Opinion ID: 2978433
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The tape-recording was properly admitted

Text: Prior to trial, Johnson moved to exclude the tape-recording, arguing that its admission would violate the Confrontation Clause, that O’Reilly’s statements were not sufficiently against his penal interest to be admissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 804(b)(3), and that the statements were more prejudicial than probative in violation of Federal Rule of Evidence 403. The district court denied the motion, holding that the Confrontation Clause was not implicated because the statements were not testimonial and that the statements were admissible under Rule 804(b)(3).
On the recording, O’Reilly speaks at length about the robbery, naming each of his five co-defendants and identifying Watson as the killer of the armed guard. He states that it was Johnson’s idea to rob the ATMs, which were near the headquarters of Ford Motor Company, because Johnson (a Ford employee) thought the ATMs would contain large amounts of cash shortly after Ford issued certain profit-sharing checks to its employees. O’Reilly states that Johnson surveilled the DFCU prior to the robbery and recruited two of his Ford co-workers to participate. O’Reilly also refers to Johnson as “expendable” and a “dumb-ass” because Johnson underestimated the number of guards who would be in the armored truck and the amount of money that would be in the ATMs.
The Confrontation Clause guarantees a criminal defendant the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” U.S. Const. amend. VI. In Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 53-54 (2004), the Supreme Court held that the Confrontation Clause bars the “admission of testimonial statements of a witness who did not appear at trial unless he was unavailable to testify, and the defendant had a prior opportunity for cross-examination.” We review de novo claims that the admission of evidence violated No. 08-1662 United States v. Johnson Page 5 the Confrontation Clause. See United States v. Mayberry, 540 F.3d 506, 515 (6th Cir. 2008). In determining whether statements are testimonial, we ask whether the declarant “intend[ed] to bear testimony against the accused.” United States v. Cromer, 389 F.3d 662, 675 (6th Cir. 2004). This, in turn, depends on “whether a reasonable person in the declarant’s position would anticipate his statement being used against the accused in investigating and prosecuting the crime.” Id. Because O’Reilly did not know that his statements were being recorded and because it is clear that he did not anticipate them being used in a criminal proceeding against Johnson, they are not testimonial, and the Confrontation Clause does not apply. See United States v. Johnson, 440 F.3d 832, 843 (6th Cir. 2006) (holding that an unwitting declarant’s secretly recorded statements to a close friend were nontestimonial); see also United States v. Mooneyham, 473 F.3d 280, 286-87 (6th Cir. 2007) (stating that co-defendant’s out-of-court statements to an undercover officer whose status was unknown to the declarant were nontestimonial); United States v. Watson, 525 F.3d 583, 589 (7th Cir. 2008) (“[A] statement unwittingly made to a confidential informant and recorded by the government is not ‘testimonial’ for Confrontation Clause purposes.”); United States v. Hendricks, 395 F.3d 173, 182 n.9, 184 (3d Cir. 2005) (same); United States v. Saget, 377 F.3d 223, 229 (2d Cir. 2004) (same). Johnson argues that our inquiry into whether the statements are testimonial should focus on Nix-Bey and the FBI’s encouragement of his questioning, but our precedent makes clear that the intent of O’Reilly, the declarant, determines whether the statements on the tape-recording are testimonial. Although Crawford clarified the requirements of the Confrontation Clause with respect to testimonial statements, it left open the question of whether nontestimonial statements continued to be governed by the test set forth in Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 66 (1980). See United States v. Arnold, 486 F.3d 177, 192-93 (6th Cir. 2007) (en banc). Roberts held that statements by an unavailable declarant were nonetheless admissible under the Confrontation Clause if they either fell into a firmly rooted hearsay exception or bore “particularized guarantees of trustworthiness.” Roberts, 448 U.S. at 66. In the No. 08-1662 United States v. Johnson Page 6 recent cases of Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813, 825 (2006) and Whorton v. Bockting, 549 U.S. 406, 420 (2007), the Supreme Court answered this question and explained that the Confrontation Clause has no bearing on nontestimonial out-of-court statements. Thus, Roberts no longer applies to statements such as O’Reilly’s, and their admissibility is subject only to the Federal Rules of Evidence, which we analyze below. See Arnold, 486 F.3d at 192-93. The Supreme Court’s recent clarification of the scope of the Confrontation Clause also eliminates any need to analyze the admissibility of the tape-recording under the rule established in Bruton v. United States, under which “[a]n accused is deprived of his rights under the Confrontation Clause when the confession of a nontestifying codefendant that implicates the accused is introduced into evidence at their joint trial . . . even if the jury is instructed to consider the confession only as evidence against the codefendant.” United States v. Cope, 312 F.3d 757, 780-81 (6th Cir. 2002) (citing Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 137 (1968)). Because it is premised on the Confrontation Clause, the Bruton rule, like the Confrontation Clause itself, does not apply to nontestimonial statements. See United States v. Pugh, 273 F. App’x 449, 455 (6th Cir. 2008) (“[T]he statement at issue . . . is nontestimonial in nature, and therefore, does not implicate the Confrontation Clause as analyzed under Bruton or otherwise.”); see also United States v. Vargas, 570 F.3d 1004, 1009 (8th Cir. 2009) (holding that Bruton does not apply to nontestimonial co-defendant statements); United States v. Pike, 292 F. App’x 108, 112 (2d Cir. 2008) (“[B]ecause the statement was not testimonial, its admission does not violate either Crawford [] or Bruton [].”). The inapplicability of Bruton and the Confrontation Clause to O’Reilly’s statements also forecloses Johnson’s argument that the tape-recording should have been redacted to eliminate the use of Johnson’s name. Cf. Gray vs. Maryland, 523 U.S. 185, 191-92 (1998) (discussing when statements otherwise inadmissible under Bruton may be cured by redaction). Although the parties do not discuss it, we also note that the Bruton rule guards against a risk that arises in joint trials, and Johnson and O’Reilly were not tried together. Therefore, even if Bruton did apply to nontestimonial statements, it is unclear that it No. 08-1662 United States v. Johnson Page 7 would apply to this case. See Adams v. Holland, 168 F. App’x 17, 19 (6th Cir. 2005) (distinguishing Bruton because defendant and declarant were not tried jointly); see also Hicks v. Straub, 377 F.3d 538, 554 (6th Cir. 2004) (distinguishing Bruton because in a single-defendant trial the jury is not “‘asked to perform the mental gymnastics of considering an incriminating statement against only one of two defendants’” (quoting Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U.S. 731, 735 (1969))). 3. The recording was admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence Because O’Reilly’s statements on the tape-recording are nontestimonial, “the only admissibility question . . . is whether the statement[s] satisf[y] the Federal (or State) Rules of Evidence.” Arnold, 486 F.3d at 192-93 (citing Davis, 547 U.S. at 824). Our standard of review of such issues is for abuse of discretion. See United States v. Vasilakos, 508 F.3d 401, 406 (6th Cir. 2007). For a statement to be admitted under the hearsay exception for statements against penal interest set forth in Rule 804(b)(3), the declarant must be unavailable, the statements must, “from the perspective of the average, reasonable person,” be adverse to the declarant’s penal interest, and corroborating circumstances must “truly establish the trustworthiness of the statement.”1 See United States v. Tocco, 200 F.3d 401, 414 (6th Cir. 2000); see also Williamson v. United States, 512 U.S. 594, 603-04 (1994) (discussing requirements for admission of evidence under Rule 804(b)(3)). Here, the first prong of the analysis is satisfied because Johnson does not challenge the district court’s conclusion that O’Reilly’s likelihood of invoking the Fifth Amendment if called to testify rendered him unavailable as a witness. The second prong is satisfied as well because from the perspective of an average, reasonable person the statements were adverse to O’Reilly’s penal interest: they admitted his participation 1 Rule 804(b)(3) states that the following is not excluded by the hearsay rule if the declarant is unavailable as a witness: A statement which was at the time of its making so far contrary to the declarant’s pecuniary or proprietary interest, or so far tended to subject the declarant to civil or criminal liability, or to render invalid a claim by the declarant against another, that a reasonable person in the declarant’s position would not have made the statement unless believing it to be true. A statement tending to expose the declarant to criminal liability and offered to exculpate the accused is not admissible unless corroborating circumstances clearly indicate the trustworthiness of the statement. Fed. R. Evid. 804(b)(3). No. 08-1662 United States v. Johnson Page 8 in an unsolved murder and bank robbery, exposing him to the possibility (and later, the reality) of a prosecution seeking the death penalty. The third prong of Rule 804(b)(3)’s trustworthiness analysis requires us to focus not “on whether other evidence in the case corroborates what the statement asserts, but rather on whether there are corroborating circumstances which clearly indicate the trustworthiness of the statement itself.” See United States v. Franklin, 415 F.3d 537, 547 (6th Cir. 2005). In his briefs, Johnson erroneously advances his arguments about the trustworthiness of O’Reilly’s statements under the no-longer-applicable Ohio v. Roberts standard of “particularized guarantees of trustworthiness,” 448 U.S. at 65, rather than the standard set forth in Rule 804(b)(3). However, the two analyses are similar, and under either standard the circumstances in this case were sufficient to corroborate the reliability of O’Reilly’s statement. The fact that the jury heard a recording of O’Reilly making his statements eliminates the risk that the statements were inaccurately relayed to the jury (Johnson does not challenge the authenticity of the recording). O’Reilly and Nix-Bey were friends and confidants, as evidenced by testimony from Nix-Bey that even before the two of them became cell-mates, they saw each other every day at meals, engaged in numerous social activities together, and worked together on O’Reilly’s legal matters. See Franklin, 415 F.3d at 548 (recognizing under Ohio v. Roberts analysis that closeness of relationship between declarant and informant bolsters trustworthiness of statement against penal interest). O’Reilly was unaware that he was being recorded and therefore could not have made his statement in order to obtain a benefit from law enforcement. See Williamson, 512 U.S. at 603 (“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.”); see also Franklin, 415 F.3d at 548 (stating that the lack of such selfinterested motives bolsters trustworthiness). O’Reilly’s unflattering references to Johnson as “expendable” and a “dumb-ass” also suggest that he was not attempting to shift blame to Johnson. These circumstances adequately corroborate the trustworthiness of O’Reilly’s statements and render them admissible under Rule 804(b)(3). No. 08-1662 United States v. Johnson Page 9 Johnson also has not established that the recording was more prejudicial than probative under Rule 403.2 “Unfair prejudice does not mean the damage to a defendant’s case that results from the legitimate probative force of the evidence; rather it refers to evidence which tends to suggest a decision on an improper basis.” See Paschal v. Flagstar Bank, 295 F.3d 565, 579 (6th Cir. 2002) (quotation marks omitted). The prejudice to Johnson caused by the recording was the result of the legitimately probative force of the evidence, not anything improper or unfair about it. The district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the recording.