Opinion ID: 835155
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Issues of Federal Law

Text: The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides, in part: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right    to be confronted with the witnesses against him   . In Crawford, the United States Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment prohibits the admission of testimonial statements of witnesses absent from a criminal trial, unless the declarant is unavailable and the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine. 541 U.S. at 59, 124 S.Ct. 1354. The Court fashioned that holding in order to address the principal evil targeted by the Confrontation Clause, which was the use of ex parte examinations as evidence against the accused. Id. at 50, 124 S.Ct. 1354. The Court did not offer a comprehensive definition of a testimonial statement, but it did offer suggestions as to the meaning of that term. The Court observed that testimony is [a] solemn declaration or affirmation made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact. Id. at 51, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (internal quotation marks omitted). A formal statement to government officers constitutes testimony, while a casual remark to an acquaintance does not. Id. at 51, 124 S.Ct. 1354. The Court then offered two examples of statements that would qualify as testimonial under any definition: ex parte testimony at preliminary hearings, and statements taken by police officers in the course of interrogations. Id. at 52, 124 S.Ct. 1354. The Court noted that such formal statements were testimonial whether they were taken by justices of the peace or police officers: The involvement of government officers in the production of testimonial evidence presents the same risk, whether the officers are police or justices of the peace. Id. at 53, 124 S.Ct. 1354. See also Melendez-Diaz, 557 U.S. at ___, 129 S.Ct. at 2532 (applying Crawford in the context of laboratory analysts' affidavits confirming results of drug tests). In Davis v. Washington , the Court offered an expanded discussion of what constitutes a testimonial statement. Davis consolidated two criminal cases, Davis v. Washington and Hammon v. State, which dealt with the admissibility of hearsay statements to a 9-1-1 operator and hearsay statements to police officers investigating a report of domestic disturbance. The Court opened its analysis by offering the following definition of testimonial statements: Statements are nontestimonial when made in the course of police interrogation under circumstances objectively indicating that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency. They are testimonial when the circumstances objectively indicate that there is no such ongoing emergency, and that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution. Davis, 547 U.S. at 822, 126 S.Ct. 2266. Although that definition focused on the purpose of an interrogation, the Court emphasized that statements made in the absence of interrogation were not necessarily nontestimonial: [I]t is in the final analysis the declarant's statements, not the interrogator's questions, that the Confrontation Clause requires us to evaluate. Id. at 822-23 n. 1, 126 S.Ct. 2266. The Court then applied that analysis to the facts of the cases. The declarant in Davis had made her statements over the phone in response to a 9-1-1 operator's questions, stating that the defendant was here jumpin' on me again and that he had just r[un] out the door. As a preliminary matter, the Court noted that [i]f 9-1-1 operators are not themselves law enforcement officers, they may at least be agents of law enforcement when they conduct interrogations of 9-1-1 callers. For purposes of the opinion  and without ruling on the issue  the Court considered the acts of the 9-1-1 operator in Davis to be acts of the police. Id. at 823 n. 2, 126 S.Ct. 2266. That said, four factors led the court to conclude that the declarant's statements to the 9-1-1 operator were not testimonial. First, the declarant was describing events as they were actually happening, rather than events that had occurred in the past. Second, a reasonable listener would recognize that the declarant was facing an ongoing emergency. Third, the statements elicited from the declarant were necessary to resolve a present emergency, rather than simply to learn    what had happened in the past. Finally, the declarant had not made her statements in a formal police interview: rather, they were provided over the phone, in an environment that was not tranquil, or even    safe. Id. at 827, 126 S.Ct. 2266 (emphasis removed). From those four factors, the Court concluded that the primary purpose of the declarant's interrogation by the 9-1-1 operator was to enable the police to deal with an ongoing emergency. The declarant's statements were not testimonial because she simply was not acting as a witness; she was not testifying.    No `witness' goes into court to proclaim an emergency and seek help. Id. at 828, 126 S.Ct. 2266 (emphasis in original). In contrast, the declarant in the companion case had made her statements to officers responding to a domestic disturbance call when there was no emergency in progress. The declarant's statements described possibly criminal past conduct, after that conduct had occurred. There was no ongoing emergency; the interrogating officer had heard no arguments or crashing and saw no one throw or break anything, and the declarant told the officers that there was no immediate threat to her person. The officers' interrogation of the declarant was formal in that it took place in a separate room, away from the defendant; the declarant deliberately recounted, in response to police questioning, how potentially criminal past events began and progressed; and the interrogation took place after the end of the events that the declarant was describing. Id. at 829-30, 126 S.Ct. 2266. From those factors, the Court concluded that the declarant's statements were testimonial, because they do precisely what a witness does on direct examination   . Id. at 830, 126 S.Ct. 2266 (emphasis in original). From those cases, we draw two preliminary conclusions regarding the arguments presented in this case. First, the Court has not stated, explicitly, whether a statement can be testimonial if it is made to anyone other than a judge or a law enforcement officer. However, the Court in Davis was willing to consider statements testimonial when the declarant made them to someone acting as an agent of a law enforcement organization, e.g., a 9-1-1 operator. Second, although Davis holds that the testimonial nature of a statement is determined by the primary purpose of the interrogation, it also holds that even when interrogation exists, it is in the final analysis the declarant's statements, not the interrogator's questions, that the Confrontation Clause requires us to evaluate. Id. at 822, 823 n. 1, 126 S.Ct. 2266. In other words, when the Court inquires into the primary purpose of an interrogation, it does not focus exclusively on the questions asked or the subjective intent behind them. [9] Rather, the Court infers the purpose of the interrogation by objectively examining the statements that the declarant makes and the circumstances under which the declarant makes them. The Court then determines whether those statements do precisely what a witness does on direct examination, and whether the circumstances of the statements are similar to the ex parte examinations condemned in Crawford. Id. at 830, 126 S.Ct. 2266. From that analysis, the Court infers the primary purpose of the interrogation in much the same way that, for example, a jury might infer a defendant's intentions from the results of his actions. Our cases have applied those principles. In State v. Mack, 337 Or. 586, 101 P.3d 349 (2004), we considered a factual scenario nearly identical to that presented in Crawford. Police attempted to interview a three-year-old child about an alleged murder that he had witnessed, but they could not establish a dialogue. A DHS caseworker assumed the primary role in questioning the child, while police videotaped the interview. This court held that the child's statements fell within the core class of statements that were testimonial under Crawford, because for all intents and purposes, they were made during police interrogation of a witness. Id. at 593, 101 P.3d 349. Mack rejected a series of arguments similar to those that the state raises here. First, the state asserted that the child's statements to the caseworker were not testimonial, because the caseworker was not a police officer. This court responded that the caseworker was acting as an agent, or a proxy, for the police when she elicited the statements from the child. Second, the state asserted that the caseworker's interview of the child lacked the formality that characterizes testimonial evidence. This court responded that the DHS caseworker had structured the interview in an age-appropriate way to elicit information from [the child] relevant to the police investigation, and that she had done so at the request of the officers while they videotaped the interviews. For those reasons, this court concluded, the interview was not meaningfully different from the interrogations in Crawford. Id. at 594, 101 P.3d 349. Finally, the state argued that whether or not the child's statements were testimonial was a question of the child's intent. This court responded that the primary focus in Crawford was on the method by which government officials elicited out-of-court statements for use in criminal trials, not on the declarant's intent or purpose in making the statement. [10] This court acknowledged that in some situations, such as an unsolicited statement or an emergency call to a government official, a declarant's intent may be relevant. Mack, however, did not present such a scenario, and this court concluded that the child's statements to the DHS caseworker were testimonial. Id. at 594-95, 101 P.3d 349. State v. Camarena, 344 Or. 28, 176 P.3d 380 (2008), dealt more directly with the question of what makes a statement testimonial. The declarant, during a 9-1-1 call, stated that the defendant had assaulted her [l]ike a minute before the call. This court, as did the Court in Davis, assumed that the 9-1-1 operator acted as an agent of the police. Id. at 37, 176 P.3d 380. The Court of Appeals had held that the declarant's statements were not testimonial, because the 9-1-1 operator's questions were calculated to determine whether an emergency existed and the nature and extent of [the declarant's] need for immediate assistance. Id. at 39-40, 176 P.3d 380 (quoting State v. Camarena, 208 Or.App. 575, 589, 145 P.3d 267 (2006)) (internal quotation marks omitted). In other words, the Court of Appeals had attempted to follow the Supreme Court's directive to inquire into the primary purpose of the interrogation by focusing on the intentions behind the questions asked. On review, this court rejected the analysis used by the Court of Appeals, emphasizing the Court's statement in Davis that the Confrontation Clause requires analysis of the declarant's statements, not the interrogator's questions. Id. at 40, 176 P.3d 380 (quoting Davis, 547 U.S. at 822-23 n. 1, 126 S.Ct. 2266). This court then applied the four factors listed in Davis to the facts of the case, and found that: (1) the lapse of time between the assault and the call was insufficient to suggest that the danger of a renewed assault had fully abated; (2) a reasonable person could infer from [the declarant's] responses that she faced an emergency; (3) the declarant's responses were necessary to help end that emergency; and (4) the environment from which the declarant was calling was not tranquil or safe. In short, an analysis of the declarant's statements, and the circumstances under which she made them, revealed that the primary purpose behind her 9-1-1 interrogation was to respond to an ongoing emergency. Accordingly, this court held that the declarant's initial 9-1-1 responses were nontestimonial, but the rest of her responses were testimonial, because they were not necessary to resolve that emergency. Id. at 40-41, 176 P.3d 380. Thus, in Mack and Camarena, this court emphasized that whether a statement is testimonial depends on an objective analysis of the contents and circumstances of the statement, rather than an attempt to determine only the subjective intentions of the questioner or the declarant. We infer the purpose of an interrogation from the totality of the circumstances in which it took place and the results that it yielded.