Opinion ID: 222737
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Co-Defendant's Statement

Text: The government sought a pretrial ruling on the admissibility of statements made by Braziel's co-defendants, as well as an order to limit defense counsel from eliciting portions of these statements that would give rise to a violation of Bruton. The motion stated that the government would call as a witness FBI Special Agent Donald Kaiser who would relate co-defendant Donald Thomas' confession. Thomas, also on trial with Braziel and Miller, would not testify and thus would not be subject to cross-examination on the statement. The motion summarized the statement that the government would elicit from Special Agent Kaiser. It included a description of the property transaction, but it did not mention that Braziel was incriminated in that section, nor did it provide any description of the redaction that the government intended to use. The day before Special Agent Kaiser's testimony at trial, the government discussed with defense counsel and the court how it had redacted Thomas' statement to conceal Braziel's identity. The prosecutors noted that the original statement referred to Braziel as the purchaser of 14820-22 South Hoyne Avenue, but they had replaced his name with the term straw buyer. Braziel's counsel made no objection at that time. At trial the next day, Special Agent Kaiser offered his testimony: Q: Did Donald Thomas tell you about getting money for any particular properties? A: Yes, he told me that he received $20,000 for the sale of 14822 South Hoyne in Harvey. Q: Did he tell you anything else about that transaction? A: Yes. Mr. Thomas explained to me that he had found a straw buyer, his term, for that property, and he explained the arrangement he had with that straw buyer. Specifically, he stated that the agreement was the straw buyer would purchase the property and then deed the property back to Mr. Thomas. Mr. Thomas would, had agreed to then purchase the property from that straw buyer several months later, and in that time frame Mr. Thomas was supposed to make the mortgage payments until he was able to repurchase that property. Q: Did Donald Thomas say whether he had paid the straw buyer? A: Yes, he indicated that he had agreed to and that he actually did pay that straw buyer $5,000 for the purchase of that property. Several minutes later, Braziel's counsel objected and requested a mistrial, claiming that the jury could identify Braziel as the straw buyer, so that admitting Thomas' incriminating statement without the opportunity to cross-examine him violated Braziel's Confrontation Clause rights under Bruton. [1] Although the Thomas statement was redacted, the jury heard other witnesses read mortgage and bank records naming Braziel as the purchaser of 14820-22 South Hoyne Avenue. Heather McCartney, an employee of lender Fremont Investment & Loan, read the following from a real estate contract in Fremont's loan application for the South Hoyne property as part of her testimony: Q: Who is the buyer? A: Alonzo Braziel. Q: What is the street address of the property at issue? A: 14820 and 22 South Hoyne, Harvey, Illinois 60426. A few minutes before Special Agent Kaiser read from Thomas' statement, he had testified about bank records he had reviewed as part of his investigation: A. The first real estate transaction is 14822 Hoyne Avenue in Harvey, and that transaction closed or funded on 12/20/2004. The seller was the Marquette Bank Trust 16575, and the [buyer] was Alonzo Braziel. [2] Putting these pieces together, the jury could have inferred that Braziel was the straw buyer to whom Thomas referred. The court deferred ruling on Braziel's mistrial motion until later that day when it reviewed the transcript from the conference the day before. Acknowledging some potential confusion in their prior discussion, the court then denied the mistrial motion. Braziel renewed his motion at the close of the trial, and the court again denied the motion.