Court Opinion

ID: 9482285
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:45:41.577481+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:53.138658
License: Public Domain

BOGGS, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the judgment of the court that the conviction of Danny Wade Arthur must be reversed, and with all parts of the opinion except II. B. and II. C.
I do not agree that exclusion of the 302 statements was error. As Noel establishes an abuse of discretion standard for Rule 804(b)(3) decisions, Arthur must show that Judge Hull abused his discretion in excluding Fields’s 302 statements. In light of the paucity of corroborating evidence referred to at page 10, I cannot find that he abused that discretion.
The Advisory Committee Notes to Rule 804(b)(3) state that “the requirement of corroboration should be construed in such a manner as to effectuate its purpose of circumventing fabrication.” This distrust of confessions offered to exculpate the accused was even more keenly felt by the House, which added the requirement that the corroborating circumstances clearly indicate the trustworthiness of the statement. The drafters of the Rule cited Donnelly v. United States, 228 U.S. 243, 33 S.Ct. 449, 57 L.Ed. 820 (1912), as the case they were seeking to overturn by adopting the rule. Donnelly involved a murder, and the evidence showed that only one person could have committed the murder. This made the third person’s confession key to the case, as it automatically exonerated the accused. Thus, corroborating circumstances, like those in Donnelly, that proved the third person was likelier to be the murderer, even though they did not corroborate any statement that the defendant did not commit the murder, were dispositive.
Here, many persons could have assisted and planned the robbery, and circumstances showing that Fields was one of those persons does not automatically exonerate Danny. I think that in these multiple defendant cases, the statement that must be clearly corroborated is the one exculpating the accused, not the confession of the witness. Here, we have almost no corroboration of Fields’s statement that Danny was not involved.
Let me consider each corroborating circumstance in order. Fields’s testimony as a witness cannot corroborate his own 302s: if his 302s are lies, then so was his testimony. The House Committee notes to Rule 804(b)(3) (H.Rep. 93-650, 93d Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in West’s Federal Civil Procedure and Judicial Rules 375) clearly indicate that the witness’s own testimony cannot corroborate the exculpating statements. This leaves Terry’s testimony and the photograph. The photograph merely shows Fields’s involvement in the robbery. As I mention above, I don’t think Congress had this sort of corroboration in mind in multiple defendant cases, as the circum*219stance of one person’s involvement does not exclude the involvement of others. That leaves Terry’s in-court confession. Here, I think that the heavy burden of proving an abuse of discretion precludes us from overruling Judge Hull when only one piece of evidence supports Fields’s statement that Danny wasn’t involved.
I also do not agree with section II. C., which holds that “the district court erred by refusing to allow Terry to put on a wig and cap before the jury.” Normally, such a decision is reviewed for abuse of discretion. United States v. Brady, 595 F.2d 359 (6th Cir.1979). In every case in which a court has ordered a defendant to wear a wig for identification purposes, there has been some significant indication that the perpetrator of the crime was wearing a wig. In fact, the Fourth Circuit in United States v. Turner, 472 F.2d 958 (4th Cir.1973), referred to the government’s having established a foundation for its request that defendant wear a wig. In this case, there is no such evidence apart from Terry’s own testimony. All of the eye witnesses testified that whoever robbed the bank was not wearing a wig. In light of this, I cannot find that Judge Hull abused his discretion.
Therefore, while I concur in the judgment of the court, I cannot agree with parts II. B. and II. C. of the opinion.