Opinion ID: 2582433
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: D.L.'s out-of-court statements

Text: ¶ 34 Ohlson claims that admission of D.L.'s out-of-court statements to Officer Gray violated his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation. The confrontation clause is violated by admission of testimonial out-of-court statements when the declarant does not testify at trial unless the declarant is unavailable to testify and the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the declarant. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 53-54, 124 S.Ct. 1354. It is undisputed that D.L. did not testify at trial and that Ohlson had no prior opportunity to cross-examine D.L. regarding the challenged statements. Thus, whether the confrontation clause bars admission of D.L.'s out-of-court statements turns exclusively on whether D.L.'s statements were testimonial. ¶ 35 The Court of Appeals, without the benefit of Davis, adopt[ed] a per se rule and h[e]ld that excited utterances cannot be testimonial under Crawford.  Ohlson, 131 Wash.App. at 84, ¶ 37, 125 P.3d 990. The court reasoned that since an excited utterance requires the declarant to be `still under the influence of the event to the extent that [the] statement could not be the result of fabrication, intervening actions, or the exercise of choice or judgment,' id. at 83, ¶ 37, 125 P.3d 990 (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting State v. Brown, 127 Wash.2d 749, 758-59, 903 P.2d 459 (1995)), [i]t is not reasonable to regard an excited utterance as `bearing witness,' such that the declarant would know that it would be used in a later prosecution. Id. at 82, ¶ 32, 125 P.3d 990. Therefore, the court reasoned, excited utterances are not testimonial by their very nature. Id. ¶ 36 In light of Davis, the Court of Appeals' per se rule is no longer tenable. Davis indicated that the objectively determined primary purpose of a police interrogation is decisive in evaluating whether a resulting statement is testimonial. 126 S.Ct. at 2276-79. Davis also rejected the Indiana Supreme Court's implication [in Hammon v. State] that virtually any `initial inquiries' at the crime scene will not be testimonial, while making clear that it was not hold[ing] the oppositethat no questions at the scene will yield nontestimonial answers. Id. at 2279. ¶ 37 The reasoning of Davis and its focus on the primary purpose for which statements were obtained seem to have implicitly foreclosed any per se rule that excited utterances cannot be testimonial. Certainly, applying Davis, we can conceive of a hybrid situation where a predominantly excited utterance might contain testimonial elements. Ohlson, 131 Wash.App. at 84, ¶ 42, 125 P.3d 990 (Hunt, J., concurring). We therefore reverse the Court of Appeals decision to the extent that it announced a per se rule that excited utterances cannot be testimonial. ¶ 38 However, applying Davis to the facts presented here, we nonetheless conclude that D.L.'s statements in response to Officer Gray's interrogation were nontestimonial. [3] The circumstances of Officer Gray's interrogation of D.L. objectively indicate that the primary purpose of that interrogation was to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency. ¶ 39 First, with respect to timing, D.L.'s statements to Officer Gray were made within minutes of the assault. L.F. called 911 immediately after the assault and within five minutes of the call Officer Gray was on the scene making her initial inquiries. This is not like Hammon, where the statements in question were made some time after the events described were over, during the officer's second questioning of the declarant. Davis, 126 S.Ct. at 2278. While D.L. was not speaking about events as they were actually happening,  the statements were made contemporaneously with the events described. Id. at 2276. In timing, D.L.'s statements are not unlike McCottry speaking to the 911 operator contemporaneously with the domestic dispute. ¶ 40 Considering the threat of harm, Ohlson had previously left the scene, only to return five minutes later and escalate his behavior from yelling to physically assaulting L.F. and D.L. Objectively viewing the course of events, there is no way to know, and every reason to believe, that Ohlson might return a third time and perhaps escalate his behavior even more. Unlike Hammon, D.L. did not greet Officer Gray with the message that things were fine and there was no immediate threat to [his] person. Id. at 2278. Also, unlike Hammon, the police could not actively separate[ ] Ohlson from D.L., and forcibly prevent[ ] Ohlson from harming D.L.Ohlson's identity and location were unknown. Id. Rather, like McCottry, D.L.'s statements to Officer Gray were a call for help against bona fide physical threat. Id. at 2276. ¶ 41 Third, D.L.'s statements to Officer Gray were necessary to resolve a present emergency. When Officer Gray arrived on the scene, all that was known about the situation was what the 911 call reporteda speeding vehicle was trying to hit some juveniles. The immediate top priority was to determine whether there was ongoing danger to those juveniles or any threat to the community or herself and her fellow officers. Officer Gray's initial inquiries sought information essential to determining whether the situation presented such ongoing dangers or threats. At least until Officer Gray completed her initial triage of the situation, which in this case necessitated the information obtained from L.F. and D.L., the situation presented an ongoing emergency. ¶ 42 Finally, as to the level of formality, the circumstances of Officer Gray's interrogation of D.L. were far less formal than those in Hammon, in which the interrogation was conducted in a separate room and Hammon deliberately recounted, in response to . . . questioning, how potentially criminal past events began and progressed. Id. D.L.'s interrogation was conducted in an unsecured situation that was not tranquil, or even . . . safe. Id. at 2277. ¶ 43 For the above reasons, we conclude that the primary purpose of Officer Gray's interrogation of D.L. was to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency. As such, D.L.'s statements to Officer Gray were nontestimonial. [4] Therefore, the trial court's admission of D.L.'s out-of-court statements did not violate Ohlson's Sixth Amendment right to confrontation.