Opinion ID: 2570511
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Admission of Codefendants' Redacted Statements

Text: White contends the admission of the extrajudicial statements of his nontestifying codefendants violated his rights under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment. White also argues that this is a grounds for severance, as the codefendants' statements were calculated to prejudice his rights. White made and preserved a general objection to the admission of all the codefendants' redacted statements. Before trial, White had the opportunity to object to any alteration or to request additional editing. Subsequently, he has not made any specific objection to any portion of the statements or to the court's instructions. Rather, he complains that excising parts of the statement resulted in a choppy presentation that made it obvious to the jury that the statements were edited and thereby incriminated White. A defendant is deprived of his or her Sixth Amendment right of confrontation when the facially incriminating confession of a nontestifying codefendant is introduced at their joint trial, even if the jury is instructed to consider the confession only against the codefendant. Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 126, 20 L. Ed. 2d 476, 88 S. Ct. 1620 (1968). Bruton involved two defendants, Evans and Bruton, tried jointly for robbery. Evans did not testify, but the Government introduced into evidence Evans' confession, which stated that he and Bruton committed the robbery. The trial judge told the jury it could consider the confession as evidence only against Evans, not against Bruton. The United States Supreme Court held that, despite the limiting instruction, the introduction of Evans' out-of-court confession at Bruton's trial violated Bruton's right, protected by the Sixth Amendment, to cross-examine witnesses. 391 U.S. at 137. The Court concluded that the nature of some evidence is so powerfully incriminating that it overrules the prevailing presumption that a jury will follow instructions. 391 U.S. at 135-36. We followed Bruton in State v. Rodriquez, 226 Kan. 558, 601 P.2d 686 (1979). However, compliance with Bruton does not mean that extrajudicial statements of nontestifying codefendants can never be admitted at trial. In Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 211, 95 L. Ed. 2d 176, 107 S. Ct. 1702 (1987), the United States Supreme Court upheld the use of a confession which had been redacted to remove all references to the codefendant. The case involved a joint murder trial of Marsh and Williams. The State had redacted the confession of Williams so as to omit all indication that anyone other than Williams and a third person had participated in the crime. As redacted, the confession indicated that Williams and the third person had discussed the murder in the front seat of a car while they traveled to the victim's house. The redacted confession contained no indication that any other person was in the car or had participated in the crime. Later in the trial, however, Marsh testified that she was in the back seat of the car. The United States Supreme Court held that this redacted confession fell outside Bruton's scope and was admissible at the joint trial. The Court distinguished Evans' confession in Bruton as a confession that was incriminating on its face, and which had expressly implicat[ed] Bruton. Richardson, 481 U.S. at 208. By contrast, Williams' confession amounted to evidence requiring linkage in that it became incriminating in respect to Marsh only when linked with evidence introduced later at trial. 481 U.S. at 208. Rejecting contextual implication as a test for whether a statement was admissible, the Court held that the Confrontation Clause is not violated by the admission of a nontestifying codefendant's confession with a proper limiting instruction when, as here, the confession is redacted to eliminate not only the defendant's name, but any reference to his or her existence. 481 U.S. at 211. Applying this holding, this court has held that redaction of a confession is proper if any suggestion of a codefendant's involvement in the crime charged can be eliminated from the statement, but generally an edited statement should not be admitted if it explicitly suggests the participation of the complaining defendant. State v. Swafford, 257 Kan. 1099, 1102, 913 P.2d 196 (1996); see also State v. Porter, Green & Smith, 228 Kan. 345, 350, 615 P.2d 146 (1980) (removal of name not sufficient when statement refers to other participants in the crime). In Swafford and its companion, State v. Butler, 257 Kan. 1110, 916 P.2d 1 (1996), we found that presenting a transcript to the jury which showed the deletions by leaving a blank or underlining the space where a word had been, violated the Bruton principle. However, this does not preclude the use of such statements with proper editing. Had another method of redaction been chosen, the result might have been different. For example, had the statement been redacted to remove the defendant's and Butler's names and all reference to their existence by removing a sentence or paragraph where their names appear so as not to leave blanks, the result might have been different. The question to be asked in each case is whether the redacted statement admitted eliminated not only the defendant's name, but also any reference to his or her existence. If the codefendant's redacted statement, standing alone without consideration of any other evidence, does not directly incriminate the complaining defendant, Bruton is not violated even when other admissible evidence indirectly implicates the defendant. Swafford, 257 Kan. at 1106-07. See Butler, 257 Kan. at 1118. Approximately 2 years later, the United States Supreme Court reached a similar conclusion when confronted with a method of redaction in which blanks had been left in the written statements. When portions of the statement were read by the officer who took the statements, he said deleted or deletion in place of any removed words. Gray v. Maryland, 523 U.S. 185, 140 L. Ed. 2d 294, 118 S. Ct. 1151 (1998). The United States Supreme Court held redaction that replaces a defendant's name with an obvious indication of deletion, such as a blank space, the word deleted, or a similar symbol, falls within Bruton's protective rule. 523 U.S. at 192. The Court distinguished and clarified the holding in Richardson, stating: Richardson must depend in significant part upon the kind of, not the simple fact of, inference. Richardson's inferences involved statements that did not refer directly to the defendant himself and which became incriminating `only when linked with evidence introduced later at trial.' 481 U.S., at 208. The inferences at issue here involve statements that, despite redaction, obviously refer directly to someone, often obviously the defendant, and which involve inferences that a jury ordinarily could make immediately, even were the confession the very first item introduced at trial. Moreover, the redacted confession with the blank prominent on its face, in Richardson's words, `facially incriminat[es]' the codefendant. Id., at 209 (emphasis added). Like the confession in Bruton itself, the accusation that the redacted confession makes `is more vivid than inferential incrimination, and hence more difficult to thrust out of mind.' 481 U.S. at 208. 523 U.S. at 196. In similar fashion to this court's suggestion in Swafford and Butler that additional editing could resolve the problem, the United States Supreme Court offered an example, suggesting that by changing the me, deleted, deleted, and a few other guys to me and a few other guys the statement could be admitted. 523 U.S. at 196. In the current case, the statements were edited in a manner consistent with the guidance of Swafford, Butler, and Gray. All references to the other codefendants by name or description and most plural pronouns were removed. Thus, in most respects, the statements in this case are less accusatory than saying me and a few other guys. However, this is not a situation such as presented in Richardson where the statements give no indication another person is involved. But, given the removal of entire sentences and blocks of questions to remove direct reference to any other actor, there is no way to determine the number of people involved or to determine the actions of any specific person other than the declarant. In similar situations a majority of courts have determined there is no Bruton violation. E.g., United States v. Verduzco-Martinez, 186 F.3d 1208, 1214-15 (10th Cir. 1999); see Richardson, Casting Light on the Gray Area: An Analysis of the Use of Neutral Pronouns in Non-Testifying Codefendant Redacted Confessions under Bruton, Richardson, and Gray, 55 U. Miami L. Rev. 825 (2001). Additionally, the playing of digitally edited recordings obviated many of the problems created by the method utilized in the trials of Swafford, Butler, and Gray for displaying or communicating the statements. Through the technology used in this case, no gaps were left at the point where material was deleted, whether one word or several lines were deleted. When it sounds as if a word is missing, the missing word is usually a pronoun and the listener cannot tell whether there was a deletion or whether, as happened many times during the recording, the speaker dropped his speaking volume, stopped speaking and changed course of thought, or utilized poor diction. Further, while there are contextual gaps, it is not obvious these gaps are the result of editing to delete reference to other participants. The redacted statements eliminate all references to White's existence, do not direct the jury's attention to White, do not facially incriminate White, and do not violate the holding in Bruton. The district court did not err in admitting the redacted statements of White's codefendants.