Opinion ID: 2193321
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Jackie's Statements on the 911 Call

Text: Davis provides a functional analysis for determining whether an out-of-court statement is testimonial and, thus, subject to the Confrontation Clause restrictions of Crawford . The Davis analysis must be applied to the 911 call made by Laura Johnson to determine if it was an interrogation to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency, or an interrogation to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution when there is no such ongoing emergency. Davis, 126 S.Ct. at 2274. The circumstances of the situation must be viewed objectively. Id. Any reasonable listener would recognize that Jackie was facing an ongoing emergency. She had last seen Kemp on his back porch. Early in the call, she hypothesized that he was still in his apartment. Later, she said that he had chased her, that she did not know if he knew where she was, and that he was probably knocking on the doors of the neighborhood. Jackie's varied answers to questions about Kemp's location, together with the fact that the police had not arrived to secure the area, indicate that no one was certain where Kemp was, where he was going, or what he might do. All that was known was that, according to Jackie, Kemp was armed, had been smoking crack, and had been holding her at gunpoint all night. Furthermore, Laura described Jackie as really scared and just hysterical. Jackie can be heard on the 911 call breathing heavily and saying, Oh God. These circumstances indicate that, although Jackie was inside the Johnson home, she and her neighbors were in the midst of an ongoing emergency. The questions the operator asked were directed at enabling police assistance to meet the ongoing emergency. As the Supreme Court noted in Davis , statements necessary to resolve the present emergency include the operator's effort to establish the identity of the assailant, so that the dispatched officers might know whether they would be encountering a violent felon. Id. at 2276. Thus, questions about Kemp's name were directed at resolving the present emergency. In addition, questions about Kemp's address and possible location would help the police determine where to look first. Questions about the gun and where Kemp hid it would inform the police whether they should expect to encounter an armed person. Questions about drug use would warn the police of possible erratic or dangerous behavior upon arrival. Questions about the dogs would inform the police how many dogs to expect and whether the dogs were hostile. Questions about Kemp's telephone number were necessary to allow the police to call the apartment because no one was answering the door. Finally, questions about whether Jackie needed an ambulance were necessary to determine if anyone on the scene needed emergency medical care. These questions were also directed at resolving the present emergency. The court only allowed thirty-nine seconds of the 911 call to be played for the jury. In the excerpt, Jackie can be heard saying her name, Kemp's name, that Kemp had a gun, and that he had, he had the gun on me, he had me sittin' down with him like this while he's wavin' the gun around talkin' `bout he's seein' people. This been goin' on all night. The court was clearly being cautious in allowing only this short excerpt. Jackie's statements in this excerpt, like her statements in much of the remainder of the call, were made under circumstances objectively indicating that the primary purpose of the interrogation [was] to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency and were therefore nontestimonial. Id. at 2274. The Confrontation Clause does not prohibit their admission. Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 53-54, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004). The court did not err in admitting these statements. See United States v. Clemmons, 461 F.3d 1057, 1060-61 (8th Cir.2006); Middleton v. Roper, 455 F.3d 838, 854-57 (8th Cir.2006); United States v. Peneaux, 432 F.3d 882, 895-896 (8th Cir.2005); United States v. Brun, 416 F.3d 703, 706-08 (8th Cir.2005); United States v. Lee, 374 F.3d 637, 643-45 (8th Cir.2004).