Court Opinion

ID: 9785377
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 21:37:45.936184+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:21.499702
License: Public Domain

LUMPKIN, J.,
Concurring in Result.
T1 I concur in the result reached in this opinion and agree that this case presents a statutory violation that touches upon Appellant's Confrontation Clause rights and requires reversal. However, I cannot agree with some of the analysis used and write to point out a more important constitutional basis that prohibits admission of a non-testifying co-defendant's statement under the circumstances presented.
12 While significant amendments were made to 12 0.98.2001, § 2804(B) in 2002 (did not go into effect until November 1, 2002), I find the reasoning behind the amendments to that statute still apply. In other words, the "nontestimonial" statement made by Appellant's co-defendant Hanson to Rashad Barnes should not have been admitted in Appellant's trial under the former version of the statute, 12 O.S8.Supp.1991, § 2804(B)(8), for the statement was simply not trustworthy. The statement was, therefore, classic hearsay without an applicable exception.
{3 The Opinion spends a lot of time analyzing and quoting from the United States Supreme Court's recent opinion in Lilly v. Virginia, 527 U.S. 116, 119 S.Ct. 1887, 144 L.Ed.2d 117 (1999). But Lilly was a plurality opinion and most of the quotes taken from IAilly did not even receive a majority of the votes. We should refrain from relying too heavily on plurality views. For our purpose here, the most that should be said of Lilly is that six justices found "the admission of the untested confession of Mark Lilly violated Petitioner's Confrontation Clause rights" as per Part VI of the Opinion. Indeed, the Court did not even foreclose the possibility *750that such error could be found harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
[4 Furthermore, Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004) is, in my opinion, a red herring, for it is clearly distinguishable from the situation here. Crawford dealt with "testimonial" hearsay made to the police by the defendant's wife, who never testified against her husband because of a state marital privilege. The instant case involves non-testimonial hearsay of a co-defendant, which was overheard by a third party who then testified in Appellant's trial. Since Crawford did not deal with the issue of how "non-testimonial" hearsay should be treated, we should not, in turn, be "reading" the case "to allow the admission of such anon-testimonial statement over the defendant's right of confrontation if the hearsay is inherently trustworthy and reliable," especially when the hearsay involved here was neither. '
5 All that being said, the more important issue, overlooked in the Court's opinion, is the strict prohibition against the use of statements/confessions of a non-testifying co-defendant set forth in Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 127-28, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 1623, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968) (finding admission of anon-testifying co-defendant's confession in Appellant's joint trial violated Appellant's constitutional right of confrontation) and Cruz v. New York, 481 U.S. 186, 191, 107 S.Ct. 1714, 1717, 95 L.Ed.2d 162 (1987) (finding pretrial confession of one defendant is not admissible against co-defendants, unless the confessing defendant waives his Fifth Amendment right, so as to permit eross-examination).
T6 What cannot be done directly under Bruton or Cruz certainly may not be done indirectly through a straw man, such as Barnes in this case. Moreover, even prior to Crawford, Barnes's testimony could not have passed the reliability test due to the lack of independent evidence to corroborate his testimony.