Smith v. State

• Decision Date: 31 August 1994
• Docket Number: No. 237,1993,237
• Citation: 647 A.2d 1083
• Parties: John M. SMITH, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee. . Submitted:
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Delaware

Page 1083

647 A.2d 1083

John M. SMITH, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee.

No. 237, 1993.

Supreme Court of Delaware.

Submitted: Aug. 31, 1994.

Decided: Sept. 23, 1994.

On appeal from the Superior Court. REVERSED AND REMANDED.

David W. Jones, Blades, Pryor & Benson, P.A., Dover, for appellant.

Gary A. Myers, Dept. of Justice, Georgetown, for appellee.

Before VEASEY, C.J., WALSH and HOLLAND, JJ.

VEASEY, Chief Justice:

In this appeal we consider whether the Superior Court erred in admitting against defendant below-appellant John M. Smith ("Smith") testimony of Jeanine Weedon ("Mrs. Weedon"), the wife of codefendant below William Weedon, Jr. ("Weedon"). In relevant part, the testimony recounted a conversation Weedon had with Mrs. Weedon on October 10, 1992, that implicated Smith in the subject offenses. For the reasons below, we hold that the Superior Court committed plain error by admitting the pertinent testimony and therefore REVERSE Smith's convictions and REMAND the case to the Superior Court for a new trial.

I. FACTS

In the early morning hours of October 10, 1992, Ronald Ward ("Ward") was attacked while sleeping in his house in Lewes, Delaware. Ward did not see who attacked him. As a result of the attack, Ward received severe injuries to his face, skull, arm and fingers.

Later that morning, Officer Gilbert Clampitt ("Clampitt"), of the Lewes police, stopped a blue Chevrolet Nova for a speeding violation. Smith and Weedon identified themselves, respectively, as the driver and passenger/owner of the vehicle. Located inside the vehicle were two baseball bats. Clampitt ticketed Smith for speeding and allowed the two to proceed.

The police learned of Weedon's and Smith's involvement in Ward's assault primarily through a phone call Mrs. Weedon placed to the Delaware State Police. In that call, she recounted certain events which occurred in early October, 1992, which events are summarized as follows: between 3:00 and 5:00 p.m. on October 9, Weedon arrived at the Weedon residence; Mrs. Weedon apprised Weedon of unfortunate developments relating to the sexual molestation of their children; upon learning from Mrs. Weedon of an accusation by his son Billy that Ward molested him, Weedon declared that he would kill Ward and stormed off; Weedon returned to the Weedon residence between 10:00 and 10:30 a.m., October 10, where he told Mrs. Weedon that he and "John" (later identified as Smith) had gone to Ward's house and beaten Ward with two baseball bats; he continued that "John [Smith] hit him in the head like he was hitting a baseball."

Upon Mrs. Weedon's recitation of the above events, the police pieced together what had occurred in the early hours of October 10, eventually leading to a five-count indictment of Weedon and Smith on January 11, 1993. A joint jury trial commenced on April 26, 1993, in which Smith testified on his own behalf and presented an alibi defense. Weedon did not take the stand. Mrs. Weedon testified as to the events of October 9 and 10, including a recounting of her October 10 conversation with Weedon. The trial ended on May 4, 1993, with the jury finding Weedon and Smith guilty of Attempted Murder First Degree, ¹ Burglary First Degree, ² Possession of a Deadly Weapon During Commission of a Felony ³ and Conspiracy First Degree. ⁴ Smith was sentenced on June 18, 1993, to a total incarceration period of 17 years. He filed a timely appeal. ⁵

Smith originally raised two contentions on appeal. First, he argued that admission as to Smith of Mrs. Weedon's testimony regarding Weedon's October 10 statement to her violated Bruton ⁶ and the Confrontation Clause. ⁷ Second, Smith contended that the Superior Court erred in denying his timely motion for judgment of acquittal. This Court subsequently ordered supplemental briefing on whether Delaware should adopt the standard enunciated in Williamson v. United States, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 2431, 129 L.Ed.2d 476 (1994), in defining the scope of D.R.E. 804(b)(3).

II. ANALYSIS UNDER D.R.E. 804(b)(3)

Though conceding that he failed to object to the introduction of this evidence in the Superior Court, Smith argues that the court committed plain error in admitting portions of the October 10 conversation between Weedon and Mrs. Weedon that implicated him. He asserts that Williamson provides the more analytically sound approach to D.R.E. 804(b)(3) issues. The State initially notes that Williamson is only marginally involved because only those portions of Weedon's statement that used a plural, first-person pronoun and the component that directly inculpated Smith are at issue. The State contends that because Williamson was based on federal statutory analysis, this Court is not bound by that decision and, further, that policy considerations favor rejection of Williamson. Premised on such rejection, the State concludes that Weedon's October 10 statement was admissible against Smith under D.R.E. 804(b)(3). ⁸

D.R.E. 804(b)(3) only allows admission of truly self-inculpatory statements. That provision, which codifies the declaration-against-interest exception to the hearsay rule, allows admission of the following:

A statement which was, at the time of its making, so far contrary to the declarant's pecuniary or proprietary interest, or so far tended to subject him to civil or criminal liability, or to render invalid a claim by him against another, that a reasonable man in his position would not have made the statement unless he believed it to be true.

D.R.E. 804(b)(3). In Williamson v. United States, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 2431, 129 L.Ed.2d 476 (1994) (O'Connor, J., majority), the United States Supreme Court clarified the scope of statements admissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 804(b)(3) ("F.R.E. 804(b)(3)"), --- U.S. at ---- - ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2433-37, the federal counterpart to D.R.E. 804(b)(3). In that case, a declarant ("Harris") during a custodial interrogation made a confession that incriminated himself as well as the defendant ("Williamson"). Subsequently, Harris recanted parts of his confession as fabricated but made a second confession. The second confession still incriminated himself and Williamson, though under a different set of circumstances. At Williamson's trial, because Harris (who was called as a witness under use immunity) refused to testify, the court allowed the interrogating officer to recount Harris' second confession which inculpated both Harris (the declarant) and Williamson (the defendant). Id. at ---- - ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2433-34.

The issue before the Court was whether the confession should be dissected to its self-inculpatory and non-self-inculpatory components. Relying on the denotative meaning of "statement" in F.R.E. 804(b)(3) and the underlying basis for admissibility of such statements--trustworthiness attributable to declarations against interest--the Court explicated that F.R.E. 804(b)(3) renders admissible only those components of a declarant's confession that are truly self-inculpatory as to the declarant in light of all the surrounding circumstances. Id. at ---- - ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2436-37. ⁹

The policy behind the declaration-against-interest exception is that self-inculpatory statements are inherently reliable and trustworthy. Williamson, --- U.S. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2435 ("reasonable people, even reasonable people who are not especially honest, tend not to make self-incriminatory statements unless they believe them to be true"); United States v. Matthews, 2d Cir., 20 F.3d 538, 545 (1994) ("people do not ordinarily make statements damaging to themselves unless they are true") (quotation omitted). There is no clear policy basis, however, for attributing equal guarantees of trustworthiness to declarations appurtenant to the self-incriminatory ones, particularly those that are self-serving. Williamson, --- U.S. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2435; Lee v. Illinois, 476 U.S. 530, 541, 106 S.Ct. 2056, 2062, 90 L.Ed.2d 514 (1986); Matthews, 20 F.3d at 545. Justice O'Connor, speaking for the majority of the Supreme Court in Williamson, analyzed the rule as follows:

Rule 804(b)(3) is founded on the commonsense notion that reasonable people, even reasonable people who are not especially honest, tend not to make self-inculpatory statements unless they believe them to be true. This notion simply does not extend to the broader definition of "statement." The fact that a person is making a broadly self-inculpatory confession does not make more credible the confession's non-self-inculpatory parts. One of the most effective ways to lie is to mix falsehood with truth, especially truth that seems particularly persuasive because of its self-inculpatory nature.

* * * * * *

Self-exculpatory statements are exactly the ones which people are most likely to make even when they are false; and mere proximity to other, self-inculpatory, statements does not increase the plausibility of the self-exculpatory statements.

* * * * * *

Nothing in the text of Rule 804(b)(3) or the general theory of the hearsay Rules suggests that admissibility should turn on whether a statement is collateral to a self-inculpatory statement. The fact that a statement is self-inculpatory does make it more reliable; but the fact that a statement is collateral to a self-inculpatory statement says nothing at all about the collateral statement's reliability. We see no reason why collateral statements, even ones that are neutral as to interest ... should be treated any differently from other hearsay statements that are generally excluded.

* * * * * *

In our view, the most faithful reading of Rule 804(b)(3) is that it does not allow admission of non-self-inculpatory statements, even if they are made within a broader narrative that is generally self-inculpatory. The district court may not just assume for purposes of Rule 804(b)(3) that a statement is self-inculpatory because it is part of a fuller confession, and this is especially...