Opinion ID: 1841963
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Admissibility of Wanda Brown's Out of Court Statement Regarding Coercion

Text: As an assignment of error, the defendant claims that the trial court prevented him from establishing that the state coerced Wanda Brown into identifying him as the perpetrator when it ruled inadmissible an out of court statement prepared by defense investigators and signed by Brown. Specifically, Brown testified at trial that she has consistently and repeatedly told anyone who asked that she could not describe the clothing worn by the perpetrator of the shooting. Defense counsel then asked Brown: But despite your persistent telling Mr. Mary `I can't remember what the clothes were,' Mr. Mary tried to get you to say, don't you remember a plaid shirt being worn by the gunman, didn't he? Brown responded that the prosecutor never told her that the gunman wore a plaid shirt. Defense counsel then read to Brown a portion from a statement prepared by defense investigators and adopted and signed by Brown. In the statement, Brown averred that the prosecutor had asked me if the shooter was wearing a plaid shirt after I have consistently said that I cannot remember details about the clothing. The state objected, and the court ruled Brown's statement inadmissable hearsay. The defendant asked Brown whether any prosecutors had attempted to tell her what clothes the perpetrator was wearing, she responded negatively, and defense counsel again attempted to impeach Brown using her earlier signed document. While the defendant apparently does not contest the fact that the statement in question constitutes hearsay, he claims that the trial court should have allowed it nonetheless, and thus afforded him his right to present a defense. As a general matter, this Court has recognized that under compelling circumstances a defendant's right to present a defense may require admission of statements which do not fall under any statutorily recognized exception to the hearsay rule. See State v. Van Winkle, 94-0947, p. 7 (La.6/30/95), 658 So.2d 198, 202 (finding reversible error to exclude hearsay evidence suggesting that defendant's roommate killed victim); State v. Gremillion, 542 So.2d 1074, 1078 (La.1989) (While the statement does not fit into any of the recognized exceptions to the hearsay rule, it should have, nevertheless, been admitted into evidence due to its reliability and trustworthy nature.); see also Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973) (holding that the strict application of state hearsay rules denied the defendant his due process right to present a third party confession made under circumstances which vouched for the trustworthiness of the statement). In this case, however, defendant points to no circumstances which vouched for the reliability and trustworthiness of Brown's earlier statement as it was admittedly written by a defense investigator. Further, even assuming Brown's signature somehow renders the statement sufficiently reliable, and thus further assuming trial court error, police found the defendant's blood on a bandana hidden next to the murder weapon, in an area where the perpetrator was known to have fled. Thus, any error which might have excluded an oblique suggestion that a prosecutor attempted unsuccessfully to influence a witness was harmless since it was not necessary to link the defendant to the plaid shirt because DNA evidence linked him to the other item of clothing found with the murder weapon. See, Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 828, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967).