Opinion ID: 604198
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admission of Hoac's Statement

Text: 35 DEA Special Agent James Tse testified at trial about statements that Hoac made after he was arrested. Although the Assistant United States Attorney had instructed Agent Tse not to refer by name to Chan, Tse testified on direct examination as follows: 36 Q: After these rights were given to [Hoac], did you have a further conversation regarding the eight boxes of lychee nuts that contained the heroin? 37 A: Yes. 38 Q: Can you tell us what he told you? 39 A: He told me that another individual was involved. He mentioned that his name was Anom. 40 Anom is an alias of Chan, although that information was never revealed to the jury. 41 Chan's counsel informed the court in a sidebar that Anom was Chan and moved for a mistrial. The court rejected the motion, reasoning that the jury doesn't know that Anom is Chan and they have no way of perceiving that because there's nothing in the case that links Anom to the name Chan. Plus, he didn't say that Anom was a Hong Kong person, which might have a link. The court concluded that any potential error could be cured by having Tse testify that he had previously misspoken when he mentioned the name Anom. Tse so testified on further direct examination. Tse's testimony thereafter referred only to individuals with whom Hoac said he had met. Hoac did not testify at trial, and the court instructed the jury that Hoac's hearsay statements were only admissible against Hoac. Chan argues that the admission of evidence of Hoac's extrajudicial confession at trial was a violation of Chan's Sixth Amendment right of confrontation under Bruton. 42 Redaction of a nontestifying codefendant's confession, when accompanied by a proper limiting instruction, can prevent any Bruton violation. Richardson, 481 U.S. at 209, 211, 107 S.Ct. at 1708, 1709; United States v. Yarbrough, 852 F.2d 1522, 1537 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 866, 109 S.Ct. 171, 102 L.Ed.2d 140 (1988). Chan contends, however, that the use of a neutral term such as individuals does not avoid a Bruton violation because Richardson requires the elimination of not only the defendant's name, but any reference to his or her existence. Richardson, 481 U.S. at 211, 107 S.Ct. at 1709. We reject this argument as an overly strict reading of Richardson. Although the redacted confession in Richardson eliminated any reference to [the defendant's] existence, the Court explicitly left open the question of the admissibility of a confession in which the defendant's name has been replaced with a symbol or neutral pronoun. Id. at 211 n. 5, 107 S.Ct. at 1709 n. 5. 43 In United States v. Long, 900 F.2d 1270, 1280 (8th Cir.1990), the Eighth Circuit reviewed cases from several circuits and drew a distinction between cases in which the redacted statement alerts the jury to the omission of a name and invites them to fill in the blank and cases in which no such speculation is invited. Compare United States v. Bennett, 848 F.2d 1134, 1142 (11th Cir.1988) (Bruton violation where use of pronoun they in redacted confession clearly implicated codefendants) and Clark v. Maggio, 737 F.2d 471, 477 (5th Cir.1984) (Bruton violation where redacted confession referred to the three of us and police witnesses testified that confessor had provided police with specific names of his accomplices), cert. denied, 470 U.S. 1055, 105 S.Ct. 1761, 84 L.Ed.2d 823 (1985) with United States v. Alvarado, 882 F.2d 645, 652-53 (2nd Cir.1989) (no Bruton violation where reference to another person in redacted confession did not indicate that original statement contained actual name), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1071, 110 S.Ct. 1114, 107 L.Ed.2d 1021 (1990) and United States v. Garcia, 836 F.2d 385, 390-91 (8th Cir.1987) (no Bruton violation where use of pronoun someone did not draw attention to fact that prosecution had name available and purposely omitted it). See also United States v. Petit, 841 F.2d 1546, 1556 n. 15 (11th Cir.) (distinguishing redacted confession in which reference to a friend could only be understood as referring to specific codefendant from statements that do  'not provide the slightest hint as to [the other defendants'] particular identities'  (quoting United States v. Garrett, 727 F.2d 1003, 1014 (11th Cir.1984), aff'd on other grounds, 471 U.S. 773, 105 S.Ct. 2407, 85 L.Ed.2d 764 (1985))), cert. denied, 487 U.S. 1237, 108 S.Ct. 2906, 101 L.Ed.2d 938 (1988). 44 In this case, Special Agent Tse used the neutral plural term individuals and did not indicate to the jury that Chan had given actual names or even had stated how many individuals he had met with in Hong Kong. The jury was aware that several people were involved in this conspiracy, including at least one (Leung) who was not being tried with the three defendants. Because Anom was never revealed to the jury to be Chan's nickname and was immediately corrected and replaced with the vague plural individuals, and because the redaction did not invite the jury to fill in the blanks, Hoac's extrajudicial statement did not facially incriminate Chan; rather, it could become incriminating only when linked with other evidence introduced at trial. See Richardson, 481 U.S. at 208, 107 S.Ct. at 1707; Sherlock, 865 F.2d at 1079-80. We therefore conclude that there was no Bruton error. 45