YANCEY v. THE STATE
S02A0843
Supreme Court of Georgia
September 16, 2002
RECONSIDERATION DENIED OCTOBER 11, 2002
570 SE2d 269
FLETCHER, Chief Justice.
4. Shelitha Johnson testified that she heard Reynolds bragging about the robbery and murder. Reynolds contends that Johnson‘s testimony was based on hearsay and should have been excluded. Reynolds‘s contention, however, is not supported by the record. Johnson testified that she heard Reynolds make the statements. A witness may testify as to what she heard a defendant sаy about the crime.8 Therefore, the admission of her testimony was not error.
5. After a review of the record, we conclude that the shell casing found at the scene was properly authenticated, and thus, its admission into evidence was not error.
Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.
DECIDED SEPTEMBER 16, 2002 —
RECONSIDERATION DENIED OCTOBER 11, 2002.
Torris J. Butterfield, for appellant.
Paul L. Howard, Jr., District Attorney, Bettieanne C. Hart, Assistant District Attorney, Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General, for appellee.
S02A0843. YANCEY v. THE STATE.
(570 SE2d 269)
FLETCHER, Chief Justice.
A jury convicted James Yancey of the shooting death of Gregory
1. Terrell Lofton and his friend Gregory Ferrell were sitting in Lofton‘s maroon Delta 88 Oldsmobile on a Saturday afternoon when a light-colored van pulled alongside of them. Lofton turned to his right and asked the driver what he wanted. As Lofton put his key in the ignition, he heard five to seven shots and was hit in the right shoulder. Ferrell, who was in the passenger‘s seat next to the van, died immediately from gunshot wounds to his chest and abdomen.
While in the hospital, Lofton was shоwn a photographic lineup and picked out James Yancey as the van‘s driver. Lofton could not identify the van, but a church van was found that evening in a park two blocks from the defendant‘s home with its windows knocked out and shell casings from an AK-47 rifle inside. The casings were fired from the same rifle as the shell casings found at the murder scene. Police eventually traced the van, which had the name of the church on its sides, to Travis Sloan, who had received it that afternoon in exchange fоr $50 worth of cocaine.
To establish the defendant‘s motive, the State presented evidence that the Oldsmobile‘s previous owner fought with Yancey earlier in the day. Their fight took place in a small white four-door sedan and ended when Yancey crashed into a fence. Police found the wrecked car, which belonged to Yancey‘s mother, one block from the park where they found the abandoned van. After reviewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury‘s detеrmination of guilt, we conclude that a rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty of the crimes charged.2
2. At a pretrial hearing, the State moved for the admission of
Although the State attempted to locate Sloan before trial, its investigator was unable to find him; as a result, the State introduced his statement through the testimony of the police detective who interviewed him. Detective D.B. Mathis testified that Sloan voluntarily came to the homicide office a week after the shooting, but was quiet and reluctant to talk. Mathis explained Sloan‘s rights under Miranda v. Arizona, and Sloan completed a waiver of counsel form that the homicide office uses “if we suspect someone might be involved in a crime.” When asked how the reluctant witness came to make a statement, Mathis testified:
I told Mr. Travis Sloan that right now everything points to you as being the one that last had the van. . . . And he sat there for a minute, and he thought about it, and then he began to talk about what had took place. . . . He understood that he didn‘t have to talk. But at the same time, I let him knоw that everything is pointing at him and he could end up possibly going to jail if he didn‘t want to talk about it, because . . . the last person I interviewed was clear that they gave the van to Travis on Godbey Road.
In his statement, Sloan said that he borrowed a blue and white church van from L.C. around 2:30 or 3:00 p.m. on Saturday and drove to his grandmother‘s house. “My brother James asked me could he use[] the van and I gave him the keys to use the van. He then got in the van and drove off.” Sloan said that after the shooting Yancey said that he and “Tweet” shot up the van and got rid of it. Sloan also said that James wrecked their mother‘s car: “He told me he went to a location to buy some weed (marijuana). He said a guy tried to rob him
(a)
(b) The
When a defendant raises a Confrontation Clause challenge to the admissibility of an out-of-court statement, the analysis is similar to part of our state‘s test for admissibility under the necessity exception in that the prosecution must establish that the hearsay statement bears sufficient indicia of reliability.11 When the evidence falls
(c) There are two types of cases relevant to the issue of the reliability of Travis Sloan‘s out-of-court statement to police: those involving the admissibility of hearsay evidence under this state‘s evidentiary rules and those further addressing whether the admission of the hearsаy evidence violated the defendant‘s constitutional rights under the federal Confrontation Clause. In the first line of cases, we generally have concluded that an out-of-court statement is admissible under our necessity exception to the hearsay rule based primarily on the fact that the declarant gave the statement during an official police investigation.13 These cases defy easy analysis.14 Many involve a spouse who, immediately after the crime is committed, gives a statement to investigators that incriminates his or her spouse, then invokes the marital privilege to avoid testifying at trial.15 Other cases have involved a victim,16 eyewitness,17 or peripheral participant in the crime who is unavailable at trial due to his or her disappearance or death.18
We have struggled with what weight to give the “official investigation” factor, recently concluding that a spouse‘s out-of-court statement was not trustworthy as a matter of law simply because it was told to police officers during an official investigation.19 Instead, it
must be reviewed in light of the surrounding circumstances on a case-by-case basis. Among the relevant factors to consider are whether the declarant had a motive to lie, the spontaneity of the statement, and the consistent repetition of the statement.20 Although our appellate courts have sometimes relied on evidence that corroborates the out-of-court statement as an indicia of reliability,21 the existence of corroborating evidence is more properly considered in deciding whether any error in admitting the statement was harmless.22
In the second line of cases, we have evaluated whether the admission of an accomplice‘s or codefendant‘s out-of-court statements made during an official police investigation violated a defendant‘s constitutional right to confront the witnesses against him.23 On this issue, the United States Supreme Court has consistently recognized that a codefendant‘s confession is presumptively unreliable concerning the defendant‘s conduct or culpability “because those passages may well be the product of the codefendant‘s desire to shift or spread blame, curry favor, avenge himself, or divert attention to another.”24 Following this approach, this Court held in Barksdale v. State that an accomplice‘s videotaped statement made while in police custody was inadmissible as a prior inconsistent statement when the accomplice refused to answer any questions during the trial.25 Because the declarant made the statement while in custody, we concluded that it was not made under circumstances showing particular guarantees of trustworthiness and its admission into evidence violated the defend-
A review of the circumstаnces surrounding the making of the statement in this case shows that Travis Sloan was neither an unimplicated witness, as in the first line of cases, nor an accomplice or codefendant under police custody, as in the second line of cases. Instead, he was under suspicion for the crime of murder when police called him in for questioning. Police investigators had traced the van used in the drive-by shooting to him and determined that he had possession of it on the afternoon that Ferrell аnd Lofton were shot. Detective Mathis read Sloan his Miranda rights and had him sign the waiver of counsel form used for suspects; the detective described Sloan as a reluctant witness and Sloan said that he would not take a polygraph examination. A day earlier, police had questioned Sloan‘s older brother, Daton Yancey, as a suspect and included Daton‘s photograph in the photographic lineup shown to Lofton and other witnesses. In addition, Sloan‘s mother had also been implicated and threatened with arrest for making a false police report in reporting that her car was stolen. Based on these circumstances, we conclude that the fact that Sloan gave his statement to police during the course of an official investigation does not support the trustworthiness of his statement, but rather undermines its sincerity. As a person under suspicion for murder, he had ample motive to lie and shift the blame from himself to others, including the defendant.28
The other three factors cited by the trial court also do not provide sufficient indicia of reliability so that a suspect‘s statement would be admissible under the necessity exception. The U. S. Supreme Court has found that whether a confession is voluntary under the Fifth Amendment “does not bear on the question of whether the confession was also free from any desire, motive, or impulse” that the declarant had to limit his culpability or overstate
3. In addition to challenging the admissibility of Sloan‘s statеment under our state evidentiary rules, Yancey contends that the admission of the statement violated his rights under the Sixth Amendment. Although the rules concerning the Confrontation Clause and hearsay evidence generally protect similar values, they do not always prohibit the same evidence.30 The Confrontation Clause may bar the admission of some evidence that would be admissible under an exception to the hearsay rule.31 “The converse is equally true: merely because evidence is admitted in violation of a long-established hearsay rule does not lead to the automatic conclusion that confrontation rights have been denied.”32
Because the necessity exception is not a firmly rooted exception to the hearsay rule, the State was required to make a similar showing under federal constitutional law as under state criminal law.33 Thus, Yancey‘s constitutional claim also depends on whether Sloan‘s statement was made under circumstancеs showing particular guarantees of trustworthiness.34 For the same reasons that we found Sloan‘s statement unreliable under state evidentiary law, we hold that its admission under the necessity exception violated Yancey‘s right of confrontation.
Whether a constitutional violation constitutes harmless error depends on whether the state can prove beyond a reasonable doubt
Reviewing the evidence, we conclude that admission of the hearsay statement was harmful error. Sloan was the witness who linked the defendant to the van used in the drive-by shooting, thus providing critical support to Lofton‘s eyewitness identification, which was based on a momentary glance at the van‘s driver. Sloan also was the witness who tied the defеndant to the white sedan, providing a motive for the shooting of the two youths. In addition, he was the only witness who said that the defendant had admitted shooting into the van. During closing argument, the prosecutor read from Sloan‘s statement and discussed it at length, referring to it as one of the “two bookends” that showed the defendant‘s guilt. Given the protracted deliberations and the necessity for a “dynamite” charge,38 the evidence against Yancey was not overwhelming. Because there is a reasonable possibility that the improperly admitted police statement of Travis Sloan contributed to the verdict, we reverse.
Judgment reversed. All the Justices concur, except Hunstein, Carley and Thompson, JJ., who dissent.
CARLEY, Justice, dissenting.
I agree with the majority that the trial court should not have admitted Sloan‘s statement under the necessity exception to the hearsay rule and that such admission also violated Yancey‘s right of confrontation in this particular case. I submit, however, that the error was clearly harmless because it is cumulative of other admissible evidence.
This Court has often held that the erroneous admission of testimony under the necessity exception is harmless where there is other evidence proving the substance of the hearsay testimony. Gardner v. State, 273 Ga. 809, 813 (7) (546 SE2d 490) (2001); Bellamy v. State, 272 Ga. 157, 161 (7) (527 SE2d 867) (2000); Holmes v. State, 271 Ga. 138, 141 (2) (516 SE2d 61) (1999); Suits v. State, 270 Ga. 362, 365 (2) (507 SE2d 751) (1998); Fetty v. State, 268 Ga. 365, 368 (4) (489 SE2d 813) (1997); Smith v. State, 266 Ga. 827, 831 (4) (470 SE2d 674) (1996). Furthermore, the admission of confessions or other incrimi-
To support its conclusion that admission of the evidence requires reversal of the conviction, the majority applies an inverted harmless error analysis by its initial indication that Sloan‘s statement linking Yancey to the van used in the drive-by shooting was harmful because it corroborated Lofton‘s eyewitness identification. This observation actually demonstrates a lack of prejudice to Yancey. Indeed, Sloan‘s statement regarding his loan of the van was, at most, cumulative of Lofton‘s far stronger testimony. Lofton gave a detailed description of Yancey, picked him out of an extensive photographic lineup, and identified him at a preliminary hearing and at trial as the person who was driving the van at the time of the shooting. The majority also inaccurately states that Sloan “was the witness who tied the defendant to the white sedan. . . .” To the contrary, this portion of Sloаn‘s statement was only cumulative of the stronger trial testimony of the Oldsmobile‘s previous owner that Yancey was driving the white sedan when they fought. That admissible testimony, rather than Sloan‘s statement, constituted the evidence of motive. Similarly, Sloan‘s statement regarding Yancey‘s admissions concerning the van and the shooting was cumulative of both the eyewitness testimony and the evidence that, when the abandoned van was discovered, the windows were broken and shell casings found on the floor were from the same rifle as the one used in the murder. Because Sloan‘s statement was merely cumulative of other overwhelming probative evidence, there was not a reasonable possibility that it contributed to the verdict. Therefore, any error in admitting the statement was clearly harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See Vaughns v. State, supra; Jones v. State, supra; Byrd v. State, supra. Accordingly, I dissent to the judgment reversing the conviction.
I am authorized to state that Justice Hunstein and Justice Thompson join in this dissent.
DECIDED SEPTEMBER 16, 2002 —
RECONSIDERATION DENIED OCTOBER 11, 2002.
Harold S. Gulliver, for appellant.