Com. v. Rawls

• Decision Date: 13 October 1980
• Citation: 276 Pa.Super. 89,419 A.2d 109
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, v. Darryl D. RAWLS, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Superior Court

Page 109

419 A.2d 109

276 Pa.Super. 89

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, v. Darryl D. RAWLS, Appellant.

Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

Submitted March 23, 1979.

Filed March 14, 1980.

Petition for Allowance of Appeal Granted Oct. 13, 1980.

John W. Packel, Asst. Public Defender, Chief, Appeals Division, Philadelphia, for appellant.

Eric B. Henson, Asst. Dist. Atty., Philadelphia, for Commonwealth, appellee.

Before VAN der VOORT, HESTER and ^* WIEAND, JJ.

HESTER, Judge:

Following an eleven day jury trial, appellant Darryl D. Rawls was found guilty of rape, conspiracy, possession of instruments of crime, and unlawful restraint, (Crimes Code, 18 Pa. C.S.A., §§ 3121, 903, 907, 2902, respectively), all evolving from the abduction and rape of a young woman in Philadelphia. Two co-defendants were also convicted of several crimes related to the incident. Post-trial motions were argued and denied and an aggregate sentence of eight to twenty years imprisonment was imposed. On this appeal, appellant posits various trial court and prosecutorial errors in support of his request for a new trial. We find his contentions without merit and will therefore affirm.

Facts adduced at trial established that on the afternoon of October 18, 1976, the victim was waiting for a trolley on the corner of Germantown and Somerset Avenues in Philadelphia. Suddenly, a man approached and asked her where she lived, after which he placed an ice pick at her side and escorted her to a house on Eighth Street, a few blocks away. Along the way, the complainant noticed that appellant and co-defendant Eddie Rhodes passed her on the sidewalk heading towards the Eighth Street residence. When the victim arrived at the house, she observed about seven or eight men on the first floor, including appellant and Rhodes. Appellant secured the ice pick and ordered the young woman upstairs and onto a bed. There, she was required to "snort" a white powdery substance. Appellant Rawls then removed the victim's clothing below the waist and raped her. Rhodes grabbed her coat and money, while co-defendant Daniel Griffin entered the room to have sex with her. Shortly afterward, the men allowed the woman to leave and warned her to tell no one. She immediately reported the crime to the police after which appellant, Rhodes, and Griffin were quickly apprehended. Griffin confessed to the crime, naming as accomplices appellant and Rhodes.

Appellant's defense suggested that the victim fully consented to the sexual acts and only brought charges when her coat and money were not returned to her. Of the three defendants, Rhodes was the only one to take the stand. ¹

On appeal, appellant's principal contention is that Griffin's confession, which was admitted at trial, violated his right to confront adverse witnesses contrary to the rule on Bruton v. U. S., 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968). Specifically Detective Joseph Carlin of the Philadelphia Police Department testified that, after his arrest, Griffin gave a statement implicating himself in the rape. Before the confession was read to the jury, the court and counsel excised therefrom all named references to appellant and Rhodes. Thus, the statement, as edited, was read to the jury by Detective Carlin as follows:

The Witness: "Answer: I was in the kitchen of my mother's house at 2828 North Eighth Street, with two of my friends. We were fixing motor bikes. Some other fellows came into the house and they had a girl with them. They sat in a little room for awhile; they were talking about some drugs. Then they went upstairs. Then me and my friends also went upstairs. Some of the fellows and the girl went into the middle room and closed the door. Me and my friends went into my mother's room; there is a door between my mother's room and the second floor middle bedroom and the door has a lot of holes in it. We took turns peaking through the holes, at what was going on.

I saw they were on the bed and the girl was crying. Then one of the guys came out of the middle room and asked me if I wanted some. I said that I would think about it. A couple of minutes later I went into the middle room. The girl was lying on the bed and her pants were back up. Someone pulled her pants back down. She was on the bed, on her back, and I got on her. I got inside her a couple of seconds and got right out, because she started crying. I got off of her and she pulled her pants back up. I got out of the room and left the house. Someone took the girl's coat and someone took her wallet, and the girl started crying hard. " N.T. 516-518.

Before the confession was introduced, the court instructed the jury that the statement was to be considered as evidence only against Griffin and not against anyone else. N.T. 515-516.

Appellant concedes that the statement on its face does not name him as one of the participants in the crime. He contends, however, that the activities ascribed therein to unnamed persons mesh so completely with other evidence at the trial that the jury must have certainly "read in" appellant's name to the Griffin confession and that he was thus denied his right to confront an accuser. Such an argument misconstrues the scope of the Bruton decision.

In Bruton, co-defendant Evans' confession, which implicated Bruton in a robbery, was read to the jury. The trial court, in accord with Delli Paoli v. U. S., 352 U.S. 232, 77 S.Ct. 294, 1 L.Ed.2d 278 (1957) admitted the confession unedited and cautioned the jury that Evans' confession was inadmissible hearsay against Bruton and was to be considered only against Evans. Evans exercised his privilege not to testify. The Supreme Court set aside Bruton's conviction, overruling Delli Paoli because "of the substantial risk that the jury, despite instructions to the contrary, looked to the incriminating extrajudicial statements in determining (Bruton's) guilt." 391 U.S. at 126, 88 S.Ct. at 1622. The Court emphasized that Evans' statement was "powerfully incriminating" as to Bruton since it directly inculpated him in the crime and that Evans' confession "added substantial, perhaps even critical, weight to the Government's case." id. at 128, 88 S.Ct. at 1623. The Court thus held that Bruton had been denied his right of confrontation since Evans' extrajudicial statement inculpating him went to the jury without Bruton having the opportunity to cross-examine Evans.

In response to Bruton, our courts have approved the practice of redaction, in which all testimonial references in a confession to anyone other than the declarant are omitted therefrom. Commonwealth v. Johnson, 474 Pa. 410, 378 A.2d 859 (1977); Commonwealth v. Guess, --- Pa.Super. ----, 404 A.2d 1330 (1979); cf. Bruton at fn. 10. "The jury is thus not permitted to consider the nontestifying co-defendant's confession in assessing the defendant's culpability." Commonwealth v. Young, 263 Pa.Super. 333, 337, 397 A.2d 1234, 1237 (1979). ² Other courts have held that a statement made by one defendant, redacted so as not to inculpate a co-defendant on its face, is admissible in a joint trial even though other evidence in the case indicates that a co-defendant not mentioned in the statement was also involved in the activities described. U. S. v. Belle, 593 F.2d 487 (3 Cir., 1979); U. S. v. Stewart, 579 F.2d 356 (5 Cir., 1978); U S. v. Dady, 536 F.2d 675 (6 Cir., 1976); U. S. v. Wingate, 520 F.2d 309 (2 Cir., 1975); U. S. v. Trudo, 449 F.2d 649 (2 Cir., 1971). Thus, in Belle, the court stated "(Where) a co-defendant's extrajudicial statement does not directly implicate the defendant . . . the Bruton rule does not come into play . . . For example, courts . . . have consistently approved the use at joint trials of co-defendants' confessions where all references to the complaining defendant have been redacted, at least if the redacted versions do not explicitly suggest the participation of the complaining defendant." 593 F.2d at 493.

In a number of cases, non-confessing defendants have argued "contextual inculpation" as does the instant appellant, viz: the edited confession, when read in light of other evidence connecting the defendant to the crime, tends to identify him as a participant, thus violating Bruton. The courts have consistently rejected such an argument and have found Bruton inapplicable since the redacted statement was not "powerfully incriminating" as to the defendant. In Wingate, for example, a co-defendant's redacted confession had been admitted into evidence with cautionary instructions. The complaining defendant (Wingate) argued that the statement, read in light of other evidence connecting him with the declarant, tended to identify him as a co-conspirator. The Second Circuit disagreed reasoning that the co-defendant's statement did not sufficiently incriminate Wingate inasmuch as, "(O)nly when combined with considerable other evidence, which amply established Wingate's guilt (did) the statements tend to incriminate him." 520 F.2d at 314. Similarly, in U. S. ex rel. Nelson v. Follette, 430 F.2d 1055 (2 Cir., 1970) two defendants, Biggins and Nelson, were tried jointly for a bank robbery. Biggins confessed, naming one "Oliver" as his accomplice and physically describing "Oliver". The confession also stated that Biggins and "Oliver" were at a certain bar just prior to the robbery. Other evidence at the trial established a close physical resemblance between Nelson and "Oliver" and further that Nelson and Biggins were often seen together at the bar mentioned in the confession. Nelson contended that confession, considered in light of the other evidence, "necessarily implicated" him as "Oliver". The court held no Bruton violation had occurred: "Biggins' statements were not clearly inculpatory because they alone did not serve to connect Nelson with the crime . . . Biggins' statements were not the type of powerfully incriminating statements to which the court had reference in Bruton.'' 430 F.2d at 1058.

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