People v. Duarte

PEOPLE Respondent v. DANNY DUARTE, Appellant No. S068162 C.A. 2nd, Div. 6, No. B104672 California Supreme Court Filed April 15, 1998
        Appellant`s petition for review GRANTED.




[Editor's Note - For your convenience we reprint below the Daily Journal's Ruling column brief which summarized the earlier decision of the lower court.]


CRIMINAL LAW AND PROCEDURE

Admission of separately-tried co-defendant's redacted hearsay statement implicating defendant violates confrontation clause.

        The C.A. 2nd has ruled that the confrontation clause was violated when redacted hearsay statements of a codefendant which implicated defendant were admitted against the defendant as evidence of his guilt.
        Leslie Sullivan was working in her home when a barrage of bullets hit the house. Sullivan was struck in the upper thigh by a bullet. Search warrants were eventually served at the homes of Danny Duarte, William Morris, and Eran Knox. Although weapons and ammunition were found in Duarte's residence, they did not match those used in the attack on the Sullivan home. Duarte was arrested when he refused to talk to the officers. No evidence was found at Knox's residence, but he was interviewed by the police and stated that after smoking marijuana and drinking rum, Duarte suggested that the group shoot at the residence of Tam Nguyen. Officers recovered ammunition at Morris' residence that matched casings found outside Sullivan's residence. After Morris was arrested and read his Miranda v. Arizona rights, he incriminated himself and Duarte, and said that after hearing news accounts of the shooting, they realized they had shot at the wrong house. Duarte and Morris were charged with weapons related offenses but were tried separately. Morris was convicted at his trial. Duarte's first trial ended in a mistrial. After establishing that Morris was unavailable to testify at Duarte's second trial, the prosecution was permitted to introduce Morris' inculpatory statement. The trial court ruled that the statement, which was redacted to omit any reference to the names of Morris' companions, was admissible as a declaration against Morris' penal interest. Duarte was convicted as charged. He maintained that the introduction of Morris' confession violated his constitutional rights to confrontation.
        The C.A. 2nd reversed. A redaction procedure alone does not provide adequate constitutional protection to a nondeclaring defendant when he is tried separately and his codefendant's confession is introduced without an opportunity for cross-examination and without a limiting instruction. Here, because the jury was explicitly asked to consider the confession, the redaction was meaningless, and the error was not harmless. Without Morris' unchallenged statements, the prosecution's case against Duarte was weak because no physical evidence tied him to Sullivan's residence, and he made no incriminating statements. "In light of those inconsistencies, and Knox's incentive to place blame on someone else, it is impossible to speculate about the degree to which his testimony was improperly corroborated by Morris's statement."

        People v. Duarte, No. B104672, filed January 13, 1998 by Stone, J.
        The full text of this case appears at 98 Daily Journal DAR 451, January 15, 1998.