Opinion ID: 2148864
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Bruton Claim

Text: A good many people testified at trial concerning Phillips' participation in the murder. Robert Patchett testified that he, Phillips and Pauley joined in beating up Paul. Specifically, Patchett testified that Phillips beat Paul numerous times with a pipe filled with rocks. Patchett further testified that after Pauley stabbed Paul, the three men put Paul's body in a trash bag, placed it in the trunk of Phillips' car, and dumped the body off of a bridge. Juanita Bristow, who was in the bedroom at the time of the murder, testified that she heard Phillips, Pauley and Patchett beating Paul in the living room for approximately two hours. Bristow testified that she saw the three men take Paul's body, which was wrapped in trash bags and taped closed, out of the house. Bruce Spencer, Victoria Sanders, Frank Hale and Chastity McDaniel all testified that Phillips confessed his involvement in the murder to them. Among all this, Flaugher testified about Pauley's statement, I killed somebody. Flaugher also related Pauley's version of the events by using plural pronouns ([A]fter he was dead, they put trash bags around him....). Phillips claims that these statements attributed to codefendant Pauley tended to incriminate him. Phillips contends that although Pauley's confession did not mention him by name, it was in violation of Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968), because it involved facially incriminating declarations. In Bruton, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the introduction of extrajudicial statements of a co-defendant at a joint trial denied the defendant an opportunity to cross-examine the co-defendant as to his statement, thereby depriving the defendant of his right to confront a witness against him. It is entirely possible that the jury understood the use of they in Flaugher's testimony about Pauley's statements to reference Pauley, Phillips and Patchett. They could only make this link, however, because of the overwhelming cumulative evidence from other witnesses. [4] The testimony of Flaugher, McDaniel, Sanders, Patchett, Hale, Bristow and Spencer, and the joint trial of Pauley and Phillips, make it extremely easy to infer that they included Phillips. On the other hand, Phillips' trial counsel did not object during Flaugher's testimony, possibly because these references to multiple actors were so inconsequential in light of Phillips' own individual confessions. Accordingly, appellant has not preserved any issue for appeal. We affirm the judgment of the trial court. DICKSON, SULLIVAN, SELBY and BOEHM, JJ., concur.