Opinion ID: 2972608
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Franklin’s Confrontation Claim

Text: Franklin contends his conviction must be reversed on the ground that the district court admitted as evidence against him the testimony of Walter Wright regarding the out-of-court statements Franklin’s non-testifying co-defendant, Clarke, made to Wright. According to Franklin, the admission of this testimony abridged his Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him. We review this claim de novo, see United States v. Robinson, 389 F.3d 582, 592 (6th Cir. 2004); United States v. McCleskey, 228 F.3d 640, 643-45 (6th Cir. 2000), and affirm. Walter Wright, a longtime friend of Jamaal Clarke (Wright testified that he had known Clarke for 15 years), testified before the grand jury and later at trial. Wright recounted out-of-court statements made to him by Clarke; these statements inculpated Franklin. Wright’s grand jury testimony, which was reluctant, centered on a conversation Wright and Clarke had a short time after the truck robbery. Wright testified that a few weeks after the robbery, he noticed Clarke acting “paranoid” and “stressed out.” This concerned Wright and he asked his friend what was on his mind. According to Wright’s grand jury testimony, Clarke then confided in Wright that he was afraid the “feds” had him under surveillance because “we hit a truck.” J.A. 685-87. Wright then explained that Clarke had referred to Franklin during the conversation: Nos. 03-2439/2440 United States v. Franklin, et al. Page 4 QUESTION: Did [Clarke] ever mention at any time who did it with him either by name or the job that they had or anything like that? ANSWER: After awhile. I mean one other guy came up[,] Mark. That’s what he called him and that’s, I mean that’s what I knew him by. He was supposed to be a police officer and he was the one that was questioned or something and lost his job over it. Wright then testified that Franklin had approached Clarke for money after the robbery: QUESTION: What did Jamaal tell you Marcus wanted? ANSWER: Some money. QUESTION: What specifically did Jamaal say? ANSWER: I think he may have told [Franklin] that he didn’t have anything, something like that. You know, “ain’t no more,” or “I don’t have any money for you.” QUESTION: Did Marcus tell Jamaal why he was coming to Jamaal for the money? ANSWER: Something about he was being watched. He couldn’t go to his money so he needed some of Jamaal’s money. J.A. 108-111 (Transcript of Evidentiary Hearing, quoting Wright’s Grand Jury testimony). The government disclosed Wright’s grand jury testimony to Franklin, withholding Wright’s name. Franklin filed a motion in limine to preclude Wright from testifying against Franklin at trial. Two evidentiary hearings ensued. At the first, on April 21, 2003, Wright testified that the FBI had coerced him into falsely testifying before the grand jury. Because this testimony amounted to an admission of perjury and because Wright had appeared at the evidentiary hearing without counsel, the district judge adjourned the hearing and appointed counsel to represent Wright. At the second evidentiary hearing, on April 28, 2003, Wright, now represented by counsel, recanted his claim that he had lied before the grand jury. The government lawyer reviewed Wright’s grand jury testimony and Wright simultaneously maintained that he did not have recollection of it but that, “to the best of [his] knowledge,” the testimony was true and accurate. However, Wright further testified that he had been drunk during the pertinent conversations with Clarke as well has during his grand jury testimony. Wright also testified that he has a drinking problem and had been drinking before coming to the evidentiary hearings; that Clarke frequently lied to him, mainly due to inebriation; that his memory was unreliable because he was an alcoholic; and that he “never testified [at the grand jury] that somebody named Mark did no job.” J.A. 120, 127-28. Despite testifying that his grand jury testimony was true to the best of his recollection, Wright also testified, “I can’t be sure about it.” J.A. 119. Over the defense’s objections, Wright testified at trial. The government strenuously denied defense suggestions that it had knowingly called an inebriated witness to testify before the grand jury. The district court determined that Wright’s grand jury testimony regarding his conversations with Clarke had a “particularized guarantee of trustworthiness.” Specifically, the court found that at the evidentiary hearings, Wright “did everything he could to retract the grand jury testimony that he gave in this case.” J.A. 139. The court questioned whether Wright had really been drunk before the grand jury and concluded that, “[t]here seems to be no reason to believe that . . . Wright was Nos. 03-2439/2440 United States v. Franklin, et al. Page 5 lying. He testified before the grand jury that he lied before for his friend but he said he was not lying at that time. And if he lied before for his friend, why would he lie and implicate his friend in a robbery. That makes absolutely no sense. Therefore, considering all of these factors, the Court finds that 1there is a particular guarantee of trustworthiness to the statement and the statement is allowed.” J.A. 140-41. At trial, the government read into the record Wright’s grand jury testimony regarding the statements Clarke made to him. Wright distanced himself from certain aspects of his grand jury testimony but did not deny that he believed it was true and accurate at the time he appeared before the grand jury. Franklin submits that under the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), the admission of Clarke’s statements to Wright violated the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment. The government argues that Crawford does not apply because Clarke’s statements to Wright were not testimonial. See Crawford, 541 U.S. at 51. Furthermore, according to the government, Clarke’s statements were against his penal interest and because he was unavailable to testify (Clarke naturally invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against selfincrimination), the statements were admissible under a firmly rooted exception to the hearsay rule. The government is correct that Clarke’s statements to Wright were not testimonial within the meaning of Crawford; if the statements had been testimonial, they would have been inadmissible absent a prior opportunity to cross examine Clarke. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 67-69. We do not agree with the government, however, that the statement against penal interest exception to the hearsay rule is firmly rooted. Nevertheless, because Clarke’s statements to Wright bear particularized guarantees of trustworthiness, it was not error to admit them. In Crawford, the Supreme Court re-framed the purpose and scope of the confrontation clause. The Court determined that the clause’s predominant objective – perhaps its only objective – is preventing the admission of testimonial statements against criminal defendants who never had an opportunity to cross examine the declarant. 541 U.S. at 69-70. The Court declined to “spell out a comprehensive definition of ‘testimonial’” but held that the class of testimonial statements included, “at a minimum, . . . prior testimony at a preliminary hearing, before a grand jury, or at a former trial; [and] police interrogations.” Id. at 68. After Crawford, there is “an absolute bar to statements that are testimonial, absent a prior opportunity to cross examine.” Id. at 61. Indeed, the Court summed up its holding in these words: “Where testimonial statements are at issue, the only indicium of reliability sufficient to satisfy constitutional demands is the one the Constitution actually prescribes: confrontation.” Id. at 68-69. Thus, the threshold question in this case is whether Clarke’s statements to Wright were testimonial. It is clear that they were not. Clarke made the statements to his friend by happenstance; Wright was not a police officer or a government informant seeking to elicit the statements to further a prosecution against Clarke or Franklin. To the contrary, Wright was privy to Clarke’s statements only as his friend and confidant. As Crawford itself indicates, and as we and other courts have held in the wake of Crawford, statements of this sort are not testimonial for purposes of the confrontation clause. See Crawford, 541 U.S. at 51 (“An accuser who makes a formal statement to government officers bears testimony in a sense that a person who makes a casual remark to an acquaintance does not.”); United States v. Gibson, 409 F.3d 325, 338 (6th Cir. 2005) (describing statements as nontestimonial where the “statements were not made to the police or in the course of an official investigation . . . [nor in an attempt] to curry favor or shift the blame . . . .”); United States v. Manfre, 368 F.3d 832, 838 n.1 (8th Cir. 2004) (“Mr. Rush’s comments were made to loved ones or acquaintances and are not the kind of memorialized, judicial-process-created evidence of which 1 During Wright’s grand jury testimony, the foreperson asked whether he had lied for Clarke in the past. Wright responded in the affirmative. The foreperson then asked whether he was then lying, i.e., before the grand jury. Wright responded that he was not. The foreperson asked if he was sure that he was not lying. Wright responded: “I’m positive.” J.A. 694. Nos. 03-2439/2440 United States v. Franklin, et al. Page 6 Crawford speaks.”); United States v. Lee, 374 F.3d 637, 645 (8th Cir. 2004) (“Kehoe’s statements to his mother do not implicate the core concerns of the confrontation clause.”); United States v. Saget, 377 F.3d 223, 229 (2d Cir. 2004) (“Thus, we conclude that a declarant’s statements to a confidential informant, whose true status is unknown to the declarant, do not constitute testimony within the meaning of Crawford.”).2 Although Clarke’s statements to Wright were not testimonial, their admission into evidence may nevertheless implicate Franklin’s right of confrontation.3 To be sure, the absolute bar of Crawford is not triggered under these circumstances. However, as the Second Circuit has recently observed, the Supreme Court did not explicitly overrule its prior confrontation clause jurisprudence with its holding in Crawford. See United States v. Saget, 377 F.3d 223, 227 (2d Cir. 2004). Prior to Crawford, the admissibility of any statement – whether testimonial or not – depended on whether the statement fell under a “firmly rooted hearsay exception or [bore] particularized guarantees of trustworthiness.” Crawford, 541 U.S. at 60 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted); see Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56 (1980); Lilly v. Virginia, 527 U.S. 116 (1999) (plurality opinion). Thus, “[a]ny out-of-court statement was constitutionally admissible so long as it fell within an exception to the hearsay rule or, if that exception was not firmly rooted, the court found that the statement was likely to be reliable.” Saget, 377 F.3d at 226 (citation omitted). The leading case standing for this generalized approach to analyzing Sixth Amendment challenges to hearsay evidence is Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56 (1980), which the Court frankly ridiculed in Crawford but did not quite overrule. See Crawford, 541 U.S. at 61 (describing pre-Crawford confrontation clause jurisprudence as in “doubt” but not definitively overruled). Consequently, with respect to non-testimonial hearsay statements, Roberts and its progeny remain the controlling precedents. As we put it in the recent case of United States v. Gibson, “Crawford dealt only with testimonial statements and did not disturb the rule that nontestimonial statements are constitutionally admissible if they bear independent guarantees of trustworthiness.” 409 F.3d at 338; see also Saget, 377 F.3d at 227 (“Crawford leaves the Roberts approach untouched with respect to nontestimonial statements . . . . Accordingly, while the continued viability of Roberts with respect to nontestimonial statements is in doubt, we will assume for purposes of this opinion that its reliability analysis continues to apply to control nontestimonial hearsay . . . .”). Initially, we must determine whether Clarke’s statements to Wright fall within an exception to the hearsay rule. See Roberts, 448 U.S. at 66. The government contends that the statements were statements against Clarke’s penal interest. See FED. R. EVID. 804(b)(3). The government is correct if, at the time Clarke made the statements, they “so far tended to subject [Clarke] to civil or criminal liability . . . that a reasonable person in [Clarke’s] position would not have made [the statements] unless believing [them] to be true.” Id. Under the statement-against-penal-interest exception to the hearsay rule, such a statement is admissible if (1) the declarant is unavailable to testify; (2) the statement inculpates the declarant; and (3) “corroborating circumstances truly establish the trustworthiness of the statement.” United States v. Tocco, 200 F.3d 401, 415 (6th Cir. 2000) (citing United States v. Maliszewski, 161 F.3d 992, 1009 (6th Cir. 1998), cert. denied, 524 U.S. 1184 2 These cases do not conflict with our holding in United States v. Cromer, 389 F.3d 662 (6th Cir. 2004), that statements made by a confidential informant to the police are testimonial under Crawford. Because the informant in Cromer inculpated the defendant in statements to the police, the informant’s statements were akin to statements elicited during police interrogation, i.e., the informant could reasonably anticipate that the statements would be used to prosecute the defendant. As the Supreme Court observed in Crawford, “[a]n accuser who makes a formal statement to government officers bears testimony in a sense that a person who makes a casual remark to an acquaintance does not.” 541 U.S. at 51. 3 The government does not dispute that it offered Clarke’s out-of-court statements to Wright to prove the matter asserted in the statements, i.e., that “Mark” had approached Clarke seeking money because his own stash was under FBI surveillance. Accordingly, the statements were hearsay. See FED. R. EVID. 803. Nos. 03-2439/2440 United States v. Franklin, et al. Page 7 (1999)); see also United States v. Price, 134 F.3d 340, 347 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 845 (1998). In the present case, it is clear that Clarke was unavailable to testify; at trial, he elected not to testify pursuant to his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. It is also clear that the statements he made to Wright inculpated him; Clarke referred to “hitting a truck” and to having money as a result. Franklin does not dispute that these two requirements are met. He focuses his attack on the third requirement. It is with respect to this requirement that the demands of the confrontation clause supplant those of the rules of evidence. To determine whether a statement is sufficiently trustworthy for admission under Rule 804(b)(3), the court is not to focus on whether other evidence in the case corroborates what the statement asserts, but rather on whether there are “corroborating circumstances which clearly indicate the trustworthiness of the statement itself.” Price, 134 F.3d at 348 (quotation omitted). Similarly, under Roberts and its progeny, a co-defendant’s self-inculpatory statement that also inculpates the defendant will satisfy the admissibility standards of the confrontation clause only if the statement fits within a firmly rooted hearsay exception or otherwise bears particularized guarantees of trustworthiness. See Roberts, 448 U.S. at 65; see also Lilly v. Virginia, 527 U.S. 116, 124-25 (1999) (plurality opinion); White v. Illinois, 502 U.S. 346, 346-48 (1992) (plurality opinion). The government contends that in the Sixth Circuit, the statement-against-penal-interest exception to the hearsay rule is firmly rooted for purposes of the confrontation clause. See Neuman v. Rivers, 125 F.3d 315, 319 (6th Cir. 1997); Gilliam v. Mitchell, 179 F.3d 990, 993-95 (6th Cir. 1999). However, in Neuman – the one case where this Court suggested as much – the statements at issue were made by the defendant and inculpated only himself. See Neuman, 125 F.3d at 319-20. In Gilliam, this Court declined to hold that statements against the declarant’s penal interest are admissible per se; instead, the Court assessed whether the particular statements at issue bore particularized guarantees of trustworthiness. See Gilliam, 179 F.3d at 994-95. See also Hill v. Hofbauer, 337 F.3d 706, 717 n.5 (6th Cir. 2003) (observing that Neuman involved a statement made by, and inculpating only, the defendant, and that Gilliam declined to ensconce the statement-againstpenal-interest exception to the hearsay rule among those that are firmly rooted). Thus, it is by no means clear that Clarke’s statements are admissible under a firmly rooted hearsay exception. Under Roberts and its progeny, if hearsay statements do not fit within a firmly rooted hearsay exception, they are nevertheless admissible if they bear particularized guarantees of trustworthiness. Roberts, 448 U.S. at 65; see also Crawford, 541 U.S. at 60; Lilly, 527 U.S. at 124-25; White, 502 U.S. at 346-48; Gibson, 409 F.3d at 337-38. Clarke’s statements to Wright bear such guarantees and are therefore admissible.4 First, Clarke made the self-inculpatory statements not to investigators but to his close friend. Consequently, to the extent the statements inculpated Franklin, there is no basis to conclude that Clarke intentionally did so to curry favor with law enforcement. Further, the context of Clarke’s admissions to Wright was not that of puffing or bragging; rather, as Wright has consistently testified, Clarke was behaving “paranoid” and appeared “stressed out” when Wright asked him what was on his mind. In contrast to cases in which a declarant confesses to law enforcement but additionally implicates his accomplice in the crime, this case involves statements the declarant (Clarke) made in confidential exchanges with a long-time friend – a friend he had no reason to conclude would reveal those statements to law enforcement. Moreover, in his statements to Wright, Clarke did not minimize his role in the robbery; the most plausible conclusion to draw from the content of the statements is that Clarke and Franklin each played substantial roles in the commission of the offense. As we recently reiterated, the admission into evidence of statements such as these does not offend the confrontation clause. Gibson, 409 F.3d at 338. Compare Lilly, 527 U.S. at 131 (holding that a statement inculpating the declarant and his alleged accomplices is 4 The district court erred to the extent it examined the trustworthiness of the statements Wright made about Clarke’s statements to him. The statements that must bear particularized guarantees of trustworthiness are the hearsay statements themselves. Nos. 03-2439/2440 United States v. Franklin, et al. Page 8 not trustworthy when made as part of a custodial confession to law enforcement agents) and Lee v. Illinois, 476 U.S. 530, 541 (1986) (same) with Tocco, 200 F.3d at 416 (6th Cir. 2000) (“We find that the circumstances surrounding Polizzi’s statements in this case indicate that the statements were trustworthy, particularly in light of the fact that Polizzi’s statements were made to his son in confidence, rather than to the police or to any other authority for the purpose of shifting the blame to Tocco.”). Accordingly, we conclude that Clarke’s statements to Wright – which inculpated both Clarke and Franklin – bear particularized guarantees of trustworthiness and are therefore admissible under the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment as statements against the declarant’s penal interest. See also United States v. Manfre, 368 F.3d 832, 842 (8th Cir. 2004) (sustaining the admission of a statement made “casually to an intimate confidante in a setting that does not raise the same concerns as” statements made to police officers under an incentive to curry their favor); United States v. Saget, 377 F.3d 223, 230 (2d Cir. 2004) (sustaining the admission of statements made by the declarant to someone he thought was his friend and confidant but turned out to be a confidential informant) (discussing the similar case of United States v. Matthews, 20 F.3d 538, 545 (2d Cir. 1994)). Franklin finally submits that even in light of the circumstances tending to support a finding of trustworthiness, this Court should find error because Clarke and Wright were drunk when the pertinent conversations occurred and Wright was drunk when he first recounted the statements before the grand jury. This argument is not persuasive. First, Franklin offers no proof that Clarke and Wright were in fact intoxicated at the time the conversations occurred, let alone to such an extent that the statements should have been excluded as untrustworthy.5 Similarly, Franklin offers no proof that Wright was intoxicated during his grand jury testimony. In any event, Wright first raised the issue of his intoxication, and Clarke’s, at the first evidentiary hearing before the district court – the first time he was confronted with the reality that Clarke, his close friend, was soon to be tried for a serious crime. He never mentioned the issue during his very reluctant grand jury testimony. To the contrary, under questioning from the foreman of the grand jury, Wright was adamant that his testimony had been truthful. The district judge – whose credibility determinations must be credited where not clearly erroneous – concluded that Wright likely claimed his intoxication in order to protect Clarke. Absent any evidence that Wright had a motive to inculpate his friend (or to inculpate Franklin), and absent any evidence that Clarke had a motive to inculpate Franklin at the time he made the statements to Wright, there is no basis for us to conclude that the district court clearly erred.