Opinion ID: 1594325
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: admission of a codefendant's unredacted statement

Text: At trial, the court granted Boykin's motion to prevent the State from using hearsay statements from Adams against Boykin unless they were changed from the active to the passive voice (redaction) to remove references to Boykin. [4] A State witness, who appears to have been poorly prepared, later testified that Adams had said that the money wasn't what they were after, but the keys is what was worth real money. Boykin moved for a mistrial, which the court denied. The court, instead, issued an instruction limiting the jury's consideration of the remark to the question of Adams' guilt. Again, we affirm the trial court. Boykin relies on Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968), wherein a conviction was reversed after a non-testifying codefendant's confession, that he and Bruton committed robbery, was admitted with a limiting instruction. The Supreme Court held that this violated Bruton's Sixth Amendment right to confront his accusers, expressly overruling earlier case law on the point. Bruton, id. Evans' [the codefendant] confession added substantial, perhaps even critical, weight to the Government's case in a form not subject to cross-examination, since Evans did not take the stand. Petitioner thus was denied his constitutional right of confrontation. Bruton, 391 U.S. at 128, 88 S.Ct. at 1623, 20 L.Ed.2d at 480. Bruton involved a joint trial, whereas this case involved severed trials, but Simmons v. United States, 440 F.2d 890 (7th Cir.1971), reached the same result in severed trials. The error in Simmons was not considered harmless because the only other admissible evidence connecting the defendant to the crime was uncorroborated testimony by a single witness. Simmons, id. We deign to express that the United States Supreme Court has not ruled on the precise point at issue here. In Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 208, 107 S.Ct. 1702, 1707, 95 L.Ed.2d 176, 186 (1987), that Court contrasted a codefendant's confession [that] was not incriminating on its face, and became so only when linked with evidence introduced later at trial to Bruton's powerfully incriminating statements, and observed that in the case of the former there does not exist the overwhelming probability that a jury will disregard limiting instructions. Richardson, id. However, the Court in Richardson declined to express an opinion on the admissibility of a confession in which the defendant's name has been replaced with a symbol or neutral pronoun. Richardson, 481 U.S. at 211 n.5, 107 S.Ct. at 1709 n.5, 95 L.Ed.2d at 188 n. 5. The Bruton rationale does not, in all cases, require reversal. As noted in Bruton itself, `[a] defendant is entitled to a fair trial but not a perfect one.' Bruton, 391 U.S. at 135, 88 S.Ct. at 1627, 20 L.Ed.2d at 484 (citation omitted). Unlike Bruton, where the codefendant's confession directly named the defendant as a participant, Adam's statement makes no direct reference to Boykin. The reference to they only states that Adams was not alone, a fact the testimony of several independent witnesses supports. [5] Boykin's own statements regarding his shoes and his It looks like they've got us now comment to Adams while in jail overwhelmingly out weight the minimally inculpatory effect of an isolated they as used by Adams. Adams' statement, in this setting, is not a powerfully incriminating statement as envisioned by Bruton. See Bruton, 391 U.S. at 135-36, 88 S.Ct. at 1627-28, 20 L.Ed.2d at 485. Despite violation of Boykin's Sixth Amendment right to confrontation through admission of Adams' unredacted statement, we hold the error, in this case, to be harmless. It was a cumulative statement. See Harrington v. California, 395 U.S. 250, 89 S.Ct. 1726, 23 L.Ed.2d 284 (1969) (cited with approval in Cruz v. New York, 481 U.S. 186, 193-194, 107 S.Ct. 1714, 1719, 95 L.Ed.2d 162, 172 (1987)). Error of constitutional dimension may be deemed harmless where the reviewing court finds, absent the error, it is clear beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury would have returned a conviction. State v. Miller, 429 N.W.2d 26, 36 (S.D.1988); State v. Garritsen, 421 N.W.2d 499 (S.D.1988); High Elk v. State, 344 N.W.2d 497 (S.D.1984).