Petitioner was found guilty of murder following a jury trial in
which police officers testified as to the detailed confession that
he had given to them and in which one officer related a statement
made to him by petitioner's codefendant, who did not testify, which
tended to undermine petitioner's initial (but later abandoned)
version and to corroborate certain details of petitioner's
confession. The Supreme Court of Florida affirmed. Petitioner
claims that the admission into evidence of his codefendant'
statement deprived him of his right to confrontation in violation
of
Bruton v. United States, 391 U.
S. 123.
Held: Any violation of
Bruton that might have
occurred was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt in view of the
overwhelming evidence of petitioner's guilt as manifested by his
confession, which completely comported with the objective evidence,
and the comparatively insignificant effect of the codefendant's
admission. Pp.
405 U. S.
429-432.
215 So. 2d 611, affirmed.
REHNQUIST, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which
BURGER, C.J., and STEWART, WHITE, BLACKMUN, and POWELL, JJ.,
joined. MARSHALL, J., filed a dissenting opinion in which DOUGLAS
and BRENNAN, JJ., joined,
post, p.
405 U. S.
432.
MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner Schneble and his codefendant Snell were tried jointly
in a Florida state court for murder. At the trial, neither
defendant took the stand, but police
Page 405 U. S. 428
witnesses testified to certain admissions made by each defendant
implicating both of them in the murder. Both defendants were
convicted, and the Florida Supreme Court affirmed. This Court
vacated and remanded the case for further consideration in the
light of
Bruton v. United States, 391 U.
S. 123 (1968).
Schneble v. Florida,
392 U. S. 298
(1968). Upon remand, the Supreme Court of Florida reversed Snell's
conviction, finding that it had been obtained in violation of
Bruton, but affirmed petitioner's conviction. We again
granted certiorari, limited
* to the question
of whether petitioner's conviction had been obtained in violation
of the
Bruton rule. In the circumstances of this case, we
find that any violation of
Bruton that may have occurred
at petitioner's trial was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. We
therefore affirm.
The State's case showed that a threesome consisting of
petitioner, Snell, and the victim, Mrs. Maxine Collier, left New
Orleans in a borrowed automobile en route to Florida. While they
were traveling across the Florida Panhandle, Mrs. Collier was
murdered, and her body placed in the trunk of the automobile. The
body was then transported in the car to the environs of Tampa,
where it was left behind some bushes in a trash dump. Petitioner
and Snell then continued their odyssey southward to the Florida
Keys, and thence north along the east coast of Florida. They were
apprehended for unrelated offenses in West Palm Beach, but, upon
discovering blood in the trunk of the car, police officers
there
Page 405 U. S. 429
commenced the investigation that ultimately led to the charging
of petitioner and Snell with the murder of Mrs. Collier.
The investigating officers testified at the trial that
petitioner initially, while admitting knowledge of the murder,
claimed that Snell had shot Mrs. Collier while petitioner was away
from the car taking a walk. Petitioner later conceded, however,
that his earlier story was false. He admitted to the police that it
was he who had strangled Mrs. Collier, and that Snell had finally
shot her in the head as she lay dying. The state court held these
admissions of petitioner to be voluntary and admissible. Since our
grant of certiorari here was limited to the
Bruton issue,
our treatment of that question assumes that these admissions were
properly before the trial court.
One of the investigating officers also related at trial a
statement made to him by Snell. Petitioner challenges this
testimony as violative of
Bruton, since Snell did not take
the stand, and thus was not available for cross-examination.
According to the testimony of this officer, Snell said petitioner
had occupied the rear seat of the car, and had never left Snell
alone in the car with Mrs. Collier during the trip. While Snell's
statement fell far short of the type of comprehensive and detailed
confession made by petitioner, it did tend to undermine
petitioner's initial (but later abandoned) claim that he had left
Snell alone during the time at which the murder occurred. Snell's
statement also placed petitioner in the position in the car from
which the victim could more easily have been strangled. Thus,
petitioner claims, the introduction of Snell's out-of-court
statement, not subject to effective cross-examination, deprived
petitioner of his right of confrontation in violation of
Bruton.
The Court held in
Bruton that the admission of a
confession of a codefendant who did not take the stand deprived the
defendant of his rights under the Sixth
Page 405 U. S. 430
Amendment Confrontation Clause, when that confession implicated
the defendant. Even when the jury is instructed to consider the
confession only against the declarant, the Court in
Bruton
determined that the danger of misuse of the confession by the jury
was too great to be constitutionally permissible.
Bruton
was held to be retroactive in
Roberts v. Russell,
392 U. S. 293
(1968), and thus applies to the instant case even though it was
tried more than two years prior to
Bruton.
The mere finding of a violation of the
Bruton rule in
the course of the trial, however, does not automatically require
reversal of the ensuing criminal conviction. In some cases, the
properly admitted evidence of guilt is so overwhelming, and the
prejudicial effect of the codefendant's admission is so
insignificant by comparison, that it is clear beyond a reasonable
doubt that the improper use of the admission was harmless
error.
In
Harrington v. California, 395 U.
S. 250 (1969), the defendant was tried for murder
jointly with three others. As in the instant case, he admitted
being at the scene of the crime, but denied complicity. One of his
codefendants, who confessed and implicated him, took the stand and
was subject to cross-examination. The other two codefendants, whose
statements corroborated defendant's presence at the scene of the
crime, did not take the stand. Noting the overwhelming evidence of
Harrington's guilt, and the relatively insignificant prejudicial
impact of these codefendants' statements, the Court held that any
violation of
Bruton that had occurred was harmless
error.
In the instant case, petitioner's confession was minutely
detailed and completely consistent with the objective evidence. He
informed police of the precise location at which they ultimately
located the body, and guided them to this out-of-the-way spot.
Although petitioner initially tried to put the sole blame on
Snell,
Page 405 U. S. 431
this version of the facts did not satisfactorily explain certain
deep rope burns on petitioner's hands. When confronted with the
fact of the rope burns, petitioner admitted that he and Snell had
plotted to kill Mrs. Collier in order to steal her money and the
automobile.
Petitioner confessed that he had strangled Mrs. Collier with a
plastic cord, and recounted the commission of the crime in minute
and grisly detail, culminating in Snell's shooting the victim in
the head because she still showed signs of life after the
strangulation. These details of petitioner's later account of the
offense were internally consistent, were corroborated by other
objective evidence, and were not contradicted by any other evidence
in the case. They were consistently reiterated by petitioner on
several occasions after his first exposition of them.
Not only is the independent evidence of guilt here overwhelming,
as in
Harrington, but the allegedly inadmissible
statements of Snell, at most, tended to corroborate certain details
of petitioner's comprehensive confession. True, under the judge's
charge, the jury might have found the confession involuntary, and
therefore inadmissible. But this argument proves too much; without
Schneble's confession and the resulting discovery of the body, the
State's case against Schneble was virtually nonexistent. The
remaining evidence in the case -- the disappearance of Mrs. Collier
sometime during the trip, and Snell's statement that Schneble sat
in the back seat of the car during the trip and never left Snell
alone with Mrs. Collier -- could not, by itself, convict Schneble
of this or any other crime. Charged as they were by the judge that
they must be "satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt" and "to a moral
certainty" of Schneble's guilt before they could convict him, the
jurors could on no rational hypothesis have found Schneble guilty
without reliance on his confession. Judicious application
Page 405 U. S. 432
of the harmless error rule does not require that we indulge
assumptions of irrational jury behavior when a perfectly rational
explanation for the jury's verdict, completely consistent with the
judge's instruction, stares us in the face.
See Rogers v.
Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U. S. 500,
352 U. S.
504-505 (1957).
Having concluded that petitioner's confession was considered by
the jury, we must determine on the basis of "our own reading of the
record and on what seems to us to have been the probable impact . .
. on the minds of an average jury,"
Harrintgon v. California,
supra, at
395 U. S. 254,
whether Snell's admissions were sufficiently prejudicial to
petitioner as to require reversal. In
Bruton, the Court
pointed out that "[a] defendant is entitled to a fair trial, but
not a perfect one." 391 U.S. at
391 U. S. 135,
quoting
Lutwak v. United States, 344 U.
S. 604,
344 U. S. 619
(1953). Thus, unless there is a reasonable possibility that the
improperly admitted evidence contributed to the conviction,
reversal is not required.
See Chapman v. California,
386 U. S. 18,
386 U. S. 24
(1967). In this case, we conclude that the "minds of an average
jury" would not have found the State's case significantly less
persuasive had the testimony as to Snell's admissions been
excluded. The admission into evidence of these statements,
therefore, was, at most, harmless error.
Affirmed.
* The question of whether Schneble's sentence of death in this
case violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment proscription of
"cruel and unusual punishment" is therefore not at issue here. That
question is currently under consideration in
Aikens v.
California, No. 8-5027, and companion cases. All executions in
Florida have been stayed by the Governor's executive order until
July 1, 1973.
See Fla. Exec.Order No. 72-8 (Feb. 21,
1972).
MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, with whom MR. JUSTICE Douglas and MR.
JUSTICE BRENNAN join, dissenting.
This is a capital case in which the petitioner was convicted of
murder. When the case was last before us, we vacated the conviction
and remanded for further consideration in light of
Bruton v.
United States, 391 U. S. 123
(1968).
See Schneble v. Florida, 392 U.
S. 298 (1968). On remand, the Supreme Court of Florida
reaffirmed
Page 405 U. S. 433
the conviction, holding that it was not "inconsistent with
Bruton." While
Bruton itself received an
extensive factual analysis by the State Supreme Court, little
attention was paid to the facts of the instant case, and no reasons
were proffered in support of the holding that
Bruton was
not violated. In today's opinion, the Court rejects the Florida
Supreme Court's conclusion that this case can be squared with
Bruton, and concludes that
Bruton was violated
when the statement of a nontestifying codefendant implicating
petitioner in the crime charged was introduced at trial. Yet the
conviction is permitted to stand because the
Bruton
violation is viewed as "harmless error" within the meaning of
Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18,
386 U. S. 24
(1967). I dissent.
Determining whether or not a constitutional infirmity at trial
is harmless error is ordinarily a difficult task. This case is
easier than most, because it is impossible to read the record and
to conclude that the evidence so "overwhelmingly" establishes
petitioner's guilt that the admission of the codefendant's
statement made no difference to the outcome.
The Court relies on
Harrington v. California,
395 U. S. 250
(1969), to support its conclusion, but that case is inapposite. In
Harrington, the Court found harmless error where
statements of two nontestifying codefendants were introduced at
trial to demonstrate Harrington's presence at the scene of the
crime. That decision was limited to a factual setting in which the
defendant admits being at the scene, and the improperly admitted
statements of the codefendants are merely cumulative evidence. I
most urgently protest the extension of that case to these
facts.
It is true that, prior to trial, petitioner confessed to
murdering the victim. But it is also true that, when he was first
arrested, petitioner denied his guilt and
Page 405 U. S. 434
placed the full blame on his codefendant. He also denied being
present when the murder was committed. Only after he was subjected
to a series of bizarre acts by the police designed to frighten him
into making incriminating statements did petitioner "confess." The
full spectrum of events leading up to the confession is set out in
detail in the first opinion of the Supreme Court of Florida,
201 So. 2d
881, 884-885 (1967).
Petitioner moved to suppress the statements that he made to the
police on the ground that they were the direct result of police
coercion. Recognizing that the police acted improperly in
attempting to obtain a statement from Schneble, the Florida Supreme
Court upheld the trial court's finding that the incriminating
statements were made in circumstances sufficiently attenuated from
the coercive activities as to remove the taint. Our limited grant
of certiorari does not permit review of this ruling. But the
limited nature of the grant does not bar us from looking at the
entire record in the case in order to dispose of the one issue
presented.
Before the trial judge permitted the jury to hear testimony
regarding petitioner's incriminating statements, he made the
initial determination that those statements were voluntary, as
required by
Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.
S. 368 (1964). He subsequently instructed the jury in
the following manner:
"Should you find from the evidence that any alleged statement or
confession as to any defendant was not freely and voluntarily made,
or if you have a reasonable doubt in this regard, then you must
disregard the same, as well as any other item of evidence that may
have been discovered by the State by reason of such alleged
statement of [
sic] confession."
(Tr. 561.)
We have no way of knowing what judgment the jury made with
respect to the voluntariness of petitioner's
Page 405 U. S. 435
statements. In my opinion, there is clearly enough evidence to
support either a finding of voluntariness or one of coercion. Since
an error cannot be harmless if there is a reasonable possibility
that it contributed to a finding of guilt, all reasonable
inferences that might be drawn from the evidence must be drawn in
favor of the defendant, since the jury may very well have made just
these inferences. Thus, we can assume that the jury found
petitioner's incriminating statements to be involuntary.
We must also assume that the jury followed the instructions of
the court and disregarded not only the statements themselves, but
all the evidence "that may have been discovered by the State by
reason of such . . . statement[s]. . . ." It is possible that the
jury may have found the statements to be involuntary and still
relied on them.
See Jackson v. Denno, supra. But it is by
no means certain that the jury did not meticulously follow the
instructions of the trial judge.
See Lego v. Twomey,
404 U. S. 477
(1972). Since either assumption may be made, we must again choose
the assumption favorable to the defendant in order to insure that
any error was harmless.
Assuming, then, that the jury completely disregarded
petitioner's incriminating statements and all evidence derived
therefrom, little evidence remains to support the verdict. Only the
statement of the codefendant places petitioner at the scene of the
crime at the relevant time. Without this statement, it is difficult
to believe that anyone could be convinced of petitioner's guilt
beyond a reasonable doubt.
The Court asserts, however, that
"we must determine on the basis of 'our own reading of the
record and on what seems to us to have been the probable impact . .
. on the minds of an average jury'. . . whether Snell's [the
codefendant's] admissions were sufficiently
Page 405 U. S. 436
prejudicial to petitioner as to require reversal."
The Court concludes that
"the 'minds of an average jury' would not have found the State's
case significantly less persuasive had the testimony as to Snell's
admissions been excluded."
The mistake the Court makes is in assuming that the jury
accepted as true all of the other evidence. The case turns on this
assumption, and, as demonstrated above, it is clearly erroneous.
The jury was given the duty of making an independent determination
of the admissibility of petitioner's incriminating statements and
their fruits. In light of the evidence with respect to coercive
police activities, we cannot say with even a minimal degree of
certainty that the jury did not find the statements involuntary,
and that it did not choose to disregard them and almost all of the
other evidence in the case which was derived from those statements.
We also cannot be certain that the jury did not base its verdict
primarily on the statement of the codefendant.
See Malinski v.
New York, 324 U. S. 401,
324 U. S. 404
(1945);
cf. Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.
S. 534 (1961) (Frankfurter, J.).
The Court would assume that the jury must have found
petitioner's statements to be voluntary, and therefore admissible
along with their fruits, because the other evidence was
insufficient to support a conviction. This assumption is erroneous
for several reasons. First, the jury may have found that some of
petitioner's statements were involuntary and some were voluntary.
The "voluntary" statements may have been connected with the
codefendant's statement to support the conviction, while, standing
alone, they may have been insufficient to support a guilty verdict.
Second, the jury may have found that the statements were all
involuntary but that some evidence remained free from any taint.
Whereas the Court indicates that, if the statements were
involuntary,
Page 405 U. S. 437
then all the other evidence in the case except the codefendant's
statement must be suppressed as a matter of law, the jury was given
only a general instruction on suppression and may, incorrectly and
unwittingly, have more narrowly circumscribed the taint. The
codefendant's statement bolstered any other evidence considered by
the jury. Third, the jury may have found the statements to be
involuntary, and ignored all the evidence that the Court says
should have been ignored. The jury may then have convicted on
insufficient circumstantial evidence, including the codefendant's
statement. We need ascribe no malevolence here; we need only
recognize that humans err. Indeed, the very notion of "harmless
error" should constantly remind us of that.* Any one of these
things is a reasonable possibility, and, despite the apparent
certainty with which the Court affirms the decision below, there
remains a deep and haunting doubt as to whether a constitutional
violation contributed to the conviction.
In light of these uncertainties, I find it impossible to
perceive how the Court can conclude that the violation of
Bruton was harmless error. It is significant that the
Florida Supreme Court did not find harmless error in this case.
Unless the Court intends to emasculate
Bruton, supra, or
to overrule
Chapman v. California,supra, sub silentio,
then I submit that its decision is clearly wrong.
*
Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U.
S. 500 (1957), cited by the Court to support the
proposition that we do not lightly infer irrational jury behavior
had nothing whatever to do with a criminal case generally or with
"harmless error" in particular. That case dealt with the proper
function of judge and jury in Federal Employers' Liability Act
cases. It never considered whether reversal was required when
evidence was admitted in violation of the Constitution.
Rogers was, in short, a case involving the sufficiency of
the evidence. In such cases, we draw precisely the opposite
inferences as drawn in "harmless error" cases.