Opinion ID: 2286082
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Defendants' Statements Were Adequately Redacted.

Text: As we recently reiterated in Rodgers v. Commonwealth, 285 S.W.3d 740 (Ky.2009): Rule of Criminal Procedure (RCr) 6.20 permits the joinder for trial of two or more defendants if they are alleged to have participated in the same act or transaction or in the same series of acts or transactions constituting an offense or offenses. Joint trials are a mainstay of our system, as they give the jury the best perspective on all the evidence and thus increase the likelihood of proper verdicts and avoid the possibility of inconsistent ones. Conflicting versions of what happened, we have thus noted, is a reason for rather than against a joint trial. ... RCr 9.16, on the other hand, requires that trials be severed if it appears that a defendant or the Commonwealth is or will be prejudiced by the joinder. Rodgers, 285 S.W.3d at 745 (quoting from Shepherd v. Commonwealth, 251 S.W.3d 309, 313 (Ky.2008)). We review the trial court's denial of a motion to sever for abuse of discretion, Shepherd, and the burden is on the appellant to show that the denial was in fact unfairly prejudicial. Parker v. Commonwealth, 291 S.W.3d 647 (Ky.2009); Bratcher v. Commonwealth, 151 S.W.3d 332 (Ky.2004). As Williams correctly notes, in a joint trial, the Confrontation Clause of the United States Constitution precludes the pretrial confession of one [defendant from being] admitted against the other unless the confessing defendant takes the stand. Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 206, 107 S.Ct. 1702, 95 L.Ed.2d 176 (1987); see also Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004) (holding more generally that testimonial hearsay is inadmissible if the declarant is not available to testify and the defendant has not previously had the opportunity to cross-examine the declarant). The pretrial confession may not even be admitted against the confessor, moreover, if on its face it implicates another defendant being jointly tried with the confessor. Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968); Gray v. Maryland, 523 U.S. 185, 118 S.Ct. 1151, 140 L.Ed.2d 294 (1998). The Supreme Court has held, however, that the Confrontation Clause does not rule out either joint trials or the use therein of pretrial confessions against the confessors themselves. To be admissible though, the codefendant's confession must be redacted so as to remove express and obvious inferential references to the defendant: the Confrontation Clause is not violated by the admission of a nontestifying codefendant's confession with a proper limiting instruction when, as here, the confession is redacted to eliminate not only the defendant's name, but any reference to his or her existence. Richardson, 481 U.S. at 211, 107 S.Ct. 1702. Citing Bruton and Crawford, Williams moved for a separate trial on the ground that the introduction of Quisenberry's August 29th statement would violate his, Williams's, right to confrontation. The Commonwealth proposed, pursuant to Richardson, to redact from Quisenberry's statement any reference to Williams and from Williams's statement any reference to Quisenberry, and the trial court ruled that with these redactions there was no need for the trials to be severed. As the trial court noted, we have upheld the use of a codefendant's redacted statement for this purpose. Shepherd, 251 S.W.3d at 313-15. Williams first contends that the trial court abused its discretion because the written redaction of Quisenberry's statement which the Commonwealth proffered in response to Williams's severance motion did not eliminate what, Williams maintains, were obvious references to him. Significantly, however, that written redacted statement was not read or otherwise introduced at trial. Whatever its inadequacies, therefore, the written statement did not prejudice Williams and so does not provide a ground for relief. Our focus is, as it must be, on what the jury actually heard. At trial, the Commonwealth asked the detective to paraphrase what the two men had told him. In doing so, the detective scrupulously avoided any mention either defendant made of the other, limiting his testimony to what each defendant said about his own actions, about the two victims, and about his having seen a gun and heard gunshots. As noted, on cross-examination each defendant was allowed to ask whether he had denied shooting anyone, and in both cases the detective answered that he had. Williams contends that this paraphrased version of Quisenberry's statement violated his confrontation right because notwithstanding the fact that it does not refer to him expressly it does so by obvious implication. If Quisenberry saw a gun and heard gunshots, but was not himself the shooter, then clearly, Williams maintains, he is accusing Williams of filling that role. We disagree. As Williams notes, in Gray v. Maryland , the Supreme Court held that a codefendant's confession redacted only to the extent of replacing each instance of the defendant's name with a blank or with the word deleted was inadmissible under Bruton because in each instance the jury was virtually certain to understand that the deletion referred to the defendant. Even redacted, therefore, the confession remained inculpatory of the defendant on its face and thus was so similar to the unredacted confession in Bruton as to warrant the same result. In Richardson v. Marsh , however, the Court upheld the admission of a codefendant's confession notwithstanding the fact that in conjunction with other evidence introduced at trial the confession became inculpatory of the defendant. The confession had been redacted so as to eliminate any direct or obvious reference to the defendant. Noting the vital roles that joint trials and confessions play in our criminal justice system, the Richardson Court explained that a codefendant's confession such as this, one incriminating of the defendant not on its face but only by inference when linked with other evidence, did not pose the same risk the facially incriminating confession in Bruton did of confounding an instruction that the jury is to consider the confession only against the confessor and not against the defendant. Accordingly, as noted above, the Court held that the Confrontation Clause is not violated by the admission of a nontestifying codefendant's confession with a proper limiting instruction when, as here, the confession is redacted to eliminate not only the defendant's name, but any reference to his or her existence. Richardson, 481 U.S. at 211, 107 S.Ct. 1702. While this case falls somewhere between Gray and Richardson, we believe that it is more like the latter than the former and so agree with the trial court that the joint trial and the admission of a paraphrased version of Quisenberry's redacted statement to police did not violate Williams's right to confrontation. Unlike the confessions held inadmissible in Bruton and Gray, Quisenberry's statement did not expressly or in any way directly refer to Williams. It was clearly focused, rather, on Quisenberry's own role in the events at issue. To be sure, Quisenberry's admission that he heard shots and his denial of having fired them imply that someone else did, but the inference that Williams was the someone else is not suggested by the redacted paraphrase of Quisenberry's statement. It instead arises only by inference upon consideration of the other evidence of Williams's involvement ( e.g., Turner's testimony and the DNA evidence) admitted at trial. That sort of inferential linkage is not improper under the Confrontation Clause, but may, as the Court held in Richardson, be addressed in a limiting instruction. The joint trial did not unduly prejudice Williams, therefore, and the trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying his motion to sever.