Court Opinion

ID: 9559864
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:37:16.093392+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:11:49.523477
License: Public Domain

BRIGHT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
This case presents a clear Bruton error which was preserved and was most certainly not harmless. Indeed, the error here was so egregious and prejudicial it amounted to plain error. I would therefore reverse the convictions.
After a joint trial, Marcus Davis and Stephen Edwards were convicted of one count of malicious use of fire resulting in death in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 844(i). They were each sentenced to 360 months’ imprisonment. Their convictions stem from a fire that erupted on March 6, 2000. One person tragically died in the fire. Police determined the fire had been set intentionally. However, charges were not brought against Davis and Edwards for another five years.
The Government’s case consisted almost entirely of circumstantial evidence with the exception of two incriminating statements, one made by Davis, and the other made by Edwards. Two days after the fire, Davis allegedly said to Joyce O’Neal, “I didn’t mean for it — -I didn’t mean for it to happen like this. I was only trying to scare the old lady because every time our music — we would turn our music up, she would always call the police on us.” This alleged statement to O’Neal was not made to law enforcement personnel until 2006.
In late 2002 or early 2003, Edwards reportedly said to Betty Jo Thompson, “We set the fire to get someone out.” Edwards also stated, “It wasn’t to hurt anybody, to murder anybody. It wasn’t to kill anybody. It was to get someone to come out of the house.” Because the majority of the Government’s evidence against Davis and Edwards was circumstantial, these statements were key to its case.
Both Davis and Edwards filed pre-trial motions to exclude Edwards’s statements to Betty Jo Thompson. The district court denied the motions, but stated in response that it would give the jury the following limiting instruction:
You may consider the statement of defendant, whoever it is, Edwards or Davis, only in the case against him and not against the other defendant. You *918may not consider or discuss that statement in any way when you are deciding if the Government has proved beyond a reasonable doubt this ease against the other defendant.
The parties and the court also agreed that instead of objecting every time a statement was referenced during a witness’s testimony, defense counsel would need to object once — the first time the statement was referenced with each witness. At that point, a standing objection would be established with respect to that witness. In addition to the standing objection, the district court also obtained assurance from the prosecutor that the Government would “sanitize” any admissions or out-of-court statements so as to eliminate any improper and prejudicial reference to Davis or Edwards.
Notwithstanding the clear instruction from the district court, the Government at the very end of its rebuttal argument displayed, as a demonstrative aid, Davis’s and Edwards’s statements side-by-side on one Power Point slide.4 The prosecutor remarked, “And, ladies and gentlemen, they even confessed to it.” The slide remained on display before the jury until the end of the argument. The prosecutor closed his rebuttal by stating, “And look how similar their statements are.”5
Neither Davis nor Edwards made any specific objection to this slide presentation during the prosecutor’s rebuttal. After closing arguments, the court issued its jury instructions which included the limiting instruction on the use of the confessions. Immediately after the case had been submitted to the jury, Davis and Edwards moved for a mistrial on the ground that the prosecutor’s use of the statements during rebuttal violated their Sixth Amendment rights.
The district court denied the motion. However, the court noted, “When I saw the statements side by side, it gave me some pause, but at that point I don’t think it was my place to interject myself into the closing argument and try to deal with the concern I saw it raise.” The district court explained that it could not issue a curative instruction and rebuke the prosecutor because the defendants failed to make a contemporaneous objection.
The majority holds that the prosecutor’s use of the defendants’ statements in its rebuttal did not violate Bruton and that regardless, the error was not preserved and did not amount to plain error. I disagree.
I begin first with the Bruton violation. In Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968), the Supreme Court held that the admission of a nontestifying codefendant’s confession, which expressly implicated the defendant, presented a great risk that the jury could not or would not follow the court’s limiting instructions and therefore violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights under the Confrontation Clause. Id. at 137, 88 S.Ct. 1620. The Court explained that “[n]ot only are [such incriminating statements] devastating to the defendant but their credibility is inevitably suspect.” Id. at 136, 88 S.Ct. 1620. Thus, the Court held that the conduct of the prosecutor violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him,” U.S. Const, amend. VI. Bruton, 391 U.S. at 137, 88 S.Ct. 1620.
In Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 107 S.Ct. 1702, 95 L.Ed.2d 176 (1987), the Supreme Court revisited its holding in Bruton and addressed whether a statement, redacted to omit any reference to *919the defendant, violates Bruton when the defendant is linked to the confession by properly admitted evidence. Id. at 202, 107 S.Ct. 1702. Clarifying that Bruton’s holding is a narrow one, Richardson explained that Bruton does not apply to statements that only become incriminating when linked with evidence introduced later at trial. Id. at 208, 107 S.Ct. 1702. Thus, the Court held, “the Confrontation Clause is not violated by the admission of a non-testifying codefendant’s confession with a proper limiting instruction when ... the confession is redacted to eliminate not only the defendant’s name, but any reference to his or her existence.” Id. at 211, 107 S.Ct. 1702.
While Richardson held that Bruton’s application does not extend to a statement that in no way implicates or even references the defendant, the Supreme Court explained in Gray v. Maryland, 523 U.S. 185, 118 S.Ct. 1151, 140 L.Ed.2d 294 (1998), that Bruton is not confined to a statement that expressly names a defendant. Id. at 196, 118 S.Ct. 1151. In Gray, the Supreme Court held that the admission of a nontestifying codefendant’s confession, which replaced the defendant’s name with “blank,” violated the Sixth Amendment. Id. In so holding, the Court explained that a statement is not outside Bruton’s scope if the jury must use inference to connect the statement in the confession to the defendant. Id. at 195, 118 S.Ct. 1151. The Court explained that what implicates Bruton is “the kind of, not the simple fact of, inference.” Id. at 196, 118 S.Ct. 1151. And therefore, despite the fact that the statement in Chuy did not reference the defendant’s name or identity, the statement was protected under Bruton because it led the jury straight to the conclusion that the blanks in the codefendant’s statement referred to the defendant. Id. at 196, 197, 118 S.Ct. 1151.
Thus, under Bruton and its progeny, the key inquiries when a Bruton question is raised are: (1) whether the nontestifying codefendant’s statement implicates the defendant; and (2) “whether [under the circumstances] a court’s instruction to apply a confession only to the declarant is adequate to constrain the jury to do so,” United States v. Jones, 101 F.3d 1263, 1270 (8th Cir.1996). In determining whether a statement implicates a defendant, we look to the manner and context in which the prosecutor presented the statement. See id. at 1270 n. 5.
In this case, both statements, as presented in the prosecutor’s rebuttal, clearly implicated both Davis and Edwards by linking each defendant’s alleged admission to the other codefendant. The prosecutor drew attention to the statements by prominently displaying them side-by-side during the rebuttal. And with the statements in full view, the prosecutor concluded by stating, “And Stephen Edwards was right there helping him. ‘It wasn’t meant to kill anybody.’ And look how similar their statements are.” By presenting the statements in this manner during rebuttal, the prosecutor graphically connected the statements, the effect of which was that Edwards’s statement implicated Davis and Davis’s statement implicated Edwards.
Next, the prosecutor’s use of the statements during rebuttal effectively nullified the district court’s limiting instructions. We explained in Jones that limiting instructions are rendered ineffective when the statements, as used by the prosecutor, will lead the jury to “easily” and “logically” apply the codefendant’s confession to the defendant, notwithstanding the court’s limiting instruction. See Jones, 101 F.3d at 1270 (explaining that in determining whether the court’s limiting instruction is ineffective, the inquiry is whether, “if left without instruction the jury might easily and logically apply the confession to the *920defendant”). The prosecutor in this case eliminated the curative effect of the court’s limiting instruction by suggesting that the jury use Davis’s statement against Edwards and Edwards’s statement against Davis. Indeed, the prosecutor instructed the jury to compare the two statements in evaluating whether Davis and Edwards were guilty of the charges against them. The use of the out-of-court confessions in such manner violated Davis’s and Edwards’s rights under the Confrontation Clause.6
Of course, a Bruton violation alone is not enough to compel reversal as Bruton violations are subject to harmless error review. United States v. Coleman, 349 F.3d 1077, 1085 (8th Cir.2003). The test for determining whether a constitutional error is harmless is “whether it appears beyond a reasonable doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained.” Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 15, 119 S.Ct. 1827, 144 L.Ed.2d 35 (1999) (internal quotations and citation omitted). In light of the circumstantial nature of the case against Davis and Edwards, and that the prosecutor’s comments came as the jury was about to begin deliberations, by the time the prosecutor concluded his rebuttal it was too late for a limiting instruction to have any curative effect. The damage had been done. Under these circumstances, the error was not harmless.
The majority has a fallback position, however. It concludes that even if there was error, it was not preserved because defense counsel failed to object during the prosecutor’s rebuttal. I disagree. Counsel did, in fact, preserve the error.
While it is true that defense counsel remained silent during the prosecutor’s rebuttal, the defendants’ rights had been preserved earlier in the trial proceedings. Both Davis and Edwards filed motions in limine prior to trial seeking to exclude Edwards’s statements to Betty Jo Thompson.7 The motion in limine not only objected to the use of any statements at trial but also to the use of any statements in “arguments.”
Here the district court made a definitive ruling denying the motions in limine. Under Federal Rule of Evidence 103(a) (“Rule 103(a)”), the court’s ruling made it unnecessary for defense counsel to raise another objection during rebuttal to preserve the error. Rule 103(a) provides in pertinent part: “Once the court makes a definitive ruling on the record admitting or excluding evidence, either at or before trial, a party need not renew an objection or offer of proof to preserve a claim of error for appeal.” Fed.R.Evid. 103(a) (emphasis *921added). Thus, Davis and Edwards were not required to renew the objection during the rebuttal in order to preserve the error for review.8
Relying on Rule 103, the First Circuit held, under somewhat similar circumstances, that an error was preserved for appeal despite defense counsel’s failure to object to the use of certain gambling metaphors in the prosecutor’s closing arguments. United States v. Carpenter, 494 F.3d 13, 20-21 (1st Cir.2007). In Carpenter, the defendant, Carpenter, moved in limine and made several trial objections to the introduction of certain testimony relating to the defendant’s investments and losses. Id. at 18. The district court, on several occasions, ruled on the objections and noted that for purposes of Rule 103 the objection was preserved for appeal. Id. at 19-20.
The First Circuit held that the error was preserved under Rule 103(a) because the court made a definitive ruling on the objection and that Rule 103(a) did not require defense counsel to object during closing arguments to preserve the error for appeal. Id. at 20-21. In so holding, the First Circuit looked to the accompanying commentary to Rule 103 which states, “[w]hen the ruling is definitive, a renewed objection or offer of proof at the time the evidence is to be offered is more a formalism than a necessity.” Id. at 18-19 (quoting Advisory Committee notes to the 2000 Amendment to Rule 103) (emphasis added).
Similarly, here the district court made a definitive ruling on the motions in limine. Indeed, the district court noted that defense counsel had a standing objection dispensing with the requirement that counsel object every time Davis’s or Edwards’s out-of-court statements were improperly referenced. Therefore, the error was preserved.
The conduct of the prosecutor here produced a Bruton error, which seriously affected the fairness, integrity, and public reputation of the judicial proceedings. And so, even if counsel failed to preserve the error, it was plain and requires reversal of the convictions. The majority states that the error was “not an obvious error under Richardson and its progeny.”9 Slip Op. at 915. I fail to see how the record supports that conclusion. Richardson and its progeny, as discussed in this dissent, prohibit the use of each codefendant’s out-of-court confession in the manner in which they were used in this trial. Not only was there a substantial risk that the jury would use Davis’s and Edwards’s confessions against the other, but the prosecutor encouraged the jury to do so. In this context, the district court’s limiting instruction became entirely ineffective.
As in Bruton, we are presented here with a situation where “the powerfully incriminating extrajudicial statements of a codefendant, who stands accused side-by-side with the defendant, are deliberately spread before' the jury in a joint trial.” Bruton, 391 U.S. at 135-36, 88 S.Ct. 1620 (emphasis added).
For these reasons I would reverse the convictions. The error here was preserved and was far from harmless, indeed it was plain. In a weak case, this improper blow carried the day.
*922[[Image here]]

. The slide was not admitted into evidence at trial.

. A paper copy of the slide is attached as an appendix to this dissent.

. The district court recognized that the prosecutor's conduct during rebuttal posed a serious risk that the jury would use the statements in violation of Davis’s and Edwards’s constitutional rights. In its order denying Davis and Edwards a new trial, the district court made the following remarks regarding the prosecutor’s use of the statements during rebuttal:
[T]he Court finds that the prosecutor’s conduct was questionable. Displaying [the statements side-by-side] and asking the jury to "look how similar their statements are,” invited the jury to improperly consider the statements of one co-defendant in determining the guilt of another. The Court repeatedly instructed the jury that such comparisons were not permissible and the prosecutor’s rebuttal argument violated those instructions and the Court's ruling on the motions in limine.

. Edwards did not, however, move in limine to exclude the statement Davis made to Joyce O’Neal. However, the issue of the Government's use of Davis's and Edwards’s out-of-court confessions during trial and arguments was certainly before the district court. Both Davis and Edwards raised this issue in their motions for severance. Furthermore, after the district court denied severance, counsel for both Davis and Edwards expressed concerns regarding the out-of-court statements.

. From a strategic standpoint, an objection during the prosecutor’s rebuttal may have only compounded the problem by drawing further attention to the statements. Indeed, securing an evidentiary ruling in advance of trial eliminates this risk.

. The implication of the majority’s statement is unclear. The "obviousness” of the error is irrelevant. Either the prosecutor's conduct did or did not violate Bruton.