People v. Bryant

We granted leave to appeal to consider whether the victim’s statements to the police in this case constituted inadmissible testimonial hearsay *135within the meaning of the United States Supreme Court’s decisions in Crawford v Washington, 541 US 36; 124 S Ct 1354; 158 L Ed 2d 177 (2004), and Davis v Washington, 547 US 813; 126 S Ct 2266; 165 L Ed 2d 224 (2006). The Court of Appeals held that the statements were non-testimonial under the test set forth in Davis, 547 US at 822, because they were made “in the course of a police interrogation under circumstances objectively indicating that its primary purpose was to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency.” People v Bryant (On Remand), unpublished opinion per curiam of the Court of Appeals, issued March 6, 2007 (Docket No. 247039), at 3. Because we conclude on the basis of Crawford and Davis that the “primary purpose of the interrogation [was] to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution,” Davis, 547 US at 822, we respectfully disagree and hold that the statements constituted inadmissible testimonial hearsay. Moreover, we conclude that the admission of these statements constituted plain error requiring reversal. Therefore, we reverse the Court of Appeals and remand for a new trial.

I. FACTS AND HISTORY

The victim lived with his brother within a few houses of defendant, from whom he had been purchasing cocaine for three years. The victim’s brother testified that defendant sold drugs to the victim at defendant’s back door. On April 28,2001, the victim told his brother that he planned to redeem an expensive coat that he had pawned with defendant in exchange for some cocaine. On April 29, 2001, between 3:00 and 3:30 a.m., the brother heard gunfire, and at about 3:25 a.m., five police officers responded to a radio dispatch indicating that a man had been shot. They found the victim lying on the ground next *136to his car at a gas station about six blocks from defendant’s house. The victim had a gunshot wound in his abdomen and appeared to be in considerable pain. In response to the officers’ questioning, the victim indicated that he had been shot at approximately 3:00 a.m. while standing outside defendant’s back door. The victim stated that before being shot he had a short conversation through a closed door with defendant. He identified defendant as the shooter because, although he did not see defendant shoot him, he knew that it was defendant who had shot him because he recognized defendant’s voice. While the victim described defendant as being 40 years old, 5’ 7” tall, and about 140 pounds, according to defendant’s driver’s license, defendant was actually 30 years old, 5’ 10” tall, and 180 pounds. Although the brother testified that the victim knew defendant’s last name, the victim himself told the police that he did not know defendant’s last name.1 The victim told the police that, after he was shot, he drove himself to the gas station. The victim died within a few hours after he was transported to the hospital. When the police left the gas station, they immediately proceeded to defendant’s house. The police found what appeared to be blood and a bullet on defendant’s back porch and what the police believed to be a bullet hole in the back door. The victim’s wallet and identification were also discovered outside defendant’s house. However, the police did not discover any drugs, guns, bullets, or the victim’s coat when they searched defendant’s house at approximately 5:30 a.m. on the morning of the shooting. Defendant’s girlfriend testified that defendant was not home at the time of the shooting and that she had not heard any gunfire that morning. The medical examiner *137testified that the bullet that killed the victim had passed through an intermediary target, such as a door. Toxicology tests showed that the victim had consumed cocaine within four hours of his death. Defendant was arrested one year later in California and was extradited to Michigan.

Defendant’s first trial resulted in a hung jury. Following a second jury trial, and after two days of deliberations, defendant was convicted of second-degree murder, being a felon in possession of a firearm, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.2 The Court of Appeals affirmed. People v Bryant, unpublished opinion per curiam of the Court of Appeals, issued August 24, 2004 (Docket No. 247039).

Defendant appealed, arguing that the trial court erred by admitting the victim’s statements to the police identifying him as the shooter.3 This Court held defendant’s application for leave to appeal in abeyance pending our consideration of People v Mileski, 472 Mich 927 (2005), and People v Walker, 472 Mich 928 (2005). After we subsequently vacated our orders granting leave to appeal in Mileski and Walker and remanded those cases to the Court of Appeals for reconsideration in light of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Davis, we similarly remanded this case. On remand, the Court of Appeals again affirmed, concluding that the victim’s statements constituted admissible non-testimonial hearsay. Bryant (On Remand), supra at 3. When defendant again appealed, we granted leave. People v Bryant, 482 Mich 981 (2008).

*138II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

Whether the admission of the victim’s statements to the police violated defendant’s Sixth Amendment right of confrontation is a question of constitutional law that this Court reviews de novo. People v Drohan, 475 Mich 140, 146; 715 NW2d 778 (2006).

III. ANALYSIS

Defendant argues that the admission of the victim’s statements to the police identifying defendant as the shooter violated his Sixth Amendment right of confrontation. The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees a criminal defendant the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him. .. .” US Const, Am VI.4 In Crawford, 541 US at 59, the United States Supreme Court held that “[t]estimonial statements of witnesses absent from trial [are admissible] only where the declarant is unavailable, and only where the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine.” Although the Court left “for another day any effort to spell out a comprehensive definition of Testimonial,’ ” it did say that “[wjhatever else the term covers, it applies at a minimum to prior testimony. . . and to police interrogations.” Id. at 68. The Court defined “[tjestimony” as “ ‘[a] solemn declaration or affirmation made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact.’ ” Id. at 51, quoting American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). The Court explained that “[a]n accuser who makes a formal statement to government officers bears testimony in a sense that a person *139who makes a casual remark to an acquaintance does not.” Id. The Court recognized that “[vjarious formulations of this core class of ‘testimonial’ statements exist,” such as “ ‘pretrial statements that declarants would reasonably expect to be used prosecutorially’ ” and “ ‘statements that were made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial.’ ” Id. at 51-52 (citations omitted). However, the Court indicated that “[statements taken by police officers in the course of interrogations are . .. testimonial under even a narrow standard.” Id. at 52. The Court stated that “even if the Sixth Amendment is not solely concerned with testimonial hearsay, that is its primary object, and interrogations by law enforcement officers fall squarely within that class.” Id. at 53. The Court further stated that it was “us[ing] the term ‘interrogation’ in its colloquial, rather than any technical legal, sense.” Id. at 53 n 4. Finally, Crawford concluded that the statement that the defendant’s wife had given in that case in response to police questioning at the police station constituted an inadmissible testimonial hearsay statement. Id. at 53 n 4, 68.

In Davis, the Supreme Court further expounded on the meaning of the term “testimonial hearsay statements.” The Court held that “[statements are nontes-timonial when made in the course of police interrogation under circumstances objectively indicating that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency.” Davis, 547 US at 822. On the other hand, “[t]hey are testimonial when the circumstances objectively indicate that there is no such ongoing emergency, and that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution.” Id. Davis further explained that “in the final *140analysis [it is] the declarant’s statements, not the interrogation’s questions, that the Confrontation Clause requires us to evaluate.” Id. at 822 n 1.5

The statements in dispute in Davis were made to a 911 emergency operator. The victim told the operator, “[The defendant’s] here jumpin’ on me again”; “He’s usin’ his fists.” Id. at 817. The Court held that these statements were non-testimonial. Id. at 829. The Court asserted that Davis was distinguishable from Crawford because in Davis: (1) the victim was “speaking about events as they were actually happening, rather than [as in Crawford] ‘describing] past events .. . hours after the events ... had occurred”; (2) thus, in contrast to the victim in Crawford, the victim “was facing an ongoing emergency”; (3) “the nature of what was asked and answered . .. was such that the elicited statements were necessary to be able to resolve the present emergency, rather than simply to learn (as in Crawford) what had happened in the past”; and (4) the victim’s “frantic answers were provided over the phone, in an environment that was not tranquil, or even . . . safe,” while, in Crawford, the victim was “responding calmly, at the station house, to a series of questions ....” Id. at 827 (emphasis in the original; citation omitted). The Court held that the “primary purpose” of the interrogation in Davis “was to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency,” and, thus, the elicited statements were non-testimonial. Id. at 828-829.

In Hammon, a companion case decided with Davis, the police responded to a reported domestic disturbance. When the police arrived, the victim was sitting *141alone on the porch and the defendant was inside. The victim told the police that the defendant had hit her and thrown her. The Court held that because “the primary, if not indeed the sole, purpose of the interrogation was to investigate a possible crime,” the victim’s statements to the police were testimonial. Id. at 830. The Court explained that Hammon was distinguishable from Davis because in Hammon: (1) “the interrogation was part of an investigation into possibly criminal past conduct”; (2) “[t]here was no emergency in progress”; and (3) “[w]hen the officer questioned [the victim],... he was not seeking to determine (as in Davis) ‘what is happening,’ but rather ‘what happened.’ ” Id. at 829-830. As the Court further explained:

The statements in Davis were taken when [the victim] was alone, not only unprotected by police (as [the victim in Hammon\ was protected), but apparently in immediate danger from [the defendant]. [The victim in Davis] was seeking aid, not telling a story about the past. [The Davis victim’s] present-tense statements showed immediacy; [the Hammon victim’s] narrative of past events was delivered at some remove in time from the danger she described. [Id. at 831-832.]

By contrast, the Court reasoned that Hammon was similar to Crawford because: (1) “[b]oth declarants were actively separated from the defendant”; “[b]oth statements deliberately recounted, in response to police questioning, how potentially criminal past events began and progressed”; and (3) “both took place some time after the events described were over.” Id. at 830. Accordingly, the statements in Hammon, like those in Crawford, were testimonial. Id.

In the instant case, there is no question that the victim is unavailable, and defendant did not have a prior opportunity to cross-examine the victim. Therefore, if the victim’s statements to the police were *142testimonial in nature, they are inadmissible. Crawford, 541 US at 68.6 Accordingly, the only issue here is whether the victim’s statements were made in the course of police interrogation under circumstances objectively indicating that the primary purpose of the interrogation was to enable police assistance to meet an “ongoing emergency,” as defined by the United States Supreme Court, or whether the primary purpose of this interrogation was to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to a later criminal prosecution. Davis, 547 US at 822.

On remand, the Court of Appeals held that the statements in this case were non-testimonial, and thus affirmed defendant’s convictions.7 We, however, agree *143with defendant that the statements were testimonial pursuant to Crawford and Davis. The police found the victim lying on the ground outside a gas station. The police asked him what had happened, who had shot him, and where the shooting had occurred. The victim told the police that defendant shot him about 30 minutes earlier at defendant’s house, which was about six blocks away, and that he drove himself to the gas station. These statements related solely to events that had occurred in the past and at a different location. None of these statements referred to events occurring at the time the statements were made, none alleged any ongoing threat, and none asserted the possible presence of the alleged perpetrator. The circumstances, in our judgment, clearly indicate that the “primary purpose” of the questioning was to establish the facts of an event that had already occurred; the “primary purpose” was not to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency.8 The crime had been completed about 30 minutes earlier and six blocks from where the police questioned the victim. The police asked the victim what had happened in the past, not what was currently happening. That is, the “primary purpose” of the questions asked, and the answers given, was to enable the police to identify, locate, and apprehend the perpetrator.

Davis stated that “in the final analysis [it is] the declarant’s statements, not the interrogation’s ques*144tions, that the Confrontation Clause requires us to evaluate.” Id. at 822 n 1. The declarant here (i.e., the victim) made these statements while he was surrounded by five police officers and knowing that emergency medical service (EMS) was on the way. Obviously, his primary purpose in making these statements to the police was not to enable the police to meet an ongoing emergency of the type identified by the United States Supreme Court, but was instead to tell the police who had committed the crime against him, where the crime had been committed, and where the police could find the criminal. That is, the primary purpose of the victim’s statements to the police was to “establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution.” Davis, 547 US at 822.9

Further, the officers’ actions do not suggest that the officers themselves considered the circumstances at the gas station to constitute an “ongoing emergency,”10 at least not as the Supreme Court defines that term. None of the officers testified to taking any actions to secure the area, to search the station for the possible presence of any armed individuals, or to provide cover for other officers. None of the officers indicated that he drew his weapon at the gas station, took up a defensive position *145out of concern that the shooter might be nearby, or called for any backup assistance to ensure the safety of the officer himself or others in the area. And none of the police officers questioned people who were in or around the gas station (other than the victim and the gas station attendant) or searched in any way at the station for the shooter.11 Rather, they acted in a manner entirely consonant with officers who knew that the crime had already been committed, that it had been commit*146ted at a different location, and that there was no present or imminent criminal threat. Indeed, once the EMS unit arrived for the victim, the police left the gas station and immediately proceeded to defendant’s house, where they then called for backup assistance because they feared that defendant might still be inside.12

The primary purpose of the police questioning of the victim at the gas station was to determine who shot the victim and where the shooter could be found so that they could arrest him. The police were at the gas station to investigate a past crime, not to prevent an ongoing one, and the victim was not “speaking about events as they were actually happening,” as in Davis, but was “ ‘describing] past events,’ ” as in Crawford and Hammon. Davis, 547 US at 827 (emphasis in the original; citation omitted).13 The primary purpose of the victim’s *147statements was not “to describe current circumstances requiring police assistance,” as in Davis, but to “establish[] the facts of a past crime, in order to identify (or provide evidence to convict) the perpetrator,” as in Crawford and Hammon. Davis, 547 US at 826-827 (emphasis added).

When the police questioned the victim at the gas station, there simply was no “ongoing emergency,” as that term is defined by the United States Supreme Court. The prosecutor argues that the primary purpose of the interrogation was to enable police assistance to meet an “ongoing emergency” — to find and apprehend a criminal before he injured somebody else. This argument is unpersuasive because an “ongoing emergency” in this sense would almost always exist while the police are investigating alleged crimes. That is, to adopt the prosecutor’s argument would effectively render non-testimonial all statements made before the offender was placed behind bars.14 This is clearly inconsistent *148with the commands of the Supreme Court. See, for example, State v Kirby, 280 Conn 361, 385 n 19; 908 A2d 506 (2006) (explaining that “accepting the state’s arguments on this point would render meaningless the distinction drawn by the United States Supreme Court, as they would render virtually any telephone report of a past violent crime in which a suspect was still at large, no matter the timing of the call, into the report of a ‘public safety emergency’ ”); State v Mechling, 219 W Va 366, 377; 633 SE2d 311 (2006) (“[T]he investigation of a past crime— while necessary to prevent fixture harms and lead to necessary arrests — is likely to elicit testimonial statements from witnesses that will be subject to the constraints of the Confrontation Clause.”) See also Fisher, What happened — and what is happening — to the confrontation clause, 15 J L & Policy 587, 614 (2007), which explained:

The presence of an ongoing emergency is important only insofar as it indicates that a declarant’s statement describing criminal activity can fairly be described as part of the event itself, rather than a report or a narrative of it. If the law were otherwise, statements reporting criminal activity or accusing others of crimes would always be nontestimonial until a suspect was in custody and unable to cause further harm. Even more to the point, if the law were otherwise, Hammon would have had to come out the other way and the Court could never have indicated that the latter part of the 911 call in Davis was nontestimonial [sic]. Yet the emergencies in those cases were limited to the criminal events themselves, and when those events ceased occurring, statements describing how they had transpired were testimonial.

Equally unpersuasive is the Court of Appeals argument that the police were “responding to an emergency” because “someone at the gas station was shot and laying on the ground.” Bryant (On Remand), supra at 3. Once again, this type of “emergency” almost always exists *149when the police respond to a victim who has been seriously injured. That is, if we were to adopt the Court of Appeals analysis, all statements made while the police are questioning a seriously injured complainant would be rendered non-testimonial, and this is also clearly inconsistent with the commands of the Supreme Court by confusing a medical emergency with the emergency circumstances of an ongoing criminal episode. See, for example, Kirby, 280 Conn at 384-385 (“[Although the complainant might have needed emergency medical assistance at the time she made the call, the bulk of her conversation with [the police dispatcher] nevertheless consisted of her account of a crime that had happened to her in the recent past, rather than one that was happening to her at the time of the call,” which “renders the telephone call recording testimonial and, therefore, inadmissible under Crawford”); State v Lewis, 235 SW3d 136, 147 (Tenn, 2007) (“Even though the victim was in a state of distress from his wounds, his comments did not describe an ‘ongoing emergency/ as defined in Crawford, and were instead descriptions of recent, but past, criminal activity as in Hammon”). Most importantly, see Davis, 547 US at 828-829, in which the United States Supreme Court indicated that once the defendant stopped attacking the victim and “drove away from the premises,” “the emergency appears to have ended.” The Court said nothing at all that would remotely suggest that whether the victim was in need of medical attention was in any way relevant to whether there was an “ongoing emergency.” Instead, the Court said that once the criminal event was over, i.e., the defendant had stopped assaulting the victim and left the premises, the “ongoing emergency” was over at least for purposes of evaluating an alleged Crawford violation.15

*150The hearsay statements at issue in the instant case are significantly different from the admissible hearsay statements in Davis, i.e., the statements made to the 911 operator while the defendant was still attacking the victim, because, unlike in Davis, this victim was describing past events, rather than describing a criminal episode as it was unfolding, and, unlike in Davis, this victim was away from defendant and the crime scene, and was in the protection of five police officers. On the other hand, this case is significantly similar to Hammon because in both cases the police were seeking through their questioning to determine what had previously occurred, rather than what was occurring at the time of the questioning, and the victims were separated from the defendants and in the protection of the police. That is, in both Hammon and this case, (1) “[the] declarants were actively separated from the defendant[s]”; (2) “[the] statements deliberately recounted, in response to police questioning, how potentially criminal past events began and progressed”; and (3) “[they] took place some time after the events described were over.” Id. at 830.16 *151Here, the officers were obviously attempting to find out “what had happened in the past,” as evidenced by the fact that the first question asked was “what happened.” The officers were not “seeking to determine (as in Davis) ‘what is [now] happening,’ but rather ‘what happened.’ ” Davis, 547 US at 829-830. Most importantly, the victim’s actual statements pertained to what had happened previously, rather than to what was actually happening at the time of the interrogation. For these reasons, the victim’s statements to the police were testimonial and, thus, inadmissible.

Even assuming that the error here is unpreserved because, although defendant objected to the admission of the evidence, he did not do so on the basis of the Confrontation Clause as the trial in this case took place before Crawford,17 a reversal is required under the plain error standard. See People v Carines, 460 Mich 750, 763-764; 597 NW2d 130 (1999). Given that this case was pending when Crawford was decided, Craw*152ford is applicable, Teague v Lane, 489 US 288, 304; 109 S Ct 1060; 103 L Ed 2d 334 (1989), and, for the reasons discussed earlier, Crawford was clearly violated here. That is, there was error and the error was plain.

In addition, in our judgment, the error clearly prejudiced defendant. The evidence against him was far from overwhelming and the victim’s statement indicating that defendant was the one who shot him was obviously extraordinarily damaging. In fact, the prosecutor essentially conceded that the error was prejudicial when, at the suppression hearing before trial, he conceded that the admission of the victim’s statements to the police is a “crucial issue to the prosecutor’s case;... if this court rules that the excited utterance is not going to be admissible, then we won’t have a trial here. . . .” In addition, during his opening statement to the jury, the prosecutor repeatedly referred to the victim’s statements to the police and explained:

The most important piece of evidence you will hear during this trial is [the victim] in many respects speaking to you. [The victim] will tell you that it was the defendant who shot him. Obviously he won’t be here to tell you that. But before he died, the last — one of the last — probably the last thing he was able to say was that Rick shot, Rick shot me .... And ... the police, all of them, heard [the victim] say Rick shot me.... The most important piece of evidence you’ll hear during this trial, in other words, "will be [the victim] in a certain respect speaking to you from the grave and telling you what happened in this case and telling you who’s responsible. ... All of the evidence here but mainly [the victim’s] own words before he died point to [defendant] having pulled the trigger and having killed [the victim]. [Emphasis added.]

The prosecutor also relied heavily on the victim’s statements in his closing statement to the jury, stating:

*153The main reason we know enough about what happened to be able to decide beyond a reasonable doubt whether the charges that have been made out here, the main reason we know is because of [the victim’s] words himself, his own words to you through those police officers in the early morning of April 29th, 2001. [Emphasis added.]

Further evidence that the error was prejudicial is the fact that defendant’s first trial resulted in a hung jury. Finally, the error “seriously affect[ed] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” Carines, 460 Mich at 763 (citation and quotation marks omitted). For these reasons, we believe that defendant is entitled to a new trial.

We also agree with defendant that the issue whether the victim’s statements are admissible under the hearsay exception for dying declarations is not properly before this Court.18 At the preliminary examination, the prosecutor argued that the statements were admissible as either excited utterances or as dying declarations. The district court originally ruled that the statements were inadmissible because there had been no showing of the requisite factual foundation. The prosecutor then sought to establish a foundation for admission of the statements directed solely at the question whether the *154statements were excited utterances. At no point in the ensuing examination was the officer asked any questions concerning whether the victim expressed a belief that his death was imminent or was told that he was likely to die from his wound.19 That is, the prosecutor clearly abandoned any effort to establish even a minimally sufficient foundation for the dying declaration exception, and limited his further questions exclusively to the excited utterance exception. The district court then ruled that the statements were admissible excited utterances, but did not address whether they were also dying declarations. The district court’s original ruling that there was not a sufficient foundational basis to conclude that the statements were dying declarations was never appealed or reversed.

Indeed, the prosecutor essentially conceded during the following exchange at the pretrial conference that the victim’s statements to the police were not dying declarations:

The Court: I guess we have two issues ultimately, whether it comes in as a dying declaration or whether it comes in as an excited utterance. Is that where we are?

The Prosecutor: The issue is not whether it comes in as one or the other. It came in at the [preliminary] exam clearly as an excited utterance. I think that’s the way it’s *155going to be at trial because I think there’s going to be a lack of proof on whether the deceased knew he was dying at the time. [Emphasis added.]

In addition, at the suppression hearing, the prosecutor stated:

[The victim], as we know, unlike what the officers knew that night, but what we know now is that [the victim] ended up dying of his injuries. He himself, [the victim], may not have known that at the time.

During the prosecutor’s closing statement to the jury, the prosecutor again said:

[The victim] ended up dying several hours later. We don’t know whether he knew that at the time he said this....

Because a dying declaration must be made while the declarant believes his death to be imminent, and the prosecutor stated that there is a “lack of proof on whether the deceased knew he was dying at the time,” the prosecutor seems to have conceded that the victim’s statements were not dying declarations.20

*156The circuit court also believed that the prosecutor had abandoned the dying declarations issue when, in response to defendant’s request that the prosecutor refrain from referring to the victim’s statements as the dying victim’s statements during closing arguments, the circuit court stated:

I think maybe based upon an attorney’s knowledge of the difference between dying declaration[s] and excited utterance[s], dying declarations have a[] [greater] aura [of] reliability than excited utterances. This was not a dying declaration. It did not come in as a dying declaration, and I’m going to agree with Defense counsel on this one. That should not be characterized as, he lay there dying.... That’s pure supposition.

The prosecutor did not contest the circuit court’s ruling that the victim’s statement was not a dying declaration. In fact, during his closing argument, the prosecutor told the jury that the victim’s statements to the police were admissible under the excited utterance exception to the hearsay rule; the prosecutor did not refer to the dying declaration exception. Finally, the prosecutor did not raise this issue in the Court of Appeals or this Court until after this Court granted leave to appeal limited to the issue whether the victim’s statements constituted testimonial hearsay under Crawford and Davis. Accordingly, the prosecutor has either effectively conceded that the victim’s statements did not constitute a dying *157declaration or, at the very least, has abandoned this issue. See Gross v Gen Motors Corp, 448 Mich 147, 162 n 8; 528 NW2d 707 (1995) (stating that “[w]hen a cause of action is presented for appellate review, a party is bound to the theory on which the cause was prosecuted or defended in the court below” and “[f]ailure to properly brief an issue on appeal constitutes abandonment of the question”).

IV CONCLUSION

Because the victim’s statements to the police were inadmissible testimonial hearsay statements pursuant to Crawford and Davis, and the admission of the statements constituted plain error requiring reversal, we reverse the Court of Appeals and remand this case for a new trial.