Court Opinion

ID: 9472138
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:51:00.874645+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:46.272205
License: Public Domain

*1497CLARK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent because Georgia’s res gestae exception has been applied in an unconstitutional manner. The confrontation issue arises in this case because the jury was being invited, through hearsay statements, to believe that the driver of the abandoned car was Hosea Williams. Because these hearsay statements concerning the identity of the person who committed the crime lack adequate indicia of reliability, they should have been excluded. Circumstantial evidence obtained after Williams was identified as the possible driver, no matter how substantial, cannot provide the reliability required. A study of the purposes achieved by the right of confrontation leads to the conclusion that any indicia of reliability can only come from a testing of the circumstances which surround the making of the hearsay statements and from the statements themselves.
The Confrontation Clause reflects a preference for literal confrontation at trial. Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 63, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 2537, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980); California v. Green, 399 U.S. 149, 157, 90 S.Ct. 1930, 1934-35, 26 L.Ed.2d 489 (1970). The opportunity for personal examination and cross-examination of witnesses was designed to prevent convictions obtained solely upon the basis of depositions and ex parte affidavits. Mattox v. United States, 156 U.S. 237, 242-43, 15 S.Ct. 337, 339, 39 L.Ed. 409 (1895). The chance to confront a witness allowed not only for “testing the recollection and sifting the conscience of the witness” but also for “compelling him to stand face to face with the jury in order that they may look at him, and judge by his demeanor upon the stand and the manner in which he gives his testimony whether he is worthy of belief.” Id. Confrontation, therefore, gives the accused and the jury the opportunity to gauge the truth and reliability of the witness’ testimony; the accused by testing his recollection of events and the jury by assessing his demeanor. Through its examinations of when hearsay may be admitted without running afoul of the Confrontation Clause, the Supreme Court has maintained this view as to the goal achieved by confrontation. As the Court noted in California v. Green, supra, confrontation insures that the witness will testify under oath, forces the witness to submit to cross-examination and makes it possible for the jury to observe the witness and thereby better able to assess credibility. 399 U.S. at 158, 90 S.Ct. at 1935, 26 L.Ed.2d at 497. The chances for discovery of truth are enhanced by testimony under oath, subject to cross-examination and given before a jury. If a witness testifies under oath, he is impressed with the seriousness of the matter at hand and made aware of the possible penalties for lying. Id. The capabilities of cross-examination and observation by the jury for eliciting truth are self-evident.1 It is because these means of testing accuracy are so important that the lack of proper confrontation at trial “calls into question the ultimate ‘integrity of the fact-finding process.’ ” Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 295, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 1046, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973), quoting Berger v. California, 393 U.S. 314, 315, 89 S.Ct. 540, 541, 21 L.Ed.2d 508 (1969). Nevertheless, the state possesses competing interests, in effective law enforcement and the development of rules of evidence applicable to criminal proceedings, which may warrant dispensing with confrontation at trial. Ohio v. Roberts, supra, 448 U.S. at 64, 100 S.Ct. at 2538, 65 L.Ed.2d at 607. The Supreme Court has attempted to accommodate these competing interests regarding the admissibility of hearsay statements by requiring the state to show both necessity and reliability.
In Dutton v. Evans, the Court established four indicia of reliability “widely viewed as determinative of whether a statement may be placed before the jury though there is no confrontation of the declarant.” 400 U.S. 74, 89, 91 S.Ct. 210, 220, 27 L.Ed.2d 213 (1970). In assessing the reliability of a hearsay statement, the Court *1498considered: 1) whether the statement contained express assertions of past fact; 2) whether the declarant had personal knowledge of the identity and role of the participant in the crime; 3) whether it was possible that the declarant’s statement was founded upon faulty recollection; and 4) whether the circumstances under which the statements were made provided reason to believe the declarant misrepresented the defendant’s involvement in the crime. 400 U.S. at 88-89, 91 S.Ct. at 219, 27 L.Ed.2d at 226. These indicia of reliability serve as substitutes for the usual means of testing accuracy in a way that assessing the strength of the corroborating evidence against the accused cannot. Asking the Dutton questions allows for a consideration of the circumstances in which the statements were made and through that a testing of the knowledge and perception (2nd question), memory (3rd question) and motivation (4th question) of the witness. In addition, the content of the statement itself can be examined to see if it carries a warning to the jury about the weight it should carry (1st question).2 Dutton, supra, 400 U.S. at 88, 91 S.Ct. at 219, 27 L.Ed.2d at 226.
If these questions are asked about the hearsay statements admitted against Williams, it appears that they lacked sufficient reliability to meet the constitutional standard. First, the hearsay statements in question were assertions of past fact. The statements cannot be considered as being contemporaneous with the accident, since the record makes it clear that none of the hearsay witnesses heard the statements about the driver of the abandoned car until ten to fifteen minutes after the accident. This single indication of unreliability is sufficient to reject the hearsay. The statements introduced in this case were statements about the identity of the driver rather than an opinion as was the statement in Dutton.3 These statements therefore failed to carry on their face a warning to the jury not to give them undue weight. 400 U.S. at 88, 91 S.Ct. at 219, 27 L.Ed.2d at 226.
Second, there was no evidence introduced about the declarant’s personal knowledge of identity of the driver. The declarant did not say anything that would indicate how he knew the driver of the other car was Williams. None of the hearsay witnesses could testify as to whether the declarant actually witnessed the automobile accident, or if he did what sort of view he had or whether he merely heard that Williams was the driver. As the district court pointed out, testimony elicited upon cross-examination of one of the police officers at the scene indicated that the declarant might have overheard the police mentioning the defendant’s name when they found his personal papers in the abandoned vehicle. Under these circumstances, cross-examination of the declarant might well have shown that the declarant was not in a position to know whether Williams was driving the car. Dutton, 400 U.S. at 88-89, 91 S.Ct. at 219, 27 L.Ed.2d at 226.
While it seems unlikely that the statements were based on faulty recollection since they were made shortly after the accident, the district court was correct in noting that the complete lack of opportunity for cross-examination made any testing of the declarant’s mental state at the time of the statements impossible. Finally, there is nothing about the circumstances under which the statements were made to indicate that the declarant did not misrepresent Williams’ involvement in the accident. Since no one saw the driver of the *1499abandoned vehicle other than the hearsay declarant, it is not impossible that he was the driver of the car and wanted to shift suspicion to another before he left the scene. It is also possible that the declarant, without meaning to lie, simply passed on information that he heard in the crush of the thirty to forty observers at the accident scene. “[T]he mission of the Confrontation Clause is to advance a practical concern for the accuracy of the truth-determining process in criminal trials by assuring that the trier of fact [has] a satisfactory basis for evaluating the truth of the prior statement.” Dutton, 400 U.S. at 89, 91 S.Ct. at 220, 27 L.Ed.2d at 227, quoting California v. Green, supra, 399 U.S. at 161, 90 S.Ct. at 1936, 26 L.Ed.2d at 498. That mission has not been met here since the jury was presented no evidentiary basis upon which to assess the declarant’s knowledge, perception or motivation.
Under the circumstances of this case, the constitutional error cannot be considered harmless. The harmless error test as most recently stated by the Supreme Court is whether, absent the constitutional error, it is “clear beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury would have returned a verdict of guilty.” United States v. Hasting, 461 U.S. 499, 103 S.Ct. 1974, 1981, 76 L.Ed.2d 96 (1983). Without the hearsay evidence, the state presented a strong circumstantial case against Williams. The physical evidence in the car, Williams’ appearance at the time of arrest and the testimony which placed him leaving his nearby business shortly before the accident, point to Williams as the driver of the car. Williams, however, also put on a ease of circumstantial evidence which supported his theory that the car had been stolen. As the district court points out, the most important factor concerning the hearsay statements is that they constituted the sole direct evidence placing Williams at the scene. Without this evidence, the trial would have turned on credibility determinations and the weighing of the circumstantial evidence. Since there is a doubt that the jury would have found Williams guilty without the identifying statements, the admission of the hearsay statements cannot be considered harmless. Having determined that the petitioner was denied his sixth amendment right to confrontation and that this error was not harmless, I would grant the writ of habeas corpus.

. The Court in California v. Green stated that cross-examination was the best device invented for the discovery of truth. 399 U.S. at 158, 90 S.Ct. at 1935, 26 L.Ed.2d at 497.

. According to the Court in Dutton, if the hearsay statement contains no assertions of past fact, then it carries on its face a warning to the jury not to give it undue weight. This is because the jury is just being invited to infer something rather than accept it as fact.

. It is true that one hearsay witness testified that the driver "looked just like Hosea Williams" but the other two witnesses testified that the driver was expressly identified as Williams. One of these overheard the declarant say that the driver was Williams. The final hearsay witness testified that while he and some others were helping the injured driver an unidentified black man came up and asked the injured man if he knew who had hit him. When the dazed victim said that he did not, the declarant said "Hosea Williams" after standing around two or three minutes and melted away into the crowd.