Opinion ID: 1657407
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Videotaped Statements of Blanche and Bernard

Text: The state introduced as evidence a videotape containing excerpts from separate interviews investigators conducted with Blanche and Bernard. The videotape was played for the jury with instructions to the jurors that they could consider Bernard's and Blanche's statements only as they related to each defendant's own case and not the other's case. Part of the videotape contained a statement by Bernard that had been redacted shortly after the point when detectives asked him whom he picked up in his car on the morning of June 2, 1996. Bernard says Robert Williams; the tape then skips and the next words Bernard says are David Allen. During jury deliberations, the jurors sent the following note to the district court: We noticed that a name was edited out of the Montay Bernard's video testimony statement to the police. Would this normally be done so as not to implicate the other defendant? The record indicates that in response to this inquiry, the court sent the jury the following note: Any editting [sic] on the tape was done at the direction of the court according to the rules of law. And you should not concern yourself with it.