Opinion ID: 1369936
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: APPLICATION OF ER 804(b)(3)

Text: Hearsay is a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at a trial or hearing, which is offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement. ER 801(c). The declarant is the person who originally makes the statement in question. ER 801(b). In the present case a police informant, Gordon Milliron, was permitted to testify as to conversations which he had with William DeHart (hereinafter declarant) while arranging a drug purchase for the police. Petitioner, John Parris, challenges the admissibility of this testimony by Milliron. At which time I asked Mr. DeHart what was going on, and he said ... that the drugs were being gotten. I said, Do you mean that John's going to get them? I don't recall what his response was specifically. Then I asked him, I said, Will it be more than a half hour? He said, I don't think so. I said, Well, do you think he'll return with the drugs, or the money, and the quality and quantity would be accurate? And he said, Yes, I think so. There won't be any problem. Report of Proceedings, at 276. These statements are clearly hearsay. Milliron's testimony relates out-of-court statements which were offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted, that is, that Parris was going to get drugs. As hearsay the statements are only admissible if they fall within an established hearsay exception. ER 802. The only possible exception that could apply is that for statements against penal interest. This exception, only recently recognized by Washington and the federal courts by their adoption of the Federal Rules of Evidence, provides that if a declarant is unavailable his statements are excepted from the hearsay rule when they so far tended to subject him to civil or criminal liability ... that a reasonable man in his position would not have made the statement unless he believed it to be true. ER 804(b)(3). See 4 J. Weinstein & M. Berger, Evidence ¶ 804(b)(3)[01] (1981); 5A K. Tegland, Wash. Prac. § 405 (2d ed. 1982). The initial problem faced by this court is the determination of whether this rule applies to DeHart's statements. In evaluating whether a statement constitutes a declaration against interest under ER 804(b)(3), the first step is to determine who actually made the statement. In other words, who is the declarant? In the above passage the trial judge, relying on ER 804(b)(3), permits Milliron to repeat both the questions that Milliron asked DeHart and DeHart's answers. The question-answer format thus complicates the task of determining who is the declarant. For instance, the questions contain factual assertions in which DeHart acquiesced by answering affirmatively. All of the factual assertions in Milliron's questions, except the crucial one identifying the defendant as the party delivering the drugs, appear to have been affirmed by DeHart. Moreover, the questions are not relevant without their answers and the answers are meaningless without the questions. It would be fruitless, therefore, to examine the admissibility of the questions apart from their answers. The better approach, and one implicit in the trial court's ruling and the majority opinion, is to treat the statements as if they were all attributable to DeHart. [2] Once the declarant is identified, the next task is to determine whether the statements fall within the terms of ER 804(b)(3). To evaluate this problem, a little terminology and history of the rule is needed. First, the terminology. An inculpatory statement is one which implicates both the declarant and the defendant. Normally, the prosecution seeks to introduce evidence of inculpatory statements. [3] Exculpatory statements, offered by the defendant, tend to establish the defendant's innocence by substituting the declarant for the defendant as the one responsible for the crime. Both inculpatory and exculpatory statements may be further classified as collateral or noncollateral. A noncollateral statement contains a factual statement which directly implicates only the declarant. For instance, the declarant says, I killed X; the defendant is innocent. This statement exculpates the defendant by substituting the declarant for the defendant. It contains no collateral reference to someone else's criminal activity. In contrast, a statement such as, The defendant and I killed X. implicates both the defendant and the declarant. This type of statement is called a collateral statement. [4] Technically, only that portion of the statement in which the declarant admits his own guilt falls within the terms of ER 804(b)(3). The second portion of the statement implicates a third party. That portion of the statement may actually be in the declarant's interest. For instance, the declarant may believe he will suffer less severe punishment if he shares the guilt or suggests to the police that he can help them convict someone else. Commentators have suggested several ways to handle this problem. For instance, Dean McCormick set out three solutions: First, admit the entire declaration because part is disserving and hence by a kind of contagion of truthfulness, all will be trustworthy. Second, compare the strength of the self-serving interest and the disserving interest in making the statement as a whole, and admit it all if the disserving interest preponderates, and exclude it all if the self-serving interest is greater. Third, admit the disserving parts of the declaration, and exclude the self-serving parts. The third solution seems the most realistic method of adjusting admissibility to trustworthiness, where the serving and disserving parts can be severed. (Footnotes omitted.) E. Cleary, McCormick on Evidence § 279, at 677 (2d ed. 1972). Weinstein and Berger suggest that a similar test would be appropriate when statements are both disserving and neutral in effect. Because DeHart's statements contain references to someone else's criminal activity, rather than his own, they must be viewed as collateral statements which contain potentially self-serving material. Thus, the majority should have at least explored the possibility of omitting the statements referring to Parris. If it had done so, it would have discovered that no part of DeHart's statements refer to his criminal activity. The majority ignores this alternative and asserts that it is appropriate to admit any statement made during the conduct of criminal activity. The history of the rule, revealing as it does suspicion of the exception's reliability, supports only a narrow reading of the rule. At common law, statements against penal interest were thought to be insufficiently reliable to be admitted under any exception to the hearsay rule. See generally 4 J. Weinstein & M. Berger, at 804-95; Donnelly v. United States, 228 U.S. 243, 57 L.Ed. 820, 33 S.Ct. 449 (1913). The Federal Rules of Evidence and our state's counterpart depart from the common law and allow such statements when the declarant is unavailable and the statements so far tend to subject him to criminal liability that a reasonable person would not have made the statements. Fed. R. Evid. 804(b)(3); ER 804(b)(3). The rule also provides that a statement tending to exculpate the accused is not admissible unless corroborated. ER 804(b)(3). Originally, the federal version contained an additional sentence stating: `A statement or confession offered against the accused in a criminal case, made by a codefendant or other person implicating both himself and the accused, is not within this exception.' 4 J. Weinstein & M. Berger, at 804-11. Believing that it was unwise to state constitutional doctrine in a rule of evidence, Congress deleted the sentence. 5A K. Tegland, at 304. Without a specific prohibition of inculpatory statements, the majority of the federal courts have ruled that such statements are admissible under the rule. See, e.g., United States v. Alvarez, 584 F.2d 694 (5th Cir.1978); United States v. Sarmiento-Perez, 633 F.2d 1092 (5th Cir.1981). In doing so, however, the courts have held that the corroborating circumstances required for exculpatory statements are also necessary for inculpatory statements. See United States v. Alvarez, supra ; United States v. Sarmiento-Perez, supra . A 3-step test, therefore, has been developed for applying the rule. The Sarmiento-Perez court states it as follows: Thus, under Alvarez, the general test for the admissibility of statements against penal interest is the same, whether those statements are offered to exculpate or to inculpate the accused: (1) The declarant must be unavailable; (2) the statement must so far tend to subject the declarant to criminal liability that a reasonable person in his position would not have made the statement unless he believed it to be true; and (3) the statement must be corroborated by circumstances clearly indicating its trustworthiness. Sarmiento-Perez, at 1098. Washington, without discussion, adopted the equivalent of Fed. R. Evid. 804(b)(3). Although strong authority, nothing requires that this court follow the federal decisions in this area. The majority opinion ignores the option of a restricted rule and assumes that we should apply federal precedents and interpret the rule to include inculpatory statements. I disagree. I believe admission of exculpatory statements against penal interest may be constitutionally required while admission of inculpatory statements is not. Admission of exculpatory statements preserves the defendant's fundamental constitutional right to present witnesses and testimony on his own behalf. This right outweighs any countervailing interest the State may have in excluding marginally reliable testimony. In other words, once a threshold reliability is determined, the constitution requires that the statement be admitted. See generally Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 35 L.Ed.2d 297, 93 S.Ct. 1038 (1973). On the other hand, the State's right to introduce inculpatory evidence enjoys no comparable constitutional protection. This fact alone justifies a narrow interpretation of ER 804(b)(3). That conclusion is bolstered once one considers the overwhelming evidence that such statements were traditionally viewed as so unreliable that they were not generally admissible. Furthermore, the common law approach recognized a distinctive problem with statements against interest. Their reliability depends entirely on generalizations about human motivation. Once a declarant is unavailable, the validity of those generalizations may not be explored by cross examination. The vagaries of human behavior are not, in my opinion, sufficiently predictable to excuse infringement on the defendant's right to confront his accuser. Thus I favor a rule in Washington that interprets ER 804(b)(3) to allow only exculpatory statements against penal interest. Several states have, in fact, enacted versions of Fed. R. Evid. 804(b)(3) that exclude inculpatory statements. Arkansas, Florida, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, and North Dakota all recognize that these statements should not be allowed. [5] I believe such a narrow interpretation of ER 804(b)(3) is required by Const. art. 1, § 22, which provides in part: In criminal prosecutions the accused shall have the right ... to meet the witnesses against him face to face ... (Italics mine.) I cannot imagine a more explicit requirement than face-to-face confrontation. Such a requirement assures three fundamental safeguards of confrontation: (1) statements made in court are under oath; (2) the witness is subject to cross examination, the `greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth'; and (3) cross examination permits the jury to observe the demeanor of the witness and thereby evaluate his credibility. Herbert v. Superior Court, 117 Cal. App.3d 661, 172 Cal. Rptr. 850, 852 (1981). In United States v. Benfield, 593 F.2d 815, 821 (8th Cir.1979), the court observed that: The right of cross-examination reinforces the importance of physical confrontation. Most believe that in some undefined but real way recollection, veracity, and communication are influenced by face-to-face challenge. Under the majority's present interpretation of ER 804(b)(3), a defendant is denied the right not only to cross-examine the witness and have the jury observe his demeanor, but is denied the important right to physically confront that witness. I believe Const. art. 1, § 22 alone requires that the type of inculpatory statement offered against petitioner, purportedly under ER 804(b)(3), be prohibited. Notwithstanding these considerations, the majority sees fit to adopt the federal interpretation of ER 804(b)(3) wholesale. It does not, however, correctly apply that doctrine. Using this 3-step process, the majority first implicitly finds that the declarant was unavailable and then proceeds to the second step of determining whether the statements so far tended to expose the declarant to criminal liability that a reasonable person would not have made them unless he believed them to be true. The majority concludes that the statements meet this test. I disagree. First, the statements do not implicate the declarant in criminal activity. Instead, they implicate a third person, not the declarant. Thus, each question refers to the criminal activity of a third person. For instance, the first and most critical question suggests that a man by the name of John is going to get drugs. This question should never have been admitted because the witness could not remember the answer. Even if he had, however, a witness' observation that someone else is going to get drugs is not the basis of criminal liability. The declarant did not say that John was going to get drugs for him; he only acquiesced by silence in the police informant's suggestion that they were being gotten. The majority attempts to circumvent this problem by arguing that the statements taken within the context of the drug transaction would subject DeHart to criminal sanctions. No court has adopted such a broad rule. Furthermore, I consider such a test to be dangerous and illegal precedent. The logic of the majority's analysis would lead to a rule that allows any statement made during the commission of a criminal act to be admissible under the declaration against interest exception. A better rule is set out in People v. Traylor, 23 Cal. App.3d 323, 100 Cal. Rptr. 116 (1972). That court focused on the rationale for the rule and concluded: The test here is not whether the statement could provide a link in a chain of evidence leading to the declarant's criminal liability, but whether the statement satisfies the reason why declarations against interest are admitted as an exception to the hearsay rule. According to Wigmore [t]he basis of the Exception is the principle of experience that a statement asserting a fact distinctly against one's interest is unlikely to be deliberately false or heedlessly incorrect, and is thus sufficiently sanctioned, though oath and cross-examination are wanting. (5 Wigmore, Evidence (3d ed. 1940) § 1457, pp. 262-263.) Traylor, at 331. Nor are these statements of the type that implicate both the declarant and a third party. Many courts have ruled that these statements are admissible because they directly implicate the declarant and are therefore presumably reliable as to the collateral reference to a third person. See generally Comment, Federal Rule of Evidence 804(b)(3) and Inculpatory Statements Against Penal Interest, 66 Cal. L. Rev. 1189, 1190 n. 7 (1978). In the instant case the statements implicate only the third person. There is absolutely no explicit reference to DeHart's criminal activity. Second, contrary to the majority's assertion, DeHart had a strong motivation to lie. The rationale for the declaration against interest exception is that reasonable people do not make statements against their interest. See Comment to ER 804(b)(3). If the facts surrounding the making of the statement suggest that the declarant may have been acting in his own best interest by lying, the rationale, and therefore the rule, does not apply. See 4 J. Weinstein & M. Berger, Evidence ¶ 804(b)(3)[02], at 804-98 (1981). Here, DeHart, as a dealer in drugs, had a strong interest in protecting his supplier. By acquiescing in Milliron's suggestions that Parris was his supplier, DeHart drew suspicion away from himself and/or the real supplier. Thus, if he was walking into a setup, the police would go after Parris as the one most likely to have a quantity of drugs. [6] Finally, contrary to the majority's assertion, the statements are not spontaneous. They are the direct result of suggestive questioning by a police informant who had a significant interest in pleasing the police. At the time he was working with the police Milliron was facing the possibility of habitual criminal charges being filed against him for a recent felony. He admitted his interest in pleasing the police at trial. He stated: A. At that time, realizing the possible penalties that I was faced with, I asked them if there was something I could do in return. Q. Return for what? A. As opposed to the charge. Q. You mean not bring [ sic ] any charge against you? A. Yes. Report of Proceedings, at 286. [7] Each of these factors contribute to the conclusion that the statements do not fall within the terms of ER 804(b)(3). A more difficult question, however, involves the relationship of this hearsay exception to the confrontation clause. I believe the confrontation clauses of the state and federal constitutions require that this evidence be excluded irrespective of whether it falls within the terms of ER 804(b)(3).