State v. Maclin
| Decision Date | 18 January 2006 |
| Citation | 183 S.W.3d 335 |
| Parties | STATE of Tennessee v. Larrie MACLIN. and State of Tennessee v. Michael Lebron Anderson. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
WILLIAM M. BARKER, C.J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which E. RILEY ANDERSON, ADOLPHO A. BIRCH, JR., JANICE M. HOLDER, and CORNELIA A. CLARK, JJ. joined.
We granted permission to appeal these cases and then consolidated them to determine a question common to both: whether the admission at trial of an unavailable witness's "excited utterance" to law enforcement officers at the crime scene violated the defendant's right to confront witnesses against him. We conclude that— depending on the particular facts of a case—an excited utterance can be "testimonial." If the statement is determined to be "testimonial," then under Sixth Amendment analysis as outlined in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004), and under Article I, Section 9 of the Tennessee Constitution, which guarantees the defendant's right to "meet the witnesses face to face," it is inadmissible unless the witness was unavailable and the defendant had a prior opportunity for cross-examination. If the statement is not testimonial, then admissibility is governed by the standards of Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980). We reverse the Court of Criminal Appeals in State v. Maclin and dismiss charges against the defendant for reckless aggravated assault; we affirm the lower court's conviction in State v. Anderson of the defendant for burglary of a building other than a habitation.
On the afternoon of August 28, 2002, Memphis Police Officers Ronald Weddle and James Gaylor were dispatched to a residence in Memphis, Tennessee, to investigate a 911 hang-up call. When they knocked on the door, both the female victim, May Newby, and the defendant, Larrie Maclin, answered the door. The officers informed them that they were responding to a 911 call. Although the defendant told the officers that their assistance was not needed, Ms. Newby, who was crying and very emotional, told the officers that she made the call because the defendant assaulted her.
Ms. Newby gave the following account of events to the officers: The defendant was her boyfriend of nine years. He had picked her up from work that day, and on the way home they got into an argument. At one point, the defendant pulled a pistol from between the seats, pointed it at her head, and told her that he would shoot her if she did not be quiet. When she continued to argue with him, the defendant began hitting her in the face with his hands and again threatened to kill her—and her children—if she did not stop arguing. He also threatened to hit her with the pistol but never did so. When she and the defendant arrived at the house, he wrapped the gun in a blue towel and placed it somewhere inside the truck. Once inside the house, she and the defendant continued to argue, and the defendant struck her several times in the head with his hands.
Officer Weddle testified that when he and Officer Gaylor arrived, Ms. Newby's face was noticeably swollen, and the inside of her lip was split and bleeding. After hearing her version of events, they asked the defendant if he had anything to say. He refused to give a statement. Thereafter, the officers detained the defendant. They also looked through the windows of his truck and saw, in plain view, the barrel of a weapon from under a blue cloth on the seat. Police confiscated the gun, a .38 caliber revolver loaded with five live rounds.
The defendant was arrested and later indicted for (1) aggravated assault by knowingly causing Ms. Newby to reasonably fear imminent bodily injury by displaying a deadly weapon1 and (2) being a felon in possession of a handgun.2 Before trial, Ms. Newby died and was therefore unavailable to testify at trial. The defendant moved to exclude her statements to police on the grounds that (1) they were not excited utterances and (2) to admit them would violate his right to confront a witness against him. The trial court, however, ruled that the victim's statements were excited utterances and admissible at trial.
At trial, the parties stipulated that Ms. Newby died of causes unrelated to acts of the defendant or the facts of the case and, therefore, she was unavailable as a witness. The parties also stipulated that at the time of the alleged offenses, the defendant was a felon, stemming from a 1980 conviction. The evidence presented to the jury consisted primarily of the testimony of Officer Weddle, who testified concerning Ms. Newby's statements at the scene. The defendant testified to the following: That on the date of the alleged offense, he fired the victim, who worked for him, because she left the office unattended that day for an extended period. When she returned to the office, her face was already swollen and she appeared upset.3 She was carrying the gun in a paper sack. He admitted that he and the victim had argued that day, but he denied hitting her or threatening her with the gun.
The jury gave credence to Ms. Newby's account of events, as related through Officer Weddle, and found the defendant guilty of the lesser offense of reckless aggravated assault4 and being a felon in possession of a handgun. The trial court imposed concurrent sentences of four years and two years for the respective convictions.
The defendant appealed, raising numerous issues, including (1) whether admission of the victim's hearsay statements to police violated his right to confrontation; (2) whether the victim's hearsay statements to police were improperly characterized as "excited utterances" and admitted under a hearsay exception in Tennessee Rule of Evidence 803(2); and (3) whether the trial court improperly instructed the jury on the charge of reckless aggravated assault.5 The Court of Criminal Appeals held that the victim's statements were not "testimonial" in nature; therefore, the requirements of the recent United State Supreme Court decision Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. at 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354, — which conditions admissibility of out-of-court testimonial statements on unavailability of the witness and a prior opportunity for cross-examination — did not apply. Since the statements were characterized as "nontestimonial," the court applied the test of Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. at 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531 to determine whether the victim's statements were admissible under a "firmly rooted hearsay exception" or bore particularized guarantees of trustworthiness. The court concluded that the statements qualified as excited utterances under Tennessee Rule of Evidence 803(2) and were properly admitted. Regarding the jury instruction on reckless aggravated assault, however, the court concluded that the trial court erred by failing to include the element of "bodily injury" and that the error was not harmless. Accordingly, the court remanded the case to the trial court for retrial on the offense of reckless aggravated assault.
The defendant applied for, and this Court granted, permission to appeal the following issues: (1) whether the defendant's right to confrontation was violated; (2) whether the victim's hearsay statements were improperly admitted; and (3) whether reckless aggravated assault is a lesser included offense of aggravated assault by causing another to reasonably fear bodily injury.
On August 5, 2002, shortly after 10:00 p.m., Officer Brian Smith of the Chattanooga Police Department was patrolling the 1600 block of Adams Street in downtown Chattanooga when he heard a burglar alarm. As he approached the 600 block of Main Street and tried to locate the source of the alarm, he saw a group of juveniles standing on the sidewalk. They flagged him down and, responding to his inquiry about what was wrong, told him that a large African-American male with a bald head just kicked in the door of a business across the street. They were all speaking at once. When he asked whether the man was still inside, they responded that he was.
Officer Smith went to the door pointed out by the juveniles and pushed on it. The door was open and unsecured, and a light was on inside the building. Officer Smith then requested backup units. As more officers arrived, Officer Smith pushed the door open and saw the defendant, Michael Anderson, running out from behind a display counter. After the defendant was arrested, Officer Smith, another officer and a K-9 unit checked the building for other suspects. No one else was found inside. The office had been ransacked, with drawers pulled out, file cabinets damaged from forced entry, computers overturned, and papers scattered everywhere. The inside burglar alarm had been ripped off the wall and smashed. Ultimately, however, the only item determined to be missing was some change that had been left in the cash register when the store closed earlier that evening. The defendant began to moan and complain of chest pain. He was...
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