State Carolina v. Castaneda

• Decision Date: 16 August 2011
• Docket Number: No. COA11–7.,COA11–7.
• Parties: STATE of North Carolinav.Raymundo Antonio CASTANEDA, Defendant.
• Court: North Carolina Court of Appeals

715 S.E.2d 290

STATE of North Carolina

v.Raymundo Antonio CASTANEDA, Defendant.

No. COA11–7.

Court of Appeals of North Carolina.

Aug. 16, 2011.

Appeal by defendant from judgment entered 2 June 2010 by Judge Calvin E. Murphy in Mecklenburg County Superior Court. Heard in the Court of Appeals 8 June 2011.

Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General K.D. Sturgis, for the State.

Duncan B. McCormick, Lillington, for defendant-appellant.

HUNTER, Robert C., Judge.

Defendant Raymundo Antonio Castaneda appeals his second-degree murder conviction. After careful review, we find no error.

Facts

The State presented evidence tending to establish the following facts at trial: Around 10:00 a.m. on 23 December 2007, several men, including defendant, Silvano Barrera, and a man nicknamed “Gota,” were drinking beer at Gota's apartment in Charlotte, North Carolina. Moises Aguilar came over to Gota's house later that morning and began drinking beer with the other men. In the afternoon, Barrera asked defendant if he could borrow his grill to cook some steaks and defendant left Gota's house to go get the grill. When defendant returned with the grill, Barrera asked him to clean it while he went grocery shopping. While Barrera was gone, defendant told Aguilar to clean the grill, which made him angry, and the two men began arguing. Defendant threw a beer can at Aguilar and the two men started pushing each other. Aguilar went outside, defendant stayed inside the apartment, and the two men eventually calmed down.

Around 3:00 that afternoon, Barrera, who had been at his apartment preparing the food, went to Gota's apartment and told everyone to come to his house to eat outside. Defendant and Gota arrived at around 4:00 p.m. and Aguilar showed up a few minutes later. When he arrived, Aguilar “started saying stuff” to defendant and continued saying “stuff” to defendant during the meal. Aguilar then slapped defendant in the face. At this point, defendant “jumped” on Aguilar and the two men began fighting. Although at first Barrera thought defendant was punching Aguilar, when Aguilar fell to the ground on his side, knocking over the grill, Barrera saw that defendant was stabbing him with a kitchen knife. Barrera borrowed a neighbor's telephone and called 911. When someone told defendant that it looked like Aguilar was going to die, defendant fled the scene.

The paramedics arrived, found Aguilar pulseless and not breathing, and pronounced him dead at the scene. The autopsy revealed that Aguilar was stabbed eight times in the chest and abdomen and seven times in the back and that Aguilar died as a result of these wounds.

Defendant was aware, a few days after the incident, that the police were looking for him, but he did not contact the police or turn himself in. Defendant left the state and first went to Charleston, South Carolina, then to Atlanta, Georgia, and finally to Jacksonville, Florida, where he was arrested seven months later, on 31 July 2008. After defendant was apprehended, he was interviewed by Charlotte–Mecklenburg Police Detectives William Brandon and Miguel Santiago. The interview was videotaped and transcribed.

Defendant was charged with first-degree murder. Prior to trial, defendant moved to redact portions of the transcript from the interview where the detectives referred to “other witnesses[']” statements about the events surrounding the homicide as well as portions in which the detectives told defendant that his version of events was a “lie.” In declining to redact the statements referencing non-testifying third parties, the trial court ruled that the evidence was not being offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted, that the “State w[ould] be prevented from arguing the substance” of these statements, and that it would give a limiting instruction to the jury. The court also refused to redact the detective's statements that defendant was lying, noting that “officers are permitted to employ investigative and questioning techniques designed to elicit information from a suspect....” When the challenged evidence was offered during trial, defendant renewed his objection, and the trial court overruled the objection.

Defendant elected to testify in his defense, explaining that Aguilar had attacked him with the knife and that he had stabbed Aguilar in self-defense. The jury found defendant guilty of second-degree murder and the trial court sentenced defendant to a presumptive-range term of 151 to 191 months imprisonment. Defendant timely appealed to this Court.

I

Defendant first argues that the trial court erred in admitting the transcript of the police interview without redacting the detectives' “statements indicating that witnesses saw the defendant pick up a knife and stab the decedent.” During the interview, Detective Brandon told defendant that he did not believe defendant's story that Aguilar attacked him, saying that “people said that ... you picked the knife up and you stabbed [Aguilar].” Later, Detective Santiago told defendant that some parts of his story were “not true” as they did not “match” the evidence from the scene.

A. Hearsay

Defendant contends that the detectives' statements referring to what they had been told by non-testifying third parties constituted inadmissible hearsay. The State counters that the detectives' statements were not offered at trial for the truth of the matter asserted and thus did not constitute hearsay. Rule 801 of the Rules of Evidence defines “[h]earsay” as “a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted.” N.C. R. Evid. 801(c). Consequently, as the State correctly points out, “[o]ut-of-court statements offered for purposes other than to prove the truth of the matter asserted are not considered hearsay.” State v. Call, 349 N.C. 382, 409, 508 S.E.2d 496, 513 (1998). In particular, statements of one person to another to explain subsequent actions taken by the person to whom the statements were made are admissible as non-hearsay evidence. State v. Coffey, 326 N.C. 268, 282, 389 S.E.2d 48, 56 (1990). “The reason such statements are admissible is not that they fall under an exception to the [hearsay] rule, but that they simply are not hearsay—they do not come within the ... legal definition of the term.” Long v. Paving Co., 47 N.C.App. 564, 569, 268 S.E.2d 1, 5 (1980). The trial court's determination as to whether an out-of-court statement constitutes hearsay is reviewed de novo on appeal. State v. Miller, 197 N.C.App. 78, 87–88, 676 S.E.2d 546, 552, disc. review denied, 363 N.C. 586, 683 S.E.2d 216 (2009).

Here, as noted by the trial court in denying defendant's motion, the detectives' references to statements by unidentified third parties are not hearsay because they were “not admitted for the purpose of conferring the truth of what [was] contained in [the] statements.” Instead, the detectives' statements were offered to provide context for defendants' answers and to explain the detectives' interviewing techniques. See id. at 89, 676 S.E.2d at 553 (“Because defendant changed his story as a result of these out-of-court statements, it can be properly said that these questions were admitted to show their effect on defendant, not to prove the truth of the matter asserted.”). As the detectives' statements were not offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted, they did not constitute hearsay, and the trial court properly admitted the evidence.

The trial court, moreover, instructed the jury twice “not to consider such statements for the truth of what was said but only for the impact those statements may have had on the Defendant as an interviewing technique by the detective[s].” It is well established that “[t]he law presumes that the jury heeds limiting instructions that the trial judge gives regarding the evidence.” State v. Shields, 61 N.C.App. 462, 464, 300 S.E.2d 884, 886 (1983).

B. Right to Confrontation

Defendant also argues that the admission of the detectives' statements violated his rights under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment. It is well recognized, however, that “[t]he Confrontation Clause ‘does not bar the use of testimonial statements for purposes other than establishing the truth of the matter asserted.’ ” Miller, 197 N.C.App. at 87, 676 S.E.2d at 552 (quoting Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 59 n. 9, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 1368 n. 9, 158 L.Ed.2d 177, 197–98 n. 9 (2004)). Thus, because the detectives' statements were not admitted to establish the truth of the assertions,—that certain witnesses saw defendant pick up the knife and stab Aguilar—but were instead used to provide context for defendant's responses, the admission of these statements did not violate defendant's confrontation rights. See id. at 90–91, 676 S.E.2d at 554 (finding no Confrontation Clause violation from admission of detectives' questions which included statements by non-testifying declarants as the evidence was admissible to assist the jury in “understand [ing] the circumstances in which the defendant was caught in a lie, changed his story, and made significant admissions of fact, not to prove the truth of the matter asserted”). Defendant's arguments are overruled.

II

Defendant next contends that the trial court erred in not redacting those portions of the transcript in which Detective Santiago accused defendant of telling a “lie” and giving an account of the fight that was “bullshit” and like “the shit you see in the movies”. The trial court denied defendant's motion to redact these statements, observing that “officers are permitted to employ investigative and questioning techniques designed to elicit information from a suspect.”

A. Improper Opinion Evidence

Defendant claims that Detective Santiago's “statements constituted inadmissible opinion evidence on the truth or falsity of [defendant]'s pretrial statement and, ultimately, [his] testimony at...