Opinion
3:19-cr-00026-TMB-SAO
03-29-2022
United States of America v. Filthy Fuhrer, et al.
PROCEEDINGS: ORDER FROM CHAMBERS
THE HONORABLE TIMOTHY M. BURGESS
This Order addresses Craig King's renewed oral motion to sever (“Motion”), raised yesterday afternoon during trial. King argues severance is warranted under Bruton v. United States. For the reasons stated below, the Court DENIES King's renewed Motion.
391 U.S. 123 (1968).
As King asserts, the Government intends to introduce a recorded phone call between Defendants Roy Naughton and Filthy Fuhrer in which they discuss alleged victim Michael Staton “ripping off Red and White, ” i.e., the Hells Angels. The Government contends that during this phone call, Naughton and Fuhrer are referring to Staton stealing from King. King argues this statement about “Red and White” violates Bruton and asks the Court to sever his trial for that reason. King alternatively requests to exclude the statement.
See Dkt. 1062 at 4 (Order).
The statement about Staton “ripping off Red and White” falls outside the scope of Bruton. In Bruton, the United States Supreme Court held that a defendant is deprived of their Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause right when “powerfully incriminating extrajudicial statements of a codefendant”-such as a codefendant's confession explicitly implicating the defendant-are admitted in a joint trial. Bruton's holding is “narrow” in two respects relevant here. First, it applies only to “testimonial codefendant statements.” A statement is “testimonial” when it is provided in a context “functionally identical to live, in-court testimony” or when it is given with “the primary purpose of assisting in [the defendant's] prosecution.” Second, Bruton does not apply to “a statement, not incriminating on its face, that implicates the defendant only in connection to other admitted evidence.” Here, the at-issue statement about Staton “ripping off Red and White, ” which comes from a recorded jail call between Naughton and Fuhrer, is neither testimonial nor incriminating on its face. Thus, Bruton is inapplicable.
Bruton, 391 U.S. at 135; Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 207 (1987) (“In Bruton, . . . [w]e held that a defendant is deprived of his Sixth Amendment right of confrontation when the facially incriminating confession of a nontestifying codefendant is introduced at their joint trial, even if the jury is instructed to consider the confession only against the codefendant.”).
Richardson, 481 U.S. at 207.
Lucero v. Holland, 902 F.3d 979, 988 (9th Cir. 2018) (holding “that only testimonial codefendant statements are subject to the federal Confrontation Clause limits established in Bruton”).
Id. at 989 (quotations omitted).
Mason v. Yarborough, 447 F.3d 693, 695 (9th Cir. 2006) (citing Richardson, 481 U.S. at 211).
For this reason and those articulated in the Orders at Dockets 389 and 1086, the Court DENIES King's renewed Motion to sever his trial.
Entered at the direction of the Honorable Timothy M. Burgess, United States District Judge.