Opinion ID: 2025275
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Bruton and Richardson

Text: Although it is often reasonable to assume that a jury has followed a trial judge's limiting instructions regarding evidence admitted for one purpose but not for another, there are some contexts in which the risk that the jury will not, or cannot, follow instructions is so great, and the consequences of failure so vital to the defendant, that the practical and human limitations of the jury system cannot be ignored. [Citations.] ( Bruton, 391 U.S. at 135, 20 L.Ed.2d at 485, 88 S.Ct. at 1627.) Bruton thus could not accept limiting instructions as an adequate substitute for petitioner's constitutional right of cross-examination in a case where a nontestifying codefendant's powerfully incriminating extrajudicial statements of doubtful credibility were introduced in a joint trial, even though the jury was instructed to disregard the statements in determining the defendant's guilt or innocence. Bruton, 391 U.S. at 124-25, 135-37, 20 L.Ed.2d at 478-79, 485, 88 S.Ct. at 1621-22, 1628. Bruton has now been given new meaning by the decision in Richardson v. Marsh (1987), 481 U.S. 200, 95 L.Ed.2d 176, 107 S.Ct. 1702. In Richardson, the Court held that a defendant's Federal constitutional right of confrontation (U.S. Const., amends. VI, XIV) is not violated by the use at a joint trial of a nontestifying codefendant's confession, although the defendant is linked to the confession by other evidence, when the confession is redacted to eliminate even anonymous references to the defendant and when the jury is properly instructed not to use the confession against the defendant. Richardson, 481 U.S. at 211, 95 L.Ed.2d at 188, 107 S.Ct. at 1709. Fundamental to the Court majority's reasoning in Richardson was its view that, whereas Bruton teaches that a jury cannot be assumed to have obeyed its instructions and disregarded a powerfully incriminating codefendant's confession that expressly implicates a defendant, a different situation is presented when the codefendant's confession does not intrinsically incriminate the defendant. ( Richardson, 481 U.S. at 208, 95 L.Ed.2d at 186, 107 S.Ct. at 1707.) The Richardson majority felt that, even though inferences may be created by extrinsic evidence that links the defendant with the confession, [w]here the necessity of such linkage is involved, it is a less valid generalization that the jury will not likely obey the instruction and, while it may not always be simple for the members of a jury to obey the instruction that they disregard an incriminating inference, there does not exist the overwhelming probability of their inability to do so that is the foundation of Bruton 's exception to the general rule. Richardson, 481 U.S. at 208, 95 L.Ed.2d at 186, 107 S.Ct. at 1707-08. In order to reconsider our previous opinion in light of Richardson, we initially inquire whether the facts of this case bring it within the terms of Richardson 's newly announced refinement of the Bruton rule. We conclude that they do not. First, there was no redaction whatever of the statements attributed by Stalder to Olinger and admitted into evidence during the joint trial of Olinger and defendant. Indeed, redaction would have been difficult, since evidence of the statements was found solely in the trial testimony of Stalder, who was not a police officer but an admitted criminal himself, and the statements apparently had never been reduced to writing prior to trial. Under these circumstances, procuring admissibility through attempts at redaction is a chancy enterprise that has been much criticized. (See Bruton, 391 U.S. at 134 n. 10, 20 L.Ed.2d at 484 n. 10, 88 S.Ct. at 1626 n. 10; People v. Cruz (1988), 121 Ill.2d 321, 330.) This fact, however, while serving to set our case apart from Richardson, might not by itself constitute a weighty distinction if there were nothing worthy of redaction. Second, and more telling, one of the statements attributed to Olinger named one of the murder victims and Bill as being the two persons who stood in the way of a takeover by Olinger of the local drug traffic. It was that very victim with whom defendant, bearing the given name William, had jointly engaged in unlawful drug traffic. Another statement attributed to Olinger was that he would procure drugs from someone who would bring them from Kansas City; other testimony showed defendant to be acquainted with a Kansas City drug dealer and to have participated with the victim Adams in bringing drugs back from the dealer. In view of these facts, at least the first statement differed from what was found acceptable in Richardson, since, particularly in the context of other trial evidence, it not only failed to eliminate any reference to defendant's existence but also could reasonably be construed (and is conceded by the People) to name defendant specifically through its reference to Bill as the victim's associate in drug dealing. (See Richardson, 481 U.S. at 211, 95 L.Ed.2d at 188, 107 S.Ct. at 1709.) The Richardson Court expressly refrained from approving the use at trial of codefendants' confessions that, as redacted, name defendants only by symbols or neutral pronouns ( Richardson, 481 U.S. at 211 n. 5, 95 L.Ed.2d at 188 n. 5, 107 S.Ct. at 1709 n. 5; People v. Hernandez (1988), 121 Ill.2d 293, 313); a fortiori, admissions naming defendants by their actual nicknames are not permitted. Accordingly, the impropriety of admitting into evidence the Stalder testimony about Olinger's statement regarding Jim Adams and Bill was not relieved by Richardson from the full force of Bruton 's disapproval. Even the second statement to which Stalder testified, about obtaining drugs from a Kansas City courier, though arguably incriminating defendant only by inference and thus permissible under Richardson, differed significantly from the evidence found acceptable in Richardson. In Richardson, the codefendant's redacted statement made no reference whatever to the defendant's existence and it was she alone whose testimony placed herself in the codefendant's company, whereas here the codefendant's statement referred to someone  I don't know who it was that was going to Kansas City to bring back cocaine and marijuana, thus directly affirming the existence of a Kansas City courier who then might be identified with defendant by the force of other testimony. The People argue that the statement naming the victim and Bill does not incriminate defendant even though, as the People acknowledge, it refers to him by name, because it is not a confession but rather an expression of intent by Olinger to victimize defendant and, as such, tends to exculpate rather than incriminate defendant. Without pursuing this point extensively, the People then argue that, in any event, the real issue is whether the limiting jury instructions adequately protected defendant from misuse against him of Olinger's statement. Before assessing the adequacy of the instructions to which the People refer, we wish to observe that, as defendant notes in his supplemental reply brief on remand, his situation with respect to the statement about Bill falls someplace between those two end points of the spectrum represented by a codefendant's confession explicitly naming a defendant ( Bruton ) and one that, as redacted, makes no reference at all to a defendant ( Richardson ). (See People v. Cruz (1988), 121 Ill.2d 321, 330.) As we noted in our earlier opinion in this cause, for its use at a joint trial to be weighed against a defendant's rights to confrontation, a codefendant's confession or admission need not expressly state that a defendant was involved in an offense; it is sufficient that it clearly imply the defendant's guilt when considered in light of other evidence against the defendant. People v. Duncan (1987), 115 Ill.2d 429, 443 (and cases cited therein). Here, though Olinger's statement bespoke intent rather than accomplishment in relation to certain crimes, that fact is purely academic and his statement was nonetheless a confession or admission  the more so since the solicitation that it constituted would itself have been a crime, of which intent was an element (see Ill. Rev. Stat. 1981, ch. 38, par. 8-1). In its evidentiary context, the statement tended ultimately to incriminate defendant because, as the jury was urged to believe, it tended to show that Olinger was seeking a confederate and found one in defendant after having had a chance to spend some hours with defendant and observe the advantages of combining with him rather than robbing or killing him. Thus, although Olinger's naked statement ostensibly involved an effort to victimize rather than conspire with defendant, it is proper for us to examine it in light both of Bruton and Richardson and of our own precedents regarding nontestifying codefendants' statements. If such a statement were otherwise admissible under the rule of Richardson, a proper limiting instruction would still be required. ( Richardson, 481 U.S. at 211, 95 L.Ed.2d at 188, 107 S.Ct. at 1709.) Here, not only was the limiting instruction somewhat removed in time from the Stalder testimony about Olinger's effort to obtain a confederate to take over drug traffic, but its mandate was overlooked even by the prosecution in closing jury argument and by the People in briefing this court. The People's supplemental brief on remand describes Olinger's wish to join with a confederate and take over the drug traffic as being one link in a chain of circumstantial evidence showing defendant's guilt; yet the evidence of such a desire on Olinger's part was Stalder's testimony that Olinger had made such statements, and under the trial court's instructions the testimony was to be considered against Olinger only, not against defendant. Indeed, the appellate court itself appears to have considered the same Stalder testimony as evidence of defendant's guilt. See 133 Ill. App.3d 489, 494. Under these circumstances, we do not believe that the trial court's instructions in the case at bar clearly directed the jury not to consider as part of the case against defendant the testimony by Stalder either about Olinger's statement naming Jim Adams and Bill or about Olinger's statement regarding a Kansas City drug courier. The very fact that, given the interwoven nature of the prosecution's case, it might be quite difficult adequately to impart proper limiting instructions supports our view that the trial court erred in failing to sever defendant's trial from Olinger's. The People argue that we should not force upon trial courts a costly and unworkable choice of severing trials whenever evidence against one defendant might tend to implicate another, of completely pretrying a case to determine whether such implication would occur, or of reaching such a determination and granting a new trial only after the first trial was largely completed. ( Cf. Richardson, 481 U.S. at 209, 95 L.Ed.2d at 187, 107 S.Ct. at 1708-09.) On the scales of justice, however, considerations of fairness normally outweigh administrative concerns ( Richardson, 481 U.S. at 217, 95 L.Ed.2d at 192, 107 S.Ct. at 1712 (Stevens, J., dissenting, joined by Brennan and Marshall, JJ.)), and in any event, as we point out infra, the Illinois courts have long held that a choice must be made between severance, nonuse of a nontestifying codefendant's admissions, or redaction to eliminate all reference to the implicated defendant ( e.g., People v. Patris (1935), 360 Ill. 596, 601).