People v. Watkins

• Court: Court of Appeal of Michigan
• Writing for the Court: Before DANHOF; DANHOF
• Citation: People v. Watkins, 444 N.W.2d 201, 178 Mich.App. 439 (Mich. App. 1989)
• Decision Date: 30 August 1989
• Docket Number: Docket Nos. 103572,104682 and 104685,104636,104523
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Donald WATKINS, Defendant-Appellant. PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Michael HUNTER, Defendant-Appellant. PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Kerry JORDAN, Defendant-Appellant. PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Christian PHILLIPS, Defendant-Appellant. PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Walter MILLER, Defendant-Appellant. 178 Mich.App. 439, 444 N.W.2d 201

Page 201

444 N.W.2d 201

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Donald WATKINS, Defendant-Appellant.

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Michael HUNTER, Defendant-Appellant.

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Kerry JORDAN, Defendant-Appellant.

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Christian PHILLIPS, Defendant-Appellant.

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Walter MILLER, Defendant-Appellant.

Docket Nos. 103572, 104523, 104636, 104682 and 104685.

178 Mich.App. 439, 444 N.W.2d 201

Court of Appeals of Michigan.

Submitted April 4, 1989.

Decided July 17, 1989.

Released for Publication Aug. 30, 1989.

[178 MICHAPP 441] Frank J. Kelley, Atty. Gen., Louis J. Caruso, Sol. Gen., John D. O'Hair, Pros. Atty. and Timothy A. Baughman, Chief of the Criminal Division, Research, Training and Appeals, for the People.

Norman R. Robiner, Detroit, for Donald Watkins.

Gerald M. Lorence, Detroit, for Michael Hunter.

Ada Snyder Kerwin, Detroit, for Kerry Jordan.

Daniel J. Rust, Redford, for Christian Phillips.

John L. Belanger, Warren, for Walter Miller.

Before DANHOF, C.J., and WAHLS and GRIFFIN, JJ.

DANHOF, Chief Judge.

After a joint trial, a Detroit Recorder's Court jury convicted defendants Watkins, Phillips, Jordan, and Miller of first-degree murder, M.C.L. Sec. 750.316; M.S.A. Sec. 28.548, assault with intent to commit murder, M.C.L. Sec. 750.83; M.S.A. Sec. 28.278, kidnapping,[178 MICHAPP 442] M.C.L. Sec. 750.349; M.S.A. Sec. 28.581, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, M.C.L. Sec. 750.227b; M.S.A. Sec. 28.424(2). The jury also convicted defendant Hunter of first-degree murder and assault with intent to commit murder. The lower court sentenced Watkins, Phillips, and Miller to natural life in prison on their murder convictions, life in prison on their assault convictions, thirty to sixty years on their kidnapping convictions, plus the mandatory two-year felony-firearm sentences. The court sentenced Jordan to natural life in prison on the murder conviction, life in prison on the assault conviction, twenty-five to fifty years on the kidnapping conviction, plus the mandatory two-year felony-firearm sentence. The court sentenced Hunter to natural life in prison on the murder conviction and fifty to one hundred years on the assault conviction. Defendants appeal. We affirm.

All of the defendants claim that the lower court erred in admitting the unredacted confessions of Jordan and Miller as substantive evidence against all defendants.

In Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968), the United States Supreme Court held that a defendant is deprived of his rights under the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause when his nontestifying codefendant's confession naming him as a participant in the crime is introduced at their joint trial, even if the jury is instructed to consider the confession only against the codefendant.

The Bruton Court noted that the codefendant's hearsay statement inculpating the petitioner was not admissible against him under traditional rules of evidence or any recognized exception to the hearsay rule. 391 U.S. at 128 n. 3, 88 S.Ct. at 1623 n. 3. Now, there is a statement against penal interest exception to the [178 MICHAPP 443] hearsay rule. MRE 804(b)(3). That exception applies in this case. However, our analysis does not end here. The United States Supreme Court stated that the declaration against penal interest concept defines too large a class for meaningful Confrontation Clause analysis. Lee v. Illinois, 476 U.S. 530, 544 n. 5, 106 S.Ct. 2056, 90 L.Ed.2d 514 (1986). Therefore, we must proceed with our analysis and determine whether defendants were deprived of their Confrontation Clause rights in the context of this case which involves confessions by accomplices that incriminate criminal defendants.

We note that the United States Supreme Court has declined to extend Bruton in cases such as Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 107 S.Ct. 1702, 95 L.Ed.2d 176 (1987), where the Court held that the defendant's Sixth Amendment confrontation rights were not violated by the admission of a nontestifying codefendant's confession at a joint criminal trial, where the confession was redacted to eliminate any reference to the defendant, but the defendant was linked to the confession by evidence properly admitted against him at trial.

In Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980), the United States Supreme Court discussed the relationship between the Confrontation Clause and the hearsay rule with its many exceptions. The Court held that the defendant's Confrontation Clause rights were not violated by the introduction into evidence of the preliminary hearing testimony of a witness not produced at the defendant's subsequent criminal trial. The Court stated:

In sum, when a hearsay declarant is not present for cross-examination at trial, the Confrontation Clause normally requires a showing that he is unavailable. Even then, his statement is admissible[178 MICHAPP 444] only if it bears adequate "indicia of reliability." Reliability can be inferred without more in a case where the evidence falls within a firmly rooted hearsay exception. In other cases, the evidence must be excluded, at least absent a showing of particularized guarantees of trustworthiness. [Roberts, 448 U.S. at 66, 100 S.Ct. at 2539.]

Lee, supra, is the most significant case for purposes of this analysis. There, Lee and a codefendant were charged with committing a double murder and tried jointly in a bench trial at which neither Lee nor the codefendant testified. Both Lee and the codefendant previously confessed. In finding Lee guilty as charged, the trial judge expressly relied on portions of the codefendant's confession, obtained by police at the time of arrest, as substantive evidence against Lee. The Lee Court held that the codefendant's statement, as the confession of an accomplice, was presumptively unreliable and that it did not bear sufficient independent "indicia of reliability" to overcome that presumption. 476 U.S. at 539, 106 S.Ct. at 2061.

The Lee Court explained that an accomplice's confession is presumptively unreliable because of the accomplice's strong motivation to implicate the defendant and exonerate himself. 476 U.S. at 541, 106 S.Ct. at 2062. The five-justice majority stated:

Illinois contends that [the accomplice's] statement bears sufficient "indicia of reliability" to rebut the presumption of unreliability that attaches to codefendants' confessions, citing as support our decision in Ohio v. Roberts, 448 US [56, 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597, 17 Ohio Ops 3d 240 (1980) ] (citations omitted). While we agree that the presumption may be rebutted, we are not persuaded that it has been in this case.

In Roberts, we recognized that even if certain hearsay evidence does not fall within "a firmly [178 MICHAPP 445] rooted hearsay exception" and is thus presumptively unreliable and inadmissible for Confrontation Clause purposes, it may nonetheless meet Confrontation Clause reliability standards if it is supported by a "showing of particularized guarantees of trustworthiness." Ibid. However, we also emphasized that "[r]eflecting its underlying purpose to augment accuracy in the factfinding process by ensuring the defendant an effective means to test adverse evidence, the Clause countenances only hearsay marked with such trustworthiness that 'there is no material departure from the reason of the general rule.' " Id. at 65, 100 S.Ct. at 2539, quoting Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 107, [54 S.Ct. 330, 78 L.Ed. 674, 90 A.L.R. 575 (1934) ]. Illinois' asserted grounds for holding [the accomplice's] statement to be reliable with respect to Lee's culpability simply do not meet this standard. [476 U.S. at 543-544, 106 S.Ct. at 2063-64.]

The majority explained that the accomplice's confession was elicited only after he was told that Lee had already implicated him and Lee had implored him to share "the rap" with her. The accomplice may have had a desire, motive, or impulse either to mitigate the appearance of his own culpability by spreading the blame or to overstate Lee's involvement in retaliation for her having implicated him in the murders. The majority further noted that the accomplice not only had a theoretical motive to distort the facts to Lee's detriment, but also was considering becoming her adversary by being a witness for the state against her. 476 U.S. at 544, 106 S.Ct. at 2064.

The majority rejected Illinois' contention that because the confessions interlocked at some points, the accomplice's testimony should be deemed trustworthy in its entirety. The majority explained that although the confessions overlapped in their factual recitations to a great extent, they clearly [178 MICHAPP 446] diverged with respect to the very issues in dispute at trial: the roles which the two defendants played in the killings and the question of premeditation. 476 U.S. at 545, 106 S.Ct. at 2064. The majority was not convinced that there were sufficient "indicia of reliability" to overcome the presumption against the admission of the accomplice's confession. Therefore, the majority held that Lee's right of confrontation was violated. However, the majority did not foreclose the possibility that the error was harmless when assessed in the context of the entire case against Lee and remanded the case for further proceedings on this matter.

Four justices, dissenting, believed that the Roberts requirements were satisfied and concluded that the trial court's use of the accomplice's confession as evidence against the defendant was constitutionally permissible. 476 U.S. at 548, 106 S.Ct. at 2064.

In their confessions, Jordan and Miller described a fairly detailed series of events. Essentially, Jordan and Miller stated that defendants kidnapped Bernard Payne and...