Opinion ID: 1292293
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admission of Bobby's Out-of-Court Statements

Text: Prior to the trial of Bobby and Michael, the government requested permission to introduce, against both defendants, statements Bobby made to Carol Johnson, Earl Baldwin, and Julian Brown about his involvement in the triple homicide. Michael objected and moved for exclusion and, in the alternative, requested a severance pursuant to Fed.R.Crim.P. 14. After hearing from both sides, the district court denied the severance and allowed Johnson and Baldwin, but not Brown, to testify about Bobby's statements, finding their testimony admissible under the exception to the hearsay rule for statements against penal interest. See Fed.R.Evid. 804(b)(3). The district court also found no Confrontation Clause impediment to the admission of Johnson's and Baldwin's testimony. At trial, Baldwin testified that Bobby admitted to him on two separate occasions that he participated in the triple homicide. Bobby first told Baldwin that Timothy Moore was killed because the Dude owed money. The second time, Bobby, speaking about himself and Michael, stated: [W]e gave it to them niggers. . . . [W]e walked up to the truck, each of us on a side of the truck and gave it to them niggers. Johnson, echoing much of Baldwin's account, testified that Bobby told her that the victims were shot because of their debts. She then explained that Bobby told her that Michael shot the man in the driver's seat while Bobby shot at least one of the other passengers. Johnson's testimony did not account for the shooting of the third victim. In this challenge to the district court's pretrial ruling, Michael argues again that the admission of Bobby's out-of-court statements violated both Rule 804(b)(3) and the Confrontation Clause. We review the district court's admissibility determination under Rule 804(b)(3) for abuse of discretion and its Confrontation Clause analysis de novo. United States v. Tropeano, 252 F.3d 653, 657 (2d Cir.2001).
Admission of a statement under Rule 804(b)(3) hinges on whether the statement was sufficiently against the declarant's penal interest `that a reasonable person in the declarant's position would not have made the statement unless believing it to be true.' Williamson v. United States, 512 U.S. 594, 603-04, 114 S.Ct. 2431, 129 L.Ed.2d 476 (1994) (quoting Rule 804(b)(3)). Whether a challenged statement is sufficiently self-inculpatory can only be answered by viewing it in context. Id. at 604, 114 S.Ct. 2431. Thus, this determination must be made on a case-by-case basis. See Tropeano, 252 F.3d at 658. We find no abuse of discretion in the district court's decision to admit the challenged statements under Rule 804(b)(3). The first of Bobby's statements to Baldwin was plainly selfinculpatory, and it did not on its face implicate Michael. The second of Bobby's statements to Baldwin and his statement to Johnson were also sufficiently self-inculpatory as they described acts that he and Michael committed jointly. See United States v. Saget, 377 F.3d 223, 231 (2d Cir.2004) (finding that the bulk of confessor's statements were self-inculpatory because they described acts that the defendant and the confessor committed jointly). Moreover, the context of these statements shows that Bobby was not attempting to minimize his own culpability, shift blame onto Michael, or curry favor with authorities. Cf. Williamson, 512 U.S. at 601, 603, 114 S.Ct. 2431. To the contrary, in his second statement to Baldwin, Bobby was boastful regarding his participation in the murders, and in his remark to Johnson he claimed an equal role, asserting that he and Michael each killed one of the three victims.
The Confrontation Clause states that [i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him. U.S. Const. amend. VI. In Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004), the Supreme Court held that the Confrontation Clause prohibits the admission of out-of-court testimonial statements against a criminal defendant, unless the declarant is unavailable and the defendant had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the declarant. Crawford 's per se bar on such testimonial statements displaced that much of the indicia of reliability standard of Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980), that had allowed into evidence, as not violative of the Confrontation Clause, hearsay statements that fell within a firmly rooted hearsay exception or contained particularized guarantees of trustworthiness. Id. at 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531; Crawford, 541 U.S. at 60, 124 S.Ct. 1354; Saget, 377 F.3d at 226 (explaining that under Roberts, [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). While Crawford 's per se bar did away with Roberts' reliability analysis for testimonial statements, it left unclear whether the admission of nontestimonial statements would still implicate Confrontation Clause concerns because Crawford did not explicitly overrule Roberts on that score. See 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. . . .). However, in Davis v. Washington, ___ U.S. ___, 126 S.Ct. 2266, 165 L.Ed.2d 224 (2006), the Court was required to decide . . . whether the Confrontation Clause applies only to testimonial hearsay. Id. at 2274 (emphasis added). Answering that question in the affirmative, the Court explained that Crawford, even if it did not expressly so hold, pointed the way: The text of the Confrontation Clause reflects this focus on testimonial hearsay. It applies to witnesses against the accused  in other words, those who bear testimony. Testimony, in turn, is typically a solemn declaration or affirmation made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact. 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. Id. A limitation so clearly reflected in the text of the constitutional provision, the Court continued, must fairly be said to mark out not merely its `core,' but its perimeter. Id. Following Davis, we stated in United States v. Feliz, 467 F.3d 227 (2d Cir.2006), that Roberts' reliability analysis plays no role in a Confrontation Clause inquiry. See id. at 230-32. It is plain from Davis that the right to confrontation only extends to testimonial statements, or, put differently, the Confrontation Clause simply has no application to nontestimonial statements. Feliz, 467 F.3d at 231; see Tom Lininger, Reconceptualizing Confrontation After Davis, 85 Tex. L.Rev. 271, 280 (2006) (Whereas Crawford called into question the reasoning of Roberts, Davis sounded the death knell. The Davis Court indicated plainly that the protections of the Confrontation Clause are limited to testimonial hearsay.). Now, after Crawford and Davis, indicia of reliability play no role in the Confrontation Clause analysis. Rather, the inquiry under the Confrontation Clause is whether the statement at issue is testimonial. If so, the Confrontation Clause requirements of unavailability and prior cross-examination apply. If not, the Confrontation Clause poses no bar to the statement's admission. Feliz, 467 F.3d at 232. Michael does not, nor could he, contend that Bobby's statements were testimonial; they bear none of the hallmarks of testimonial statements identified in Crawford. See 541 U.S. at 51-52, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (identifying as testimonial ex parte in-court testimony, extrajudicial statements . . . contained in formalized testimonial materials, such as affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions, and statements that were made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)); see also Saget, 377 F.3d at 228 (identifying as testimonial under Crawford a declarant's knowing responses to structured questioning in an investigative environment or in a courtroom setting where the declarant would reasonably expect that his or her responses might be used in future judicial proceedings). Instead, relying on Roberts and its progeny, Michael asserts that the statements lack particularized guarantees of trustworthiness. Because the Confrontation Clause does not bar such nontestimonial statements, whatever their guarantees of trustworthiness, Michael's argument fails and our Confrontation Clause inquiry is at an end.