Opinion ID: 2677200
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Redaction Issue

Text: Appellants‟ second party opponent hearsay claim is specific to cooperating witness Marquet McCoy‟s testimony recounting admissions by appellant Leaks. Before calling McCoy to the witness stand, the government informed the trial court and defense counsel that Leaks had told McCoy “chapter and verse” about the May 17 shootings, among other things “naming all five of his accomplices,” but that “for Bruton reasons” the government had instructed McCoy to limit his testimony about Leaks‟s admissions so as to implicate only “Leaks and [unnamed] others.” On the stand, McCoy testified that a few days after the May 17 raid, Leaks gave him a detailed account of it and admitted having been “present and involved” himself. The prosecutor asked McCoy whether Leaks had said who went with him on the raid; McCoy confirmed what he had indicated earlier in his testimony, that 60 Cf. Baker, 867 A.2d at 1003 (finding insufficient prejudice for reversal under plain error review where the co-defendant‟s statement was “both vague and cumulative of much weightier evidence”). 43 Leaks had indeed named his confederates. The prosecutor then inquired how many there were. “It was him [i.e., Leaks] and five others,” McCoy responded. Defense counsel objected and moved to strike the witness‟s answer as being violative of the Bruton doctrine because it plainly referred to Leaks‟s co-defendants. The trial court declined to strike the testimony but repeated its earlier instruction to the jury that a statement by a defendant could only be used against that defendant. McCoy then went on to testify to what Leaks told him about how the May 17 shootings had occurred. On appeal, Allen argues that Leaks‟s statement to McCoy incriminated him by unavoidable inference even though it was redacted so as not to identify him by name—for it would have been obvious to the jury that the “five others” whom Leaks mentioned could only have been Leaks‟s three co-defendants (Arrington, Hagans, and Allen) and the government‟s two cooperating witnesses (Payne and Smith). We understand Arrington and Hagans to join in this contention. Accordingly, Allen asserts (on their behalf as well as his own) that because the hearsay statement was inadmissible against Leaks‟s co-defendants,61 the trial court 61 Despite the references in the trial court to Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123 (1968), appellants properly do not complain of a Confrontation Clause violation. Leaks‟s statement, made in casual conversation to a fellow gang member, was not testimonial. See note 51, supra. The government does not (continued…) 44 erred in admitting it without severing their trials from that of Leaks pursuant to Criminal Rule 14.62 Appellants‟ argument is not without merit. Rule 14 “requires that the trial court take appropriate steps to minimize the prejudice inherent in codefendant confessions which are inadmissible against the nondeclarant defendant.”63 “[T]he remedial options under Rule 14 when one defendant‟s extrajudicial statement directly inculpates a co-defendant are the same as under the Confrontation Clause: unless the government agrees to forego any use of the statement, it must be redacted to eliminate all incriminating references to the co-defendant, or the co- (continued…) suggest, however, nor do we think, that appellants failed to preserve their nonconstitutional claim predicated on the inadmissibility of Leaks‟s statement against them under traditional hearsay principles. 62 Super. Ct. Crim. R. 14 (providing, in pertinent part, that “[i]f it appears that a defendant . . . is prejudiced by a joinder of defendants . . . for trial together, the Court may . . . grant a severance of defendants or provide whatever other relief