Court Opinion

ID: 9706651
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:48:38.589729+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:24.213015
License: Public Domain

Cavanagh, C.J.
(concurring). I agree wholeheartedly with the result reached by my Brother Griffin, and with his careful analysis, as far as it goes. That analysis fully supports and demonstrates the wisdom of Justice Griffin’s conclusion that the so-called "redaction” applied to the incriminating codefendant confessions in this case was wholly inadequate to protect defendant Banks against the danger that the jury, in violation of Banks’ right of confrontation, would improperly rely on the unreliable hearsay statements in those confessions as evidence against him. However, because I believe the factors identified by Justice Griffin which require finding the redaction in this case inadequate will inevitably arise in every case where the redaction is of a similarly limited and superficial nature, I would prefer to go further and enunciate a categorical rule that this sort of redaction simply does not and cannot suffice to vindicate the right of confrontation and the rule against hearsay.
As Justice Griffin discusses, the leading case regarding the redaction of codefendant confessions is Richardson v Marsh, 481 US 200; 107 S Ct 1702; 95 L Ed 2d 176 (1987). The codefendant confession in Richardson was redacted to remove all references, not only to the complaining defendant’s *432name, but also to his activities and his very existence. The majority in Richardson held that redaction of that type — which I shall call "complete” redaction — is categorically sufficient to satisfy Confrontation Clause concerns. As Justice Stevens pointed out in dissent, however, even a completely redacted codefendant confession, in conjunction with other evidence at trial, may permit the jury to draw conclusions on the basis of the hearsay confession which are devastatingly prejudicial to the complaining defendant. See id. at 213-216. I would be inclined to follow Justice Stevens’ reasoning in interpreting Michigan’s Confrontation Clause, see Const 1963, art 1, § 20. I need not explore that issue further, however, because even accepting arguendo the majority’s position in Richardson, this case involves a dramatically different kind of redaction.
In this case, the crucial hearsay confessions of Funches and Burley were each "redacted” only in the sense that Banks’ name and either Funches’ or Burley’s name (depending on whose confession it was) were replaced by the term "blank.” The detailed descriptions of Banks’ alleged criminal conduct remained in both confessions as they were presented to the jury. While my Brother Griffin persuasively demonstrates how easy it must have been for the jury in this case to fill in those "blanks” and identify Banks in the confessions, he goes no further, as a general matter, than to conclude that Richardson’s "rule of admissibility per se is simply not appropriate for the form of redaction used in the case at bar,” ante, p 420, and to find the redaction inadequate in this case on the basis of an individualized review of the evidence and argument presented at trial. While I agree that the evidence and argument presented at trial in this case make it especially obvious that the *433jury must have seen through the superficial redaction used here, I think the particular facts of this case merely exemplify the categorical insufficiency of such superficial, "name-only” redaction. For reasons set forth below, I find it impossible to conceive of any joint-trial, codefendant-confession situation where such superficial redaction could ever suffice to protect the defendant’s rights, and I would therefore enunciate a categorical rule of exclusion of such superficially redacted confessions.
First, it should be noted that there is a fundamental difference between complete and name-only redaction. While it was assumed for purposes of analysis in Richardson that the codefendant confession was substantively inadmissible against the complaining defendant, complete redaction of the kind employed in Richardson necessarily removes from such a confession all statements directly accusing the complaining defendant. The statements left over following such complete redaction will be statements that might, therefore, have a much higher likelihood of qualifying for substantive admission under, for example, the "statement against interest” hearsay exception. See MRE 804(b)(3); FRE 804(b)(3).1 In dramatic contrast, name-only redaction necessarily leaves in place for *434the jury’s consideration all the presumptively unreliable accusatory details relating to the noncon-fessing defendant, with only the removal of his actual name providing a dubious shield, of protection.
Second, the very fact that the mysterious "blank” has been substituted for the defendant’s name, coupled with the required cautionary instruction, will inevitably arouse the jury’s suspicions and entice it to draw the very inferences sought to be precluded. By contrast, the very point of complete redaction is to successfully hide the fact that the confession ever referred to the other defendant. I do not think we can safely assume that modern-day jurors, steeped in television legal dramas, are without sophistication in these matters. When jurors — presented with a joint trial of several codefendants and a confession by one co-defendant which refers to one or more accomplices identified only as "blank” — are pointedly instructed not to consider that confession as evidence against the accomplices on trial with the confessor, it would be almost an insult to their intelligence to suppose that they would not deduce that the "blanks” are indeed the other defendants.2 After all, why would there be any need for a cautionary instruction if the confession did not *435contain potentially incriminating evidence regarding the other defendants?3
Finally, I note that Justice Griffin places special emphasis on the fact that the prosecutor’s closing argument tended to erode the effectiveness of the redaction. See ante, pp 423-427.1 fully agree with my colleague’s analysis in this regard, but I would note that this tendency will inevitably exist in every joint trial with one or more superficially redacted codefendant confessions, no matter how conscientious the prosecutor is. The prosecutor’s job is to obtain convictions of all the defendants being jointly tried, and he will properly try to do so by relying on whatever available and admissible evidence tends to show that the nonconfessing defendant participated in the joint criminal scheme and was present at the key stages of the transaction. Even where the prosecutor scrupulously avoids mentioning the redacted codefendant confession with regard to the nonconfessing defendant, the case he presents — assuming it is strong enough to convict — will necessarily draw a picture for the jury which will squarely frame the noncon-fessing defendant as the "blank” in the redacted confession. I do not see how a prosecutor properly and vigorously constructing a case against a defendant like Banks could ever avoid giving the jurors (even unintentionally) precisely the hints and clues they would need to decipher the code of a superficially redacted confession.
Justice Griffin’s analysis is a model for trial judges to follow. A sensitive and proper application *436of that analysis should lead to the rejection, in every case, of the adequacy of the superficial kind of redaction employed here. I believe, however, that Justice Griffin’s analysis — which closely follows Justice Stevens’ approach in his dissenting opinion in Richardson, see ante, pp 419-420 — is best reserved for those cases, like Richardson itself, which involve complete redaction. For the reasons stated above, in the interest both of better protecting the constitutional rights of defendants and of providing better and more certain guidance to the prosecutors and trial judges of this state, I would adopt today a categorical rule excluding superficial, name-only redactions.

 For example, the inculpatory effect of the redacted confession in Richardson, as Justice Stevens explained, was that the confessor described having a conversation with a third accomplice while driving to the murder victims’ home, in which he explicitly planned their deaths. While the confession was carefully redacted to remove any reference to the fact that the complaining defendant was allegedly present in the car at the time, a different witness testified at trial that the defendant arrived at the house in the same car with the confessor and the other accomplice. See 481 US 215. Thus, the hearsay confession, in conjunction with the separate evidence, provided crucial proof that the defendant must have known about the plan to kill the victims. The jury had only to add two and two together. And yet (without expressing any firm view on the merits), it is conceivable that the confessor’s hearsay statement, shorn of any added accusatory reference to the presence of the complaining defen*434dant, might have qualified for substantive admission as a statement against penal interest. The separate and crucial allegation that the defendant was present and heard the plans for the murder would certainly have been an intrinsically suspect and unreliable "spread-the-blame” accusatory hearsay statement had it derived from the confession itself. But as it happened, that crucial allegation came, not from the hearsay confessor, but from a separate witness who testified at trial subject to full confrontation and cross-examination.

 In cases (unlike the instant case) where the confessions and other evidence do not dovetail neatly enough to provide a clear indication of which "blank” is which, the danger inevitably arises that the jury will draw speculative conclusions which are not only improper, but mistaken and misguided as well.

 Conversely, in cases where the redaction is genuinely complete and effective, I would imagine that defense counsel might often prefer to have no cautionary instruction at all, so as to avoid unnecessarily arousing the jury’s suspicions. There would be no need for a cautionary instruction if the confession were redacted so thoroughly as to make it genuinely impossible for the jury to draw any incriminating conclusions therefrom about the nonconfessing defendant.