Opinion ID: 2974368
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Information provided by the C.I. to Donegan

Text: During direct examination of Donegan by the Assistant U.S. Attorney, the following exchange ensued: Q. How did you come to being interested in Mr. Jones? - 19 - No. 05-5010 U.S. v. Jones A. I was contacted by a concerned citizen here in Davidson County who stated that he had been -- MR. COOPER [Jones’s trial attorney]: Your Honor, I’m going to object to the hearsay. THE COURT: Well, if it’s not offered for the truth of the matter asserted. In other words, members of the jury, someone can receive some information not knowing whether it is true or not, can later testify about receiving that information, and you’re not to consider that information as necessarily being true or untrue, because it’s not sworn to, but he can testify as to what he was told and what he did upon receiving that information. Go ahead. BY MR. KOSHY [the AUSA]: Q. If you would, just keep it in a very summary fashion what this person told you. For instance, did he tell you that Mr. Jones–that he could perhaps purchase controlled substances from Mr. Jones? A. Yes, that a person that he knew by Tony, and also knew his full name of Antonio Jones, that he could purchase cocaine from that person, gave me the address of 3288 Niagara Court as being his residence and two other locations where he would meet the informant, or the concerned citizen at that time, to make the deliveries of cocaine, one of those being on Stewarts Ferry near I-40 and the other one being closer downtown off North 1st. The questioning then turned to the steps Donegan took to investigate Jones. Jones argues that the admission of that evidence violates his Confrontation Clause rights. He did not raise a Confrontation Clause objection to the admission of the evidence at trial.4 “Because Defendant raised only a hearsay objection to these statements at trial, and did not challenge their admissibility on constitutional grounds, our review is governed by the plain error standard.” United States v. Hadley, 431 F.3d 484, 498 (6th Cir. 2005). “Pursuant to plain error review, an appellate court may only correct an error not raised at trial if there is (1) error, (2) that is plain, and (3) that affects substantial rights.” United States v. Cromer, 4 The trial predated the Supreme Court’s opinion in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004). - 20 - No. 05-5010 U.S. v. Jones 389 F.3d 662, 672 (6th Cir. 2004) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). “If all three conditions are met, an appellate court may then exercise its discretion to notice a forfeited error, but only if (4) the error seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). In Crawford, the Supreme Court held that “[w]here testimonial evidence is at issue, . . . the Sixth Amendment demands what the common law required: unavailability and a prior opportunity for cross-examination.” 541 U.S. at 68. The Court noted that the Confrontation Clause “does not bar the use of testimonial statements for purposes other than establishing the truth of the matter asserted.” Id. at 59 n.9. In Cromer, we declared that “[t]he proper inquiry” for whether a statement is testimonial is “whether the declarant intends to bear testimony against the accused.” “That intent, in turn,” we continued, “may be determined by querying whether a reasonable person in the declarant’s position would anticipate his statement being used against the accused in investigating and prosecuting the crime.” 389 F.3d at 672, 675. The Cromer court held that statements by a C.I. to police are testimonial. Id. at 675. It commented: Tips provided by confidential informants are knowingly and purposely made to authorities, accuse someone of a crime, and often are used against the accused at trial. The very fact that the informant is confidential–i.e., that not even his identity is disclosed to the defendant–heightens the dangers involved in allowing a declarant to bear testimony without confrontation. The allowance of anonymous accusations of crime without any opportunity for cross-examination would make a mockery of the Confrontation Clause. Ibid. - 21 - No. 05-5010 U.S. v. Jones The Cromer court then addressed whether in that case parts of the lead police investigator’s trial testimony that disclosed information provided to her by a C.I. violated the defendant’s Confrontation Clause rights. 389 F.3d at 675-79.5 The Cromer court divided the relevant parts of the police officer’s testimony into three sections for purposes of its analysis. Id. at 675-79. In the first section, the officer was asked on direct examination what her role was in investigating the defendant. She responded that she had received information about a particular address, and that she began investigating the address in connection with drug activity, as a result of which she came up with enough information for a search warrant. Cromer, 389 F.3d at 675. The Cromer court noted that that aspect of the officer’s testimony did not violate the Confrontation Clause because it arguably did not put any statements from the C.I. before the jury, and even if it did, the testimony “was provided merely by way of background.” The court stated that the Confrontation Clause does not bar assertions offered not for the truth of their content but rather to explain why the government commenced the investigation. By contrast, the Cromer court held that the second section of the officer’s testimony that revealed statements by the C.I. did amount to a Confrontation Clause violation. Also on direct examination, the officer was asked the names of the people the police believed, prior to executing the search of the residence in question, to be associated with the illegal activities at that address. She responded by saying that one was “a person nicknamed Nut, which is Mr. Sean Cromer.” 389 F.3d at 676. The Cromer court stated that “[t]his testimony was not offered merely to explain why a 5 Cromer was convicted by jury of possessing cocaine with intent to distribute. Id. at 665. - 22 - No. 05-5010 U.S. v. Jones government investigation was undertaken or to demonstrate the effect of the out-of-court statements on the officers,” but that “the purpose of this testimony could only have been to help establish that the person nicknamed ‘Nut’ . . . , which the prosecution demonstrated elsewhere in the trial was Sean Cromer’s nickname, had been involved with the illegal drug activity occurring at the . . . residence.” Id. at 676. The Cromer court found the first and second sections of the police officer’s testimony–based on statements by the C.I.–distinguishable on the following grounds: the second implicated Cromer in a way that went to the heart of the prosecution’s case; the first only alluded in the vaguest possible terms to the C.I.’s statements and linked those statements with actions taken by the officer; the first briefly explained why the government began the investigation of the residence and “at least arguably provided some assistance in understanding the background of the case.” The court noted that the second section informed the jury that the C.I. had implicated “Nut” in illegal activities, and stated that any attempt to link that to subsequent police activities was a “sham”; the central legal issue in the case was not whether illegal activity took place at the residence but rather whether Cromer knowingly participated in it. As such, the court found that “evidence that the government focused its investigation on Nut is helpful to the jury only insofar as it relates to the difficult question whether Cromer was involved in the illegal activity,” and concluded that “the purpose of this testimony was to establish the truth of the matter asserted: to prove that Cromer was, indeed, involved in the illegal activity, as stated by the CI.” Id. at 676-77. For similar reasons, the court found that the third category of objectionable - 23 - No. 05-5010 U.S. v. Jones testimony, the officer’s testimony on redirect regarding a physical description of Cromer provided by the CI, also violated the Confrontation Clause. Id. at 678. The Cromer court found that the error was plain under Crawford, and that Cromer’s substantial rights were violated because, in light of the closeness of the facts of that case, “the admission of statements directly tying Cromer to the crime likely impacted the outcome of the trial.” Accordingly, the court reversed Cromer’s conviction. Id. at 679. Cromer makes clear that statements made by a C.I. to the police can be “testimonial.” The question, in that case as well as in this one, then becomes whether the trial testimony of the police officer that refers to statements made to the officer by a non-testifying C.I. is offered to provide 1) background information regarding the investigation and why the police acted as they did, or 2) to prove the truth of the matter asserted. In this case, Donegan’s testimony regarding what the C.I. told him about Jones provided information to the jury about why Donegan investigated Jones, and that testimony was tied to subsequent actions taken by the police. Furthermore, it could be argued that the district court’s intervention and instruction mitigated the effect of the C.I.’s statements. On the other hand, Donegan’s testimony repeating the C.I.’s statements squarely implicated Jones as residing at 3288 Niagara, and tied Jones to drug activities based at that address. While there are no explicit indications that the prosecutor elicited the testimony for the purpose of using the evidence for the substance of the matter asserted, the form of the prosecutor’s question virtually ensured that Donegan’s response would be inculpatory on one or all of the central legal issues in the case. Furthermore, a review of the trial transcript shows no arguments or confusion over why the police investigated Jones. Under Cromer, it seems that the admission of Donegan’s testimony - 24 - No. 05-5010 U.S. v. Jones regarding testimonial statements made by the C.I. were in fact offered for the truth of the matter asserted, rather than to serve “the purpose of explaining how certain events came to pass or why the officers took the actions they did,” 389 F.3d at 676, and that the district court committed plain error in admitting it. The error did not affect Jones’s substantial rights, however. “An error affects substantial rights when the error was prejudicial, that is, when it ‘affected the outcome of the district court proceedings.’” United States v. Page, 232 F.3d 536, 544 (6th Cir. 2000) (quoting United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 734 (1993)). The government presented proof of four controlled drug buys; in 655 Joseph the police found drugs and a scale; in 3288 Niagara they found large amounts of drugs, firearms, photos of the defendant with firearms, photos of the defendant wearing clothing found at that residence, and paperwork of Jones’s; Jones admitted to living at 3288 Niagara and gave the police information regarding his drug supplier and the location of some of the firearms in the house, which he said he kept for protection. Under these circumstances, Jones cannot show that the admission of the one brief part of Donegan’s testimony in which Donegan repeated statements from the C.I. affected the outcome of his trial.