Court Opinion

ID: 9678137
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:12:23.281918+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:02.124248
License: Public Domain

LAWRENCE E. MOONEY, Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the reversal of the judgment of conviction and the remand for a new trial because the recorded telephone conversation between Robert Hoover and Dennis Irby was hearsay, and the conversation was not admissible as a statement of co-conspirators.
However, I write separately to express my view that limited evidence of Robert Hoover’s alleged confession is permissible to explain the circumstances of the defendant’s confession.
Let me first recount the circumstances of the trial so that I might offer my thoughts on the manner of retrial. In his opening statement, the prosecutor explained to the jury that the police employed an inteiTogation technique to induce the defendant’s confession. The prosecutor then set out in unnecessary and improper detail the information that may have been told to the defendant to induce him to confess. This was that Robert Hoover, the defendant’s son, had implicated Ervell as having helped move Lois’s car to the Des Peres Schnucks parking lot so that Dennis Irby could use a car with Missouri plates and as having provided a gun to Dennis Irby the week earlier when Dennis was in town. The prosecutor made clear that he was not vouching for the truthfulness of what the police told the defendant to induce his confession. Indeed, the trial court, in overruling the defendant’s objection, noted that the prosecutor told the jury the relayed information might not be true. The difficulties with this argument are two-fold. First, the prosecutor should not include in his opening statement matters unsupported by the evidence. Second, the use of unnecessary details from an out-of-court de-clarant could support an inference of truth, despite the prosecutor’s claims that this was but an interrogation technique. When, in fact, the three police officers later testified to the defendant’s eonfes*414sion, two officers, Major Lowery and Detective Carroll, testified that they had told the defendant only that Robert Hoover implicated him and Dennis Irby in planning Jeffrey Sexton’s murder. The police officers did not, however, relate to the jury any details with which the defendant may have been confronted. Indeed, Major Lowery testified he did not use any details of Robert Hoover’s alleged confession in confronting the defendant, but rather kept matters “intentionally vague.” The police also confirmed that the confrontation of a suspect with a co-conspirator’s alleged confession, whether true or false, was a standard interrogation technique. The third officer who testified to the defendant’s confession, Detective Banta, never mentioned any allegations with which the defendant was confronted to induce his confession. Importantly, no officer testified that Robert Hoover actually confessed or implicated the defendant, only that the police told the defendant as an interrogation technique that Robert had implicated him.
The circumstances of defendant’s confession, as testified to by the police officers, did not result in the admission of unnecessary details of Robert Hoover’s alleged confession. Instead Robert Hoover’s alleged implication of the defendant was minimally adduced to elucidate the circumstances of the defendant’s confession and the prosecutor again made clear that the claimed implication of a suspect by a co-conspirator was a standard interrogation technique. The admission of this limited evidence is consistent with our Supreme Court’s guidance in State v. Edwards because the claimed implication of the defendant by a co-conspirator was presented without detail and as an interrogation technique, not as the true statement of an out-of-court declarant.
The critical issue in hearsay analysis is whether the out-of-court declaration, Robert Hoover’s confession, is offered for the truth of the matters asserted therein. 29 Am.Jur.2d Evidence sec. 661 (1994). If the details of Robert Hoover’s alleged confession are not placed in evidence and the prosecutor makes clear that he does not vouch for the truthfulness of the information -with which the police may have confronted the defendant, there is no implication that Robert Hoover’s alleged confession is true, and thus no hearsay problem.
There is a stark difference between Robert Hoover’s actual statement to the police, which was rightly never elicited, with the mere use of the fact that Robert Hoover allegedly made a statement. The fact that he allegedly made a statement is neither hearsay nor testimonial. The hearsay rule does not exclude evidence offered to prove the fact that a statement was made, rather than the truth of the statement. Or, as Wigmore put it:
Wherever an utterance is offered to evidence the state of mind which ensued in another person in consequence of the utterance, it is obvious that no assertive or testimonial use is sought to be made of it, and the utterance is therefore admissible, so far as the hearsay rule is concerned.
6 Wigmore, Evidence sec. 1789 (Chad-bourn rev.1976).
Summarily put, I cannot conclude that an out-of-court declaration is proffered for its truth when its truth is disavowed.