U.S.A v. Brown

• Decision Date: 24 August 2010
• Docket Number: No. 09-5431.,09-5431.
• Citation: 617 F.3d 857
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant,v.David E. BROWN, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

617 F.3d 857

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant,v.David E. BROWN, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 09-5431.

United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.

Argued: Aug. 6, 2010.

Decided and Filed: Aug. 24, 2010.

ARGUED: Christopher D. Poole, Assistant United States Attorney, Chattanooga, Tennessee, for Appellant. Mary Ellen Coleman, Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, Inc., Chattanooga, Tennessee, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Debra A. Breneman, Assistant United States Attorney, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Mary Ellen Coleman, Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, Inc., Chattanooga, Tennessee, for Appellee.

Before: SUTTON and McKEAGUE, Circuit Judges; JONKER, District Judge.^*

OPINION

SUTTON, Circuit Judge.

A jury convicted David Brown of being a felon in possession of a firearm. 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Brown moved for a post-verdict judgment of acquittal, arguing that the sole evidence presented against him at trial-his confession-could not support the jury's verdict. Invoking the “corroboration rule,” the district court agreed with Brown and acquitted him. The United States appeals. Because sufficient independent evidence establishes the trustworthiness of Brown's statements, we reverse.

I.

In April 2006, Jason Helms reported that someone had stolen a Glock .40 caliber pistol and a silver necklace from his home in Cleveland, Tennessee. Helms suspected that an acquaintance, David Brown, might be the culprit. He relayed his suspicion to Detective Robert Harbison, who learned that Brown was staying at his cousin's house and eventually found Brown sleeping on the couch there. Harbison woke Brown, identified himself, explained the reason for his visit and asked to speak with him. Brown consented and the two men went outside, where Helms stood waiting. Helms and Harbison explained that they did not “want [Brown] to go to jail,” that Helms “just wanted his gun back” and that, if Brown “[gave] the gun to Mr. Helms,” he could “go back in[side] and go to sleep.” R.78, 5. Brown responded that he had traded the gun for methamphetamine in a neighboring county and that he “[could] get the gun back.” R.78, 5. He refused to divulge to whom he traded the gun or where it might be.

Harbison took Brown to the police station for further questioning. Once there, Harbison read Brown his Miranda rights, and Brown waived them. Brown gave a tape-recorded confession, saying that he entered Helms' house and stole the Glock .40 and the silver necklace. He refused once again, however, to disclose who had the gun, pledging only that he would get it back. Several days later, Brown's mother called Harbison with a similar promise: She would get the gun and return it. The gun was never recovered.

Two months later, a federal grand jury indicted Brown for being a felon in possession of a firearm on the basis of Brown's confession that he had taken-and therefore possessed-Helms' gun. 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Detective Carl Maskew arrested Brown and brought him to the county jail, where he again administered Brown his Miranda rights. Brown again agreed to speak with Maskew and signed another waiver form.

This time, Brown's story changed. He said that he knew nothing about the stolen gun. During his prior confession, he explained, he was confused as to which gun Harbison was asking him about. The gun that he traded for methamphetamine, he now insisted, was not Helms' Glock .40, but a Glock .22 that he received as payment for some landscaping work.

Minutes later, Brown revised his story again. Two acquaintances, he said, broke into Helms' house and stole the gun and the necklace. They gave Brown the Glock .40 a day or so after the burglary. Brown traded the gun to his cousin Jimmy Chambers for 30 to 40 dollars' worth of methamphetamine. He told Maskew that “if possible” he “[would] help try to find” the missing gun. R.78, 25.

Brown went to trial on the felon-in-possession charge. He stipulated that he was a convicted felon and that the gun at hand had traveled in interstate commerce, leaving the government to prove that Brown knowingly possessed it. United States v. Campbell, 549 F.3d 364, 374 (6th Cir.2008). The government played Brown's tape-recorded confession for the jury and offered the testimony of Detectives Harbison and Maskew, who both described their conversations with Brown. Brown testified. He recanted his confession to Harbison, blaming it on a methamphetamine and morphine binge and insisting that he could not remember speaking with Harbison. He also disclaimed making any statements to Maskew and denied that he ever possessed a gun, be it Helms' Glock .40 or the Glock .22 he referenced during his interview with Maskew. The jury found him guilty.

After his conviction, Brown renewed his motion for a judgment of acquittal under Rule 29 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. He argued that the only thing linking him to the crime was his uncorroborated confession, which by itself could not sustain the verdict. The district court agreed and acquitted Brown.

II.

A dusty doctrine of criminal law-the “corroboration rule”-lies at the heart of this appeal. Rooted in English common law and embraced by the United States Supreme Court in the 1950s, the rule says that no one may be convicted of a crime based solely on his uncorroborated confession. Opper v. United States, 348 U.S. 84, 89, 93, 75 S.Ct. 158, 99 L.Ed. 101 (1954); see also Smith v. United States, 348 U.S. 147, 156, 75 S.Ct. 194, 99 L.Ed. 192 (1954); United States v. Calderon, 348 U.S. 160, 165, 75 S.Ct. 186, 99 L.Ed. 202 (1954). Early versions of the rule developed in 17th-century England when a series of suspects confessed to murders, only to have their alleged victims turn up-alive and well-long after the suspects were imprisoned (or, worse, executed) for the fictitious crimes. See Thomas A. Mullen Rule Without Reason: Requiring Independent Proof of the Corpus Delicti as a Condition of Admitting an Extrajudicial Confession, 27 U.S.F. L.Rev. 385, 399-401 (1993) (citing Perry's Case, 14 How. St. Tr. 1311 (1600)). First known as the corpus delicti, or “body of a crime,” rule, the doctrine guarded against convictions for imaginary crimes by requiring prosecutors to demonstrate through independent evidence that the crime occurred before they could use an accused's own statements to establish guilt. Smith, 348 U.S. at 153-54, 75 S.Ct. 194; see also United States v. Sterling, 555 F.3d 452, 456 (5th Cir.2009).

Today's corroboration rule differs from its predecessor in form but not in function. Wary that “[the] weakness of the accused under the strain of suspicion” may cause the accused to give a false, even if voluntary, confession Opper, 348 U.S. at 90, 75 S.Ct. 158, the Supreme Court in 1954 embraced a variation on the rule to prevent “errors in convictions based upon untrue confessions alone,” Smith, 348 U.S. at 153, 75 S.Ct. 194. Unlike the corpus delicti rule, the government need not introduce evidence independent of the accused's confession to establish that the crime occurred. Opper, 348 U.S. at 93, 75 S.Ct. 158. The government instead generally may satisfy the rule if it introduces “substantial independent evidence which would tend to establish the trustworthiness of the statement,” id. (emphasis added), an approach that has the virtue of ensuring that these trustworthiness considerations extend to all confessions, including those in which no one doubts a crime occurred, only who committed it.

The corroboration requirement, it bears adding, differs from another requirement-that the confession be voluntary. Voluntariness goes to admissibility, while corroboration goes to sufficiency. See Smith, 348 U.S. at 153, 75 S.Ct. 194. Federal courts thus may admit confessions into evidence as voluntary, then later reject them as uncorroborated on the theory that even voluntary “inculpatory confessions ... are frequently unreliable,” and jurors ought not “vote to convict based upon such statements alone.” United States v. Bryce, 208 F.3d 346, 355 (2d Cir.1999).

Throughout its tenure, the corroboration rule has received mixed reviews in the federal courts. As far back as 1918, Judge Learned Hand doubted whether the rule had “any substantial necessity in justice” but did “not feel at liberty to disregard a principle so commonly accepted.” Daeche v. United States, 250 F. 566, 571 (2d Cir.). A panel of our court expressed a similar sentiment two decades later, saying it did not “feel free to cast [the rule] aside” “because of the fixed rule of most courts that corroboration of a confession is necessary,” even though it “kn[ew] of no good reason why [properly obtained confessions] need corroboration.” Anderson v. United States, 124 F.2d 58, 65 (6th Cir.1941) rev'd on other grounds, 318 U.S. 350, 63 S.Ct. 599, 87 L.Ed. 829 (1943). Even the Supreme Court did not adopt the rule without reservation. Because the rule “infringe[s] on the province of the primary finder of facts,” the Court cautioned, “its application should be scrutinized lest the restrictions it imposes surpass the dangers which gave rise to them.” Smith, 348 U.S. at 153, 75 S.Ct. 194.

The passage of time has not diminished ambivalence about the rule. False confessions, on the one hand, have not disappeared, and they provide a modern justification for continuing to respect the rule. The emergence of several new criminal procedure protections over the last several decades, on the other hand, has altered the role of the rule. Since 1954, the Court has constitutionalized several areas of criminal law, many to the end of preventing false and uncounseled confessions. Not the least of these are the requirement that law enforcement read custodial suspects their rights before interrogating them Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), the requirement that interrogations cease upon a suspect's request for an attorney, Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 484-85, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68...