Court Opinion

ID: 9600501
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:27:48.771712+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:52.965073
License: Public Domain

FELDMAN, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent because of my disagreement with the analysis adopted by the majority in the portion of the opinion involving the statements made by Bolles at the scene and at the hospital. In addition to the statements properly admitted under the dying declaration and excited utterance exceptions to the hearsay rule, were the following:
1. One witness was permitted to testify that “the first thing Don Bolles said [at the scene] was Adamson did it... . He again said Adamson did it .... he had said he was investigating a Mafia called Emprise .... ”
2. A fireman at the scene was permitted to testify that “I overheard him say he was an investigative reporter that he wanted everybody to know that the Mafia was responsible, and that apparently they had made good on their threats.”
3. An officer who interviewed Bolles at the hospital testified that “I asked [Bolles] if he suspected the Emprise Corporation for the bombing and he said he did ....”
The effect of these statements was to inform the jury that Bolles had identified the defendant as the perpetrator of this crime and that a Mafia controlled corporation, which wanted to stop Bolles’ investigation, had ordered the bombing. The victim, speaking from the grave, was thus allowed to name the criminal and explain the motive.
All this would have been admissible as a dying declaration if there were foundation to establish that the statements were the product of Bolles’ personal observation. The record, however, clearly refutes that foundation. Bolles was killed by a bomb *268detonated by radio; he had not observed who killed him and was obviously stating his inferences or deductions from those facts which he did know.
While the majority correctly concludes that the mere fact that a statement falls within a hearsay exception does not make it admissible,1 it completely ignores the serious constitutional problems which result from the interface of hearsay exceptions and the sixth amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The right of an accused to confront and cross-examine an adverse witness is guaranteed by the sixth amendment to the United States Constitution and applied to the States by the fourteenth amendment. Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 403, 85 S.Ct. 1065, 1068,13 L.Ed.2d 923 (1965). This right is also protected by art. 2, § 24 of the Arizona Constitution. State v. Pereda, 111 Ariz. 344, 345, 529 P.2d 695, 696 (1974). Admittedly, the right has never been considered absolute. Mattox v. United States, 156 U.S. 237, 243, 15 S.Ct. 337, 339—40, 39 L.Ed. 409 (1895). Extra-judicial statements may be admitted in evidence without violating the right of confrontation when the declarant is unavailable and the statements bear adequate “indicia of reliability.” Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 65-66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 2538-39, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980). This reliability may be inferred where the evidence falls within a “firmly rooted hearsay exception.” Id. at 66, 100 S.Ct. at 2539.
Hearsay exceptions are based upon the presumed reliability of the category of material which fits into the exception. The statements in question here are not admissible as hearsay exceptions because.the lack of first-hand knowledge destroyed their reliability. Thus, the admission of these statements was a violation of defendant’s sixth amendment right of confrontation which took “from the defendant a right essential to his defense,” and is fundamental error. State v. Thomas, 130 Ariz. 432, 435, 636 P.2d 1214, 1217 (1981).
In my view, therefore, this case involves more than technical error in the application of the hearsay rules. Fundamental constitutional error was committed. In light of this error, the question now becomes whether the admission of these statements was harmless. The majority concludes that the error does not warrant reversal. It weighs the evidence which was properly admitted and decides that such evidence was so overwhelming that the jury would have convicted the defendant even in the absence of the statements in question. I find this analysis incomplete because it fails to recognize and consider the constitutional violation.2 I find it also inaccurate because as a result of *269failing to consider the true issue, the majority applies an incorrect standard in determining whether the error was harmless.
While “overwhelming evidence” of guilt goes a long way in establishing the harmless nature of a trial error, the unfairly prejudicial nature of the error in this case cannot be ignored by emphasizing only the properly admitted evidence. The testimony which was erroneously admitted was of a type most likely to prejudice the defendant — it included the victim’s identification of his killer and highly inflammatory references to the Mafia’s involvement in the bombing. The tainted evidence was the only direct evidence of the killer’s identity and motive. While the judicial process necessarily requires some degree of soothsaying and crystal-ball gazing, I submit that we carry things too far when we conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that a jury, which spent a day and a half deliberating, would have reached the same conclusion in the absence of the most compelling evidence in its possession.
What the majority really concludes is that if they were jurors, they would have found the defendant guilty even without the erroneously admitted evidence. I agree that there was substantial evidence pointing to defendant’s guilt and warranting a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Nevertheless, I was not a juror and neither were my colleagues. It is irrelevant to speculate on what we would have done if we had been jurors. The defendant was entitled to a trial by a jury uninfluenced by constitutional error. The harmless error test applied by the majority (focusing only on the weight of the properly admitted evidence) violates this guarantee and results in a conviction procured in part by a violation of defendant’s right of confrontation and affirmed by this court’s usurpation of the function of the jury. See Field, Assessing the Harmlessness of Federal Constitutional Error — A Process in Need of a Rationale, 125 U.Pa.L.Rev. 15, 34-35 (1976); Note, Harmless Error: The Need for a Uniform Standard, 53 St. John’s L.Rev. 541, 560-61 (1979). The United States Supreme Court addressed this issue in Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 763-64, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 1247-48, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946).
[I]t is not the appellate court’s function to determine guilt or innocence. Nor is it to speculate upon probable reconvietion and decide according to how the speculation comes out. Appellate judges cannot escape such impressions. But they may not make them sole criteria for reversal or affirmance. Those judgments are exclusively for the jury, given always the necessary minimum evidence legally sufficient to sustain the conviction unaffected by the error.... This is different, or may be, from guilt in fact. It is guilt in law, established by the judgment of laymen. And the question is, not were they right in their judgment, regardless of the error or its effect upon the verdict. It is rather what effect the error had or reasonably may be taken to have had upon the jury’s decision. The crucial thing is the impact of the thing done wrong on the minds of other men, not on one’s own, in the total setting.
Id. (Citations and footnote omitted.)
This raises the real issue in this case: What is the test to be applied in determining whether fundamental constitutional error is harmless? At one time all constitutional error was thought to require “automatic reversal — such errors were never to be considered harmless.” Cameron & Osborn, When Harmless Error Isn’t Harmless, 1971 Law & Social Order 23, 23. In Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967), the United States Supreme Court determined, however, that some constitutional error could be considered “harmless error.” The Court explained:
We conclude that there may be some constitutional errors which in the setting of a particular case are so unimportant and insignificant that they may, consistent with the Federal Constitution, be deemed harmless, not requiring the automatic reversal of the conviction.
In fashioning a harmless-constitutional-error rule, we must recognize that harm*270less-error rules can work very unfair and mischievous results when, for example, highly important and persuasive evidence, or argument, though legally forbidden, finds its way into a trial in which the question of guilt or innocence is a close one. What harmless-error rules all aim at is a rule that will save the good in harmless-error practices while avoiding the bad, so far as possible.
... We prefer the approach of this Court in deciding what was harmless error in our recent case of Fahy v. State of Connecticut, 375 U.S. 85, 84 S.Ct. 229, 11 L.Ed.2d 171. There we said: “The question is whether there is a reasonable possibility that the evidence complained of might have contributed to the conviction.” Id., at 86-87, 84 S.Ct. at 230.
Id. at 22-23, 87 S.Ct. at 827 (emphasis supplied). Thus, the Chapman decision placed the burden on “the beneficiary of a constitutional error to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained.” Id. at 24, 87 S.Ct. at 828.
The Chapman “contribution to the verdict” test was applied by the Court in a subsequent decision, Harrington v. California, 395 U.S. 250, 89 S.Ct. 1726, 23 L.Ed.2d 284 (1969). In Harrington, the Court held that evidence admitted in violation of the confrontation clause was harmless error because it was merely cumulative of other properly admitted evidence on the same issues and the defendant’s guilt was otherwise established by “overwhelming evidence.”
At first glance, the Harrington decision appears to qualify the “contribution” test developed in Chapman by adopting an “overwhelming evidence” standard. As one of my colleagues explains:
[I]t would be difficult to say that the confessions of the two codefendants in this case “did not contribute to the verdict,” as required by Chapman. Even if the other evidence were overwhelming, the confessions were strong evidence implicating the defendant and were no doubt considered by the jury and “contributed” to its verdict. This, in fact, was the view taken by Justice Brennan in dissent, who felt that Harrington overruled Chapman while purporting to apply it. Thus, it is possible that a sub rosa easing of the Chapman test has occurred, and that it might be slightly easier in the future to establish the harmlessness of constitutional error. Under Harrington, such an error would appear to be sufficiently harmless where the other evidence is so great and convincing as to be considered overwhelming.
Cameron & Osborn, supra, at 27 (footnote omitted).
As my colleague also points out, however, the impact of Harrington on the Chapman harmless error test (contribution to the verdict) must be considered in the context of the facts in the Harrington case. In Chapman, the only evidence of the defendant’s guilt was circumstantial. 386 U.S. at 25-26, 87 S.Ct. at 829. In Harrington, however, there was direct, untainted evidence, including the defendant’s own statements, which established the same facts as the erroneously admitted evidence. 395 U.S. at 252-54, 89 S.Ct. at 1727-29. Thus, the improperly admitted evidence was merely cumulative. Under those facts, the Court could conclude that the constitutional error did not contribute to the verdict. See Note, supra, at 548.
On careful analysis, it does not appear that the Harrington court applied an “overwhelming evidence” of guilt test as the standard to find the error harmless. The Court stated that the appellate court must determine “the probable impact of the [error] on the minds of an average jury.” 395 U.S. at 254, 89 S.Ct. at 1728.
The majority’s use of the “overwhelming evidence” test in the case at bench without regard to the probable impact of the tainted evidence on the jury is put in even greater doubt by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Connecticut v. Johnson, - U.S. -, 103 S.Ct. 969, 74 L.Ed.2d 823 (1983).
In Johnson, the Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the Connecticut Supreme Court reversing a defendant’s conviction on *271the ground that the trial court had given the jury a conclusive presumption instruction on the question of intent in violation of Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 99 S.Ct. 2450, 61 L.Ed.2d 39 (1979). In affirming the state supreme court’s holding that this error was not harmless, the Court stated:
If the jury may have failed to consider evidence of intent, a reviewing court cannot hold that the error did not contribute to the verdict. The fact that the reviewing court may view the evidence of intent as overwhelming is then simply irrelevant. To allow a reviewing court to perform the jury’s function of evaluating the evidence of intent, when the jury never may have performed that function, would give too much weight to society’s interest in punishing the guilty and too little weight to the method by which decisions of guilt are to be made.... See County Court of Ulster County v. Allen, 442 U.S. 140, 160 [99 S.Ct. 2213, 2226, 60 L.Ed.2d 777] (1979) (“[It is] irrelevant in analyzing a mandatory presumption ... that there is ample evidence in the record other than the presumption to support a conviction”).
Johnson, - U.S. at -, 103 S.Ct. at 977.
The decision in Johnson is a plurality decision in which but four Justices joined; a fifth, Justice Stevens, concluded that no federal question was raised by the Connecticut court’s refusal to hold the error harmless and concurred in the opinion for the purpose of allowing disposition of the case. Four Justices dissented, but none of them did so on the ground that Harrington overruled Chapman and provided an overwhelming evidence test as a substitute for a contributing to the verdict test. The dissent discusses the proper test with concern for determining “the effect of the error on the jury’s verdict.” Id. at -, 103 S.Ct. at 982.
The issue debated in Johnson was actually whether automatic reversal is required in the face of constitutional error in instructing on a mandatory presumption and whether such an error must necessarily have influenced the verdict. While the effect of a Sandstrom instruction on a jury’s deliberations may be open to question, we must acknowledge that every juror understands what the Mafia is and why it would order the death of a reporter engaged in investigating one of its enterprises. Every juror would understand the victim’s identification of his killer. We need not indulge in mental gymnastics to imagine the effect of such evidence.
By failing to recognize the fundamental nature of the error and applying the “overwhelming evidence” test, the majority also ignores its own precedents in cases involving constitutional error. For instance, in State v. Thomas, 130 Ariz. 432, 636 P.2d 1214 (1981), we found the trial court committed fundamental error in permitting the prosecutor to support the credibility of the complaining witness by establishing that the witness was very religious and went to church “almost every Sunday.” In reversing, we stated the test for fundamental error as follows:
Fundamental error has been variously defined by this court as “such error as goes to the foundation of the case or takes from the defendant a right essential to his defense,” State v. Gamble, 111 Ariz. 25, 26, 523 P.2d 53, 54 (1974).... If it is determined that error occurred, the prejudicial nature of the unobjectedto error must be evaluated in light of the entire record. If there is substantial evidence in the record to support the verdict and it can be said that the error did not, beyond a reasonable doubt, contribute significantly to the verdict, reversal is not required. If, however, it appears that the error did contribute to or significantly affect the verdict, fundamental error was committed and reversal is mandated ....
Id. 435-36, 636 P.2d at 1217-18 (citations omitted) (emphasis supplied); see also State v. Ray, 123 Ariz. 171, 598 P.2d 990 (1979). In fact, this very week the court, without discussion, recognized the contribution to the verdict test for harmless error in State v. Martin, 135 Ariz. 552, 554-55, 663 P.2d 236, 238-39 (1983).
*272Under the contribution test for harmless error set forth in Thomas, supra, the error in the case at bench would require reversal. The erroneously admitted evidence was of a type most likely to influence the jury and thus contribute to the verdict. Yet, one minute of cross-examination of Bolles would have revealed that he did not know the killer or motive from first hand knowledge, but only from deduction. Without this bit of information, we cannot exclude the reasonable possibility that the jury was influenced by testimony prohibited by the constitution and that the error therefore contributed to the verdict.
There is little to be gained and much to be lost by use of an overwhelming weight of the evidence test. To be gained is the added speed and efficiency resulting from allowing appellate court judges to weigh evidence and convict by deciding “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the jury would have convicted. The constitution, however, was intended to prevent the sacrifice of principle in the interests of expediency. In any event, there is little need for it; if the evidence is so overwhelming this court can tell beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury would have convicted the defendant without the tainted evidence, then surely this court can tell beyond a reasonable doubt that the next jury would reach the same result. Why then do we need to violate the constitution? Would it not be better to observe constitutional precepts rather than to discard them in our haste to the gallows? It may not make much difference to this defendant, but in the long run faithful adherence to constitutional concepts and procedures will make a great deal of difference to the integrity of the judicial process.
Application of the contribution test as the proper standard for constitutional error cases would permit us to avoid reversal where the error, though constitutional, was merely technical or minor. See State v. Sanchez, 130 Ariz. 295, 635 P.2d 1217 (App.1981) (reading testimony of witness to jury in absence of defendant found harmless). It also permits us to avoid reversal if the tainted evidence is not highly prejudicial but is merely cumulative of other, overwhelming evidence on the same point. See Harrington v. California, supra. Application of the proper standard permits the appellate court to focus on the nature of the error in light of the entire record. The question to be determined will be: Was the constitutional error of a type or'nature that it is reasonably possible that it influenced or contributed to the verdict? If not, then the judgment can be affirmed. By following this standard, appellate judges could use their knowledge and experience to measure the impact of the tainted evidence on the jury — a judicial function — without requiring them to act as jurors and weigh the evidence in order to speculate on what the jurors would have done under a set of facts which never existed.
I recognize also that in cases such as this there is pressure to bring the accused to speedy justice with as little attention to “legal technicalities” as possible. This pressure is implicit in every case which, like this one, has received and merits public attention and outcry. However, the constitution is not a technicality, and the function of the judiciary, difficult as it may be at times, is to withstand such pressures and to recognize that society’s great interest in punishing the guilty is outweighed by its greater interest in maintaining the integrity of the constitution.
In my view, therefore, the court has failed to recognize, discuss or analyze the serious constitutional error which was committed in this case. As a result, it has applied a test for harmless error which, if it is to be used at all, should be used only where the error was of a non-constitutional, non-fundamental nature. Therefore, I dissent and would reverse and remand the case for a new trial.

. The hearsay rule is merely an additional safeguard applied to testimonial evidence otherwise admissible. The admission of hearsay statements under an exception to the rule “therefore presupposes that the assertor possessed the qualifications of a witness in regard to knowledge and the like.” 5 J. Wigmore, Evidence in Trials at Common Law § 1424, at 255 (J. Chadboum rev. 1974). Arizona Rule of Evidence 602 provides that a witness “may not testify to a matter unless evidence is introduced sufficient to support a finding that he has personal knowledge of the matter.”
The rule is of board application and applies specifically to dying declarations:
Even if the requisite consciousness of death is established, other conditions of admissibility must be met. Rule 804(b)(2) ... contains no specific provision requiring the declarant to have personal knowledge of the facts contained in his declaration. However, the notes to Rule 804(b)(2) indicate that “continuation of a requirement of first-hand knowledge is assured by Rule 602.” This is in accord with previous federal law. In Shepard v. United States [290 U.S. 96, 101, 54 S.Ct. 22, 24, 78 L.Ed. 196 (1933)], the Supreme Court had stated:
To let the declaration in, the inference must be permissible that there was knowledge or the opportunity for knowledge as to the facts that are declared.
The statement of a declarant shot in the back by an unseen assailant as to who shot him cannot be admitted.
4 J. Weinstein & M. Berger, Weinstein’s Evidence ¶ 804(b)(2)[01], at 804-85 (1981); see also State v. Dixon, 107 Ariz. 415, 418, 489 P.2d 225, 228 (1971), applying the same rule to excited utterances.

. Inexplicably, the majority neither mentions the constitutional error nor considers its effect, even though only a few weeks ago the constitutional ramifications of a similar error were recognized and analyzed. See State v. Jeffers, 135 Ariz. 404, 421, 661 P.2d 1105, 1122 (1983).