girl who got killed. Another should be arrested for this. (N.T. 8/2/99: 42-44) (emphases added). As noted above, DeJesus's statement initially implicated Pagan. It stated that the person who should be arrested for Carisquilla's shooting should be the person who paid it off ( i.e., provided money and weapons). (N.T. 8/2/99: 22-23). However, it was truncated to stop at another should be arrested for this, with all further references to Pagan's identity and role deleted, as Pagan's counsel requested because of his own client's Bruton rights. (N.T. 8/2/99: 1-33). The prosecution, defense counsel, and trial court were involved in redacting DeJesus's statement. Judge Greenspan instructed the jury that DeJesus's confession could only be used as evidence against him, not any of his codefendants. (N.T. 8/2/99: 38-39). She repeated this caution at the end of trial in regard to Pabon in particular. Though DeJesus's confession did not identify Pabon by name, he argues that the use of another (in the statement [a]nother should be arrested for this) was an unnatural locution that revealed reference to a codefendant's participation in the shooting. See Gray, 523 U.S. at 192, 118 S.Ct. 1151 (obvious indications of alteration may cause a Bruton violation even in a redacted statement). He claims that DeJesus's confession would have implicated Pagan, had it not been truncated, but was altered to implicate Pabon (or Hernandez or Guatauba) as read to the jury at trial. In context, DeJesus's statement that another should be arrested for Carrisquilla's death does seem to refer to another of the alleged shooters. [13] It is in a passage of DeJesus's confession discussing how the shooting occurred, making the natural inference from the cropped statement that DeJesus was implicating another shooter. Of the five codefendants, two were not alleged to have been shooters, Pagan and Centeno. That leaves only Pabon, Hernandez, and Guatauba (with DeJesus the fourth alleged shooter) as the person referred to as another. If the jury credited DeJesus's confession that he shot Vargas but another should be arrested for shooting Carisquilla, Pabon and Hernandez are the only two codefendants to whom he plausibly could have referred in this passage of his confession (three persons in all could have been referenced, but one was not a codefendant [14] ). While this is not so clear-cut a situation that only one defendant is implicated by a codefendant's statement, it is also a far cry from the situation in Priester, for example, in which 15 codefendants were all equally implicated. 382 F.3d at 401. Here, because one of three persons was implicated by the statement, it is possible that attempting to avoid a Bruton violation for one codefendant may have created one for two of the others. [15] In addition, as noted above, Pabon allegedly confessed to shooting toward Franklin Street, the street from which shots were fired at Ortiz. (N.T. 7/30/99: 64). This increases the likelihood that DeJesus's statement regarding the shooting of two females who were standing on Franklin Street was particularly damaging to Pabon (rather than Hernandez or Guatauba, the other alleged shooters). Pabon claims that his challenged confession is cumulative to the harm suffered ... because of the admission of the DeJesus statement.... Pabon Br. 22. The potential corroboration of Pabon's confession by DeJesus's does raise flags under Cruz. That is, the interlocking nature of these two confessions makes it less likely, not more, that curative instructions would solve the Bruton problem. Reinforcing this point, Pabon also argues that the prosecutor's closing argument to the jury contended that Pabon and DeJesus's confessions corroborated each other. (N.T. 8/4/99: 94). In these ways, DeJesus's confession may have prejudiced Pabon by increasing the likelihood that the jury would believe he was one of the shooters.