Court Opinion

ID: 9466802
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:28:06.066729+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:57.974705
License: Public Domain

SEITZ, Chief Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the majority that appellant’s rights under the federal Constitution were denied when the state used a co-conspirator’s guilty plea as evidence of his guilt. Therefore, I concur in the decision to reverse the order of the district court and to remand for application of the harmless error standard of Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 828, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). I write separately because I believe that appellant was denied his sixth amendment right to be confronted with the witnesses against him. I would avoid invoking the due process standard of fundamental fairness.
The Supreme Court applied the confrontation clause to restrict a prosecutor’s use of third-party convictions and guilty pleas in Kirby v. United States, 174 U.S. 47, 19 S.Ct. 574, 43 L.Ed. 890 (1899). In a prosecution for receipt of property stolen from the United States, the government’s proof of the fact of theft from the United States consisted of guilty pleas of three of the thieves and the conviction after trial of a fourth. The Court reversed the receiver’s conviction, holding that he had not been “within the meaning of the Constitution, *314confronted with the witnesses against him.” Id. at 60, 19 S.Ct. at 579.1
It is important to note that the confrontation clause violation in Kirby did not result from the government’s failure to confront the defendant with the persons who had pled guilty or had been convicted. The Court saw the effect of the government’s use of third-party conviction records and guilty pleas as allowing the government to use its witnesses to prove facts incriminating to a defendant while not allowing the defendant an opportunity to challenge, impeach, and cross-examine those witnesses. In the absence of a restriction, the Court reasoned that the government might use its witnesses to establish facts necessary to convict a third person, either by presenting the witnesses at trial or by inducing a guilty plea, and might then offer the third person’s conviction in its prosecution of the defendant as proof of the facts essential to sustain the earlier conviction. Cf. Fed.R. Evid. 803(22) (final judgment of conviction entered after trial or guilty plea admissible to prove facts essential to conviction).2 At no point in this process would the government confront the defendant with the witnesses that it assembled in its prosecution of the third person. See generally Kirby, 174 U.S. at 55, 19 S.Ct. at 577.
In appellant’s trial the state attempted to prove the existence of a conspiracy involving appellant by introducing a co-conspirator’s guilty plea. In so doing, the state violated appellant’s rights under the confrontation clause, as construed in Kirby. The error was not avoided by the opportunity that appellant had to cross-examine the co-conspirator at trial. In Kirby, the Court addressed a defendant’s right to confront not the third person who pleaded guilty but the witnesses that the government would have presented in a trial of the third person. We can have no assurance that appellant had an opportunity to confront those witnesses at his trial.
In this sense, confrontation in the circumstances of Kirby differs from the confrontation in the circumstances of Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968). In Bruton the Court prohibited the use of a codefendant’s confession in a joint trial. There the Court addressed the right of a defendant to confront and cross-examine his confessing co-defendant, a right which can be preserved when the codefendant testifies at trial and subjects himself to cross-examination. See Nelson v. O’Neil, 402 U.S. 622, 91 S.Ct. 1723, 29 L.Ed.2d 222 (1970).
The appellant has presented his claim of a deprivation of confrontation rights to this court and to the district court in terms of a violation of United States v. Toner, 173 F.2d 140 (3d Cir. 1949). In Toner, this court ruled that the guilty plea of a co-conspirator was not admissible to prove the guilt of a criminal defendant. The opinion does not mention the confrontation clause specifically, and the court might well have rested its ruling on different or additional grounds, including nonconstitutional grounds.3 *315Nonetheless, the ruling in Toner was mandated by the Supreme Court’s construction of the confrontation clause in Kirby. Therefore, I read Toner as reflecting the requirements of the confrontation clause and recognize that appellant has stated a sufficient claim of a violation of his confrontation rights.
Because the majority and I rely on different constitutional claims, I must consider also whether appellant fairly presented the substance of his federal claim to the Supreme Court of New Jersey and thereby satisfied the requirement of exhaustion of state remedies. Picard v. Connor, 404 U.S. 270, 278, 92 S.Ct. 509, 513, 30 L.Ed.2d 438 (1971); Zicarelli v. Gray, 543 F.2d 466, 470-75 (3d Cir. 1976). The brief that appellant filed in the Supreme Court of New Jersey argues explicitly that the state’s violation of Toner deprived him of rights under the sixth amendment. Moreover, the opinion of the New Jersey court discusses and rejects the suggestion that the rule in Toner reflects the requirements of the confrontation clause. State v. Stefanelli, 78 N.J. 418, 396 A.2d 1105, 1111-12 (1979). It is true that appellant did not present the New Jersey court with a citation of Kirby or with an argument incorporating Kirby’s particular application of the confrontation clause. However, because that application of the confrontation clause derives from a reported opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, it is a method of analysis readily available to the state court. Its specific citation was not necessary to satisfy the exhaustion requirement. Zicarelli v. Gray, supra at 472. I conclude that appellant has satisfied the exhaustion requirement.
The majority reads Toner as reflecting the requirements of the due process clause because its restriction on the government’s use of third-party guilty pleas is an essential element of fundamental fairness. Don-nelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 642-43, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 1871, 40 L.Ed.2d 431 (1974). Review of state convictions under a standard of fundamental fairness allows the federal court to ensure that state criminal defendants do not suffer from trial errors that are inconsistent with the concept of justice implicit in the due process clause but are not prohibited by specific provisions of the Bill of Rights. The fundamental fairness standard is necessarily very general in its terms and not greatly restricted in its application by specific precepts and precedents. A court should not employ this standard when it can base a finding of constitutional error on a specific provision of the Constitution. In this case, the court’s judgment can rest on a specific provision of the Bill of Rights and on a Supreme Court application of that provision to the particular circumstances of this case. Invocation of the fundamental fairness standard of the due process clause is unnecessary and best avoided.

. The statute at issue in Kirby provided that the conviction of the principal felons for theft of property from the United States was conclusive proof of the fact of theft in a subsequent prosecution of a receiver of the property. Act of March 3, 1875, ch. 144, § 2, 18 Stat. 479 (1879). The district court instructed the jury differently, charging them that the guilty pleas and conviction constituted prima facie proof. See 174 U.S. at 50-51, 19 S.Ct. at 575. The Supreme Court ruled that both the statutory standard of conclusive proof and the district court’s modification violated the confrontation clause: “The fundamental error in the trial below was to admit in evidence the record of the conviction of the principal felons as competent proof for any purpose.” Id. at 60, 19 S.Ct. at 579.

. This rule of admissibility does not apply when a third-party conviction- is “offered by the Government in a criminal prosecution for purposes other than impeachment.” Fed.R.Evid. 803(22). The purpose of this exception is to avoid a conflict with the right of confrontation construed in Kirby. Fed.R.Evid. 803(22) (Advisory Committee’s Note).

. The opinion does address the same general concern addressed in Kirby: the use of third-party guilty pleas to prove facts against a defendant allows the government to rely on the establishment of facts in a proceeding in which the defendant did not participate. The court concluded, “The defendant had a right to have his guilt or innocence determined by the evidence presented against him, not by what has happened with regard to a criminal prosecution against someone else." Id. at 142.