Court Opinion

ID: 9758873
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:53:45.915021+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:57.262612
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mb. Justice Nix :
The majority opinion seeks to minimize appellant’s objection to that portion of Detective McGfurk’s testimony in which he stated that “Mingo” denied participation in the incident in a statement given to the police and also when confronted with appellant on two occasions. The opinion states that the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation was not offended on the theory that the statements were not hearsay but offered merely to prove that “Mingo” had made these denials. I cannot agree and therefore respectfully dissent.
Appellant in his statement to police officials admitted being a participant in the incident but placed the onus upon “Mingo” who he alleged was also a participant and implied that “Mingo” had delivered the fatal wound. Accepting the defendant’s version, “Min-go” was at least equally culpable. To argue that with*222in this context that “Mingo’s” statement was offered only for the purpose that the denials were made and not for the truth of these protestations of innocence would attribute to the jury a naivete that I would have difficulty ascribing to the most sheltered and unsophisticated member of our society.
Informing the jury that the appellant had implicated “Mingo” and that “Mingo” was released after he had denied his participation in the presence of the appellant necessarily left the inference that the police had rejected the appellant’s statement of what occurred and accepted “Mingo’s” assertions to the contrary. Even more objectionable is that no reason was offered to suggest the basis of the police determination as to why the decision was made and left to the jury’s imagination the myriad of possibilities why the authorities had seen fit to accept “Mingo’s” explanation and rejected that of the appellant’s.
If the Sixth Amendment offers any protection I cannot conceive of a situation where its protection is needed more than in the instant appeal. The appellant had a right to have “Mingo” face this jury, undergo cross-examination and then the jury would have been in a position to determine which of the two were worthy of belief.