Hearsay; Unavailable declarant exception; People v Barrera; MRE 804(b)(3); Relevance; MRE 401; Statement against penal interest; Trustworthiness

Concluding that witness-H’s hearsay statements satisfied the requirements of MRE 804(b)(3), and thus, it was “more probable than not that the” trial court’s error in failing to admit them was “outcome determinative,” the court held that defendant was entitled to a new trial. Thus, it reversed his convictions and remanded. He was convicted of possession of meth, and fourth-degree fleeing and eluding, as a fourth-offense habitual offender. He argued that because H “was unavailable at trial, and her statements as memorialized in Deputy [L’s] incident report” satisfied MRE 804(b)(3), the trial court abused its discretion by failing to admit them into evidence. The question was whether the exception in MRE 804(b)(3) applied. It was undisputed that H “was unavailable to testify at trial within the meaning of MRE 804.” Thus, the first requirement was satisfied. H “made these admissions while secured in the back of a police cruiser, and she had no way of knowing whether the residue on the assorted drug paraphernalia was sufficient for testing.” The court held that “the declarant—by admitting that the purse belonged to her and that some of the contents of the backpack also were hers—faced a reasonable threat of punishment because of the drug paraphernalia and residue discovered. This, combined with her admission that she used narcotics, that it was all her fault, and that she should have swallowed something, all constitute[d] ‘brick[s] in the wall’ proving her guilt.” The court concluded that the “trial court erred as a matter of law when it narrowly interpreted the Barrera test to require a statement against penal interest be made with respect to the exact charge at trial. It was erroneous to conclude that because some of [H’s] statements concerned cocaine and [defendant] was charged with possession of meth[], they were not against [H’s] penal interest. They could ‘implicate the declarant in a crime,’ and thus they were against her penal interest.” The trial court found that H’s “statements could not be evaluated for trustworthiness on the basis of the information presented and that they were not crucial for” defendant’s defense. But it “clearly erred by making a finding of fact that nothing presented to the trial court allowed it to make a trustworthiness determination, and the trial court made a mistake of law by failing to engage in the totality-of-the-circumstances analysis.” As to the factors favoring admissibility, while H “was speaking to or in the presence of a police officer and not a friend or family, all of [H’s] statements were: (1) voluntarily given; (2) after she was advised of her Miranda rights; (3) not made to curry favor with law enforcement; and (4) made contemporaneously with the events. [H’s] statements asserting that this was her fault, and that she should have swallowed something, were spontaneously given, which favors a finding of trustworthiness.” As to “the factors disfavoring a finding of trustworthiness, [H’s] statements regarding her purse, possessions in the backpack, preference for cocaine, and recent cocaine usage were made at the prompting of law enforcement.” Taken in their totality, H’s “hearsay statements satisfy the trustworthiness requirements of MRE 804(b)(3).”