Court Opinion

ID: 9796346
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:55:56.414351+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:50:07.823715
License: Public Domain

Johnson, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part: I concur in the result reached by the majority. Where I depart is in the majority’s application of the hearsay exception of K.S.A. 60-460(j) to a jailhouse confession to a cellmate.
First, I would note an apparent contradiction in the majority’s application of the objective declarant standard to codefendant Marcy Carrapezza’s statements to her cellmate. In deciding that admission of the statements did not violate the Confrontation Clause, the majority relies on the Miller test of whether an objective person in declarant’s circumstance would believe that his or her statements would be available for use at a later trial. See State v. Miller, 284 Kan. 682, 163 P.3d 267 (2007). The majority apparently found that the statements did not pass that test, i.e., that Carrapezza had no rational belief that her statements to a cellmate would be trial evidence. In contrast, in deciding that the statements fell within the declaration against interest exception to the hearsay rule, the majority opined that a reasonable person in Carrapezza’s position would have understood that her statements could be used against her, presumably as trial evidence. I would not find that a rational person would have been of two different minds as to the ultimate destination of bis or her statements. Rather, I would find that Carrapezza did not objectively believe that her statements would make their way to the courtroom.
I perceive the jailhouse society to be markedly different from that of the outside community. Whereas admitting to participation in a murder may make “the declarant an object of hatred, ridicule or social disapproval in the [outside] community,” as set forth in K.S.A. 60-460(j), such a declaration, whether a true admission or merely inmate bravado, may well enhance one’s standing among the denizens of a penal facility. Therefore, the rationale for the exception is not present in this context.
Moreover, one perceives that penal community mores discourage, if not prohibit, the sharing of a cellmate’s confession with persons in authority. Thus, a reasonable person in Carapezza’s po*1033sitíon would not normally have understood that her statements would be used against her in a court of law.
Granted, an inmate may not feel constrained to conform to such a rule of silence if he or she could glean a significant personal benefit from talking with law enforcement. However, that snitching-for-personal-gain scenario would then call into question the trustworthiness of the hearsay declaration. Nevertheless, the objective expectation of the declarant would still be that the statements to a cellmate would not have been used against him or her. I would find that the statements are not insulated from the hearsay rule by K.S.A. 60-460(j).