Opinion ID: 1889175
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Statements Subject Declarant to Criminal Liability

Text: The second step articulated in Tovar is to determine whether Vega-Lara's admitted statements were against Vega-Lara's interest in that they so far tended to subject Vega-Lara to criminal liability that a reasonable person in Vega-Lara's position would not have made the statements unless believing them to be true. See Tovar, 605 N.W.2d at 723; Minn. R. Evid. 804(b)(3). In Williamson v. United States, the Supreme Court concluded that the word statement, as used in the statement-against-interest exception, of the Fed.R.Evid. 804(b)(3), should be narrowly construed as a single declaration or remark rather than an entire confession narrative. 512 U.S. 594, 599, 114 S.Ct. 2431, 129 L.Ed.2d 476 (1994) (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Jones, 556 N.W.2d at 908. Williamson provides that the appropriate analysis under Rule 804(b)(3) does not consider whether an entire confession is, on balance, against the declarant's interest. 512 U.S. at 600-01, 114 S.Ct. 2431. Rather, courts must analyze whether individual declarations or remarks within a confession or conversation are each against the declarant's interest. Id. Explaining its holding, the Supreme Court in Williamson stated that Federal Rule 804(b)(3) is founded on the commonsense notion that reasonable people, even reasonable people who are not especially honest, tend not to make self-inculpatory statements unless they believe them to be true. 512 U.S. at 599, 114 S.Ct. 2431. The Court concluded that self-exculpatory statements embedded in a broader self-inculpatory narrative are not admissible under Rule 804(b)(3) because they are exactly the [statements] which people are most likely to make even when they are false; and mere proximity to other, self-inculpatory, statements does not increase the plausibility of the self-exculpatory statements. 512 U.S. at 600, 114 S.Ct. 2431. The Court held that Rule 804(b)(3) therefore does not allow admission of non-self-inculpatory statements, even if they are made within a broader narrative that is generally self-inculpatory. Williamson, 512 U.S. at 600-01, 114 S.Ct. 2431. After Williamson, the question for determining admissibility under Rule 804(b)(3) is still whether, in light of all the surrounding circumstances, the statement was sufficiently against the declarant's penal interest `that a reasonable person in the declarant's position would not have made the statement unless believing it to be true.' Williamson, 512 U.S. at 603-04, 114 S.Ct. 2431 (quoting Fed.R.Evid. 804(b)(3)). Given the Court's definition of statement in Williamson, courts must consider whether each declaration or remarkrather than the narrative or conversation as a wholeis sufficiently against the declarant's interest when determining whether a statement is admissible under the Rule 804(b)(3) exception. We adopted the Williamson rule in State v. Ford and now require courts to parse a declarant's generally self-inculpatory narrative to separate and omit from the narrative non-self-inculpatory declarations or remarks. State v. Ford, 539 N.W.2d 214, 227 (Minn.1995) (citing Williamson, 512 U.S. at 600-01, 114 S.Ct. 2431); see also Tovar, 605 N.W.2d at 723. Here, we consider Vega-Lara's confession to M.G. Though the confession may have been inculpatory as a whole, Williamson and Ford provide that we must individually analyze each of Vega-Lara's statements within the confession narrative to determine if they are admissible under Minn. R. Evid. 804(b)(3). See Williamson, 512 U.S. at 600-01, 114 S.Ct. 2431; Ford, 539 N.W.2d at 227. If each of the three challenged statements was sufficiently against Vega-Lara's penal interest in light of the surrounding circumstances, the district court did not err by admitting the statements. [14] We first observe that each of the three challenged statements refer to and incriminate another person. But Rule 804(b)(3) does not necessarily preclude the admission of a statement that inculpates a third person. Though the Supreme Court, when it interpreted Fed.R.Evid. 804(b)(3) in Williamson, warned that confessions by an accomplice may not be entirely self-inculpatory, the Court did not announce a categorical rule that requires the exclusion of statements with incriminating references to third parties. See 512 U.S. at 601, 603, 114 S.Ct. 2431; see also Fed. R.Evid. 804 advisory committee's note (These decisions, however, by no means require that all statements implicating another person be excluded from the category of declarations against interest.). [15] In fact, the Court suggested that a statement that names a third party may be admissible when it said, Even the confessions of arrested accomplices may be admissible if they are truly self-inculpatory, rather than merely attempts to shift blame or curry favor. Williamson, 512 U.S. at 603, 114 S.Ct. 2431. As Justice Antonin Scalia explained in his concurrence, a declarant's statement is not magically transformed from a statement against penal interest into one that is inadmissible merely because the declarant names another person or implicates a possible codefendant. Id. at 606, 114 S.Ct. 2431 (Scalia, J., concurring) (emphasis added). Under the Supreme Court's holding in Williamson, statements that name or incriminate a third party may not be per se inadmissible. But it is clear that such statements should be scrutinized carefully. This is because they tend not to be entirely self-inculpatory. But such statements can be admitted under the statement-against-interest exception to the hearsay rule if, in light of all the surrounding circumstances, they are sufficiently against the declarant's penal interest `that a reasonable person in the declarant's position would not have made the statement unless believing it to be true.' Williamson, 512 U.S. at 603-04, 114 S.Ct. 2431 (quoting Fed.R.Evid. 804(b)(3)). [16] Based upon the foregoing analytical framework, even though Vega-Lara's three statements to M.G. refer to and incriminate another person they may nonetheless be admitted if they are truly self-inculpatory. In Williamson, the Supreme Court suggested that the confessions of arrested accomplices may not be admissible if they are merely attempts to shift blame or curry favor. 512 U.S. at 603, 114 S.Ct. 2431. Similarly, in Tovar , we concluded that a declarant's statements were self-interested and non-self-inculpatory because they were made in an attempt to obtain a plea bargain and [the declarant] appeared to downplay his own involvement in [the] murder and exaggerate the involvement of others. 605 N.W.2d at 724. Here, Vega-Lara was not speaking with law enforcement agents, attempting to secure a plea bargain in exchange for informing on accomplices, or testifying at his own trial, attempting to lessen his culpability. Instead, Vega-Lara was conversing with a friend, without any expectation that his statements could be used to curry favor with law enforcement. Williamson, 512 U.S. at 603, 114 S.Ct. 2431. [17] Additionally, though Vega-Lara's statements demonstrate that other individuals may have been involved in the robbery and murder of Mesa-Ortiz, the statements do not shift blame away from Vega-Lara. In the first two statements, Vega-Lara admitted that he and another person each carried a gun and went to the house of prostitution with the intent to commit a robbery. The fact that Vega-Lara claimed that another person went with him and also carried a gun does not lessen Vega-Lara's own culpability. In these first two statements, Vega-Lara did not downplay his own involvement or exaggerate the involvement of others. The statements so far tended to subject Vega-Lara to criminal liability that a reasonable person would not have made the statements if they were not true. Vega-Lara's third statement, as relayed by M.G. was that another person was struggling with the victim and Mr. Vega-Lara shot the victim. This statement presents a closer call because it could be interpreted as Vega-Lara offering a justification for the shootingthat another person was struggling with Mesa-Ortiz. But even this statement falls short of the kind of finger-pointing and blame-shifting behavior characterized as unreliable in Williamson. See 512 U.S. at 603, 114 S.Ct. 2431. As the statement was relayed to the jury, Vega-Lara did not explicitly say that he shot Mesa-Ortiz because of the struggle. In the context of conversing with M.G., Vega-Lara was simply recounting the events as he remembered them. At its core, the third statement is self-inculpatory because it identifies Vega-Lara as the shooter and tends to subject Vega-Lara to criminal liability. Further, it does so without shifting blame, without exaggerating another person's culpability, or lessening the criminality of Vega-Lara's act at the expense of a third person. We conclude that the third statement was sufficiently against Vega-Lara's penal interest that a reasonable person in Vega-Lara's position would not have made the statement unless he believed it was true. For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that all three statements to M.G. directly inculpate Vega-Lara. Cf. Tovar, 605 N.W.2d at 723 (This analysis requires the court to construe the term `statement' narrowly and allow only those statements that directly inculpate the declarant....). In light of the circumstances, the fact that Vega-Lara's three statements inculpate another person as well as himself does not make them less reliable. We conclude that each statement so tended to subject Vega-Lara to criminal liability without lessening the criminality of his act at the expense of a third party that a reasonable person in Vega-Lara's position would not have made the statements if they were not true. [18]