United States v. Chischilly

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, v. TIMOTHY CHISCHILLY and STACEY YELLOWHORSE, Defendants.

No. 1:20-cr-01566-DHU

United States District Court, D. New Mexico

January 17, 2023

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN PART THE UNITED STATES' MOTION IN LIMINE TO ADMIT STATEMENTS AGAINST INTEREST

HONORABLE DAVID HERRERA URIAS, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.

This matter is before the Court on the United States' Motion in Limine to Admit Statements Against Interest (Doc. 121) (“Motion”).^[1] The United States seeks a pretrial ruling that certain statements Defendant Timothy Chischilly made to his family members are admissible against Defendant Stacey Yellowhorse as statements against interest under Federal Rule of Evidence 804(3). See Doc. 121 at 1. Defendant Stacey Yellowhorse filed a Response (Doc. 135), the Government filed a Reply (Doc. 156), Defendant filed a Supplemental Brief (Doc. 237), and the Government filed a Response to Defendant's Supplemental Brief (Doc. 242). The Court heard oral argument on the Motion during a pretrial motion hearing on July 27, 2022, at which time the Court reserved ruling on the Motion. See Docs. 196 and 200. Having considered the motion, briefs, record evidence arguments, relevant law, and being otherwise fully informed the Court concludes that the Motion is GRANTED IN PART AND DENIED IN PART.

BACKGROUND

Defendants Chischilly and Yellowhorse are accused of killing Jane Doe and burning and dismembering parts of her body. See Doc. 3. Several days after the alleged murder, Chischilly allegedly confessed to five family members - his two sisters and three of their family members -at his sister's home. See Doc. 121 at 2. The Government anticipates testimony from these family members that Chischilly gathered them together and said to them, among other things, that he and Yellowhorse had killed Doe and that he pinned Doe down while Yellowhorse hit Doe's head with a mallet or a hammer. See Doc. 121 at 1.

In February 2020, three of those individuals - Jennifer, Matisha and Andrew - testified to the Grand Jury in February 2020. See February 11, 2020 Grand Jury Transcript 1, Doc 122-1 (“Feb. 11 2020 Tr.”). Chischilly's sister Jennifer testified that Chischilly told the family members that “h[e] and Stacey killed her, and he tackled her and she bludgeoned him (sic) to death, hit her with something, a sledgehammer or something” and “went and burned her.” Id., at 9:1-3, 9:20.

Jennifer's niece Matisha and Matisha's husband, Andrew, were also present. According to Matisha's testimony, Chischilly gathered everyone in the room and told them “the girl that's missing, we had killed her.” Id., at 38:23-24. According to Andrew, Chischilly told them he “wanted to get something .. off his chest, so he told us that he murdered someone” by “pinn[ing] her down with nails and hammer, and they - they used wire, and while he was - while she was pinned down, the girlfriend, Stacy, got a mallet and busted her head in.” Id., at 28:13-14; 29:1216. According to Andrew, Chischilly said that he, “tr[ied] to hack it [the body] up and ... burn whatever was left of it, and he started putting the remains in different areas.” Id., at 20:1-3.

The Government seeks an order allowing it to elicit the following statements Chischilly made to his relatives through testimony by the family members:

1. Chischilly's statement that he and Yellowhorse killed Doe;

2. Chischilly' statement that he held Doe down;

3. Chischilly's statement that he used a hammer and nail to pin Doe down;

4. Chischilly's statement that Yellowhorse used a sledgehammer or mallet to bludgeon Doe; and

5. Chischilly's statement that he and Yellowhorse burned the body after the fact.

See Doc. 121 at 5.

LEGAL STANDARDS

Hearsay means a statement that a declarant makes while not testifying at the current trial and offered in evidence by a party to prove the truth of the matter asserted. See Fed.R.Evid. 801(c). Hearsay is inadmissible unless it falls with a hearsay exception or exclusion. See id. 802.

“One such exception is for statements against interest.” United States v. Lozado, 776 F.3d 1119, 1121-22 (10th Cir. 2015) (citing Fed.R.Evid. 804(b)(3)). “To qualify as a statement against interest, a statement must have been made by a declarant considered unavailable as a witness.” Id. (citing Fed.R.Evid. 804(a)). A declarant is unavailable as a witness if he or she “is exempted from testifying ... because the court rules that a privilege applies,” “refuses to testify,” “testifies to not remembering the subject matter,” “cannot be present ... because of death or ... illness,” or is absent and the statement's proponent cannot procure the declarant's attendance. Fed.R.Evid. 804(a); Lozado, 776 F.3d at 1122.

A statement against interest made by an unavailable declarant is one that:

(A) a reasonable person in the declarant's position would have made only if the person believed it to be true because, when made, it was so contrary to the declarant's proprietary or pecuniary interest or had so great a tendency to invalidate the declarant's claim against someone else or to expose the declarant to civil or criminal liability; and (B) is supported by corroborating circumstances that clearly indicate its trustworthiness, if it is offered in a criminal case as one that tends to expose the declarant to criminal liability.

Fed. R. Evid. 804(b)(3). In summary, “Rule 804(b)(3) requires three things: (1) the declarant is unavailable; (2) a reasonable person in the declarant's position would not have made the statement unless she believed it to be true because, when made, it exposed the declarant to criminal liability; and (3) the statement is supported by ‘corroborating circumstances that clearly indicate its trustworthiness.'” United States v. Hammers, 942 F.3d 1001, 1010 (10th Cir. 2019), cert. denied, ---U.S.----, 140 S.Ct. 2768, 206 L.Ed.2d 940 (2020) (quoting Fed.R.Evid. 804(b)(3)).

Rule 804(b)(3) embodies “the commonsense notion that reasonable people, even reasonable people who are not especially honest, tend not to make self-inculpatory statements unless they believe them to be true.” United States v. Smalls, 605 F.3d 765, 780-81 (10th Cir. 2010) (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Williamson v. United States, 512 U.S. 594, 599 (1994)). However, these types of statements are only admissible to the extent they inculpate the declarant because “[t]he fact that a statement is self-inculpatory does make it more reliable; but the fact that a statement is collateral to a self-inculpatory statement says nothing at all about the collateral statement's reliability.” Williamson, 512 U.S. at 600. In short, Rule 804(b)(3) only covers statements that are “‘individually self-inculpatory.'” Smalls, 605 F.3d at 781 (quoting Williamson, 512 U.S. at 599); see also United States v. DeLeon, 558 F.Supp.3d 1105, 1126 (D.N.M. 2021) (describing holding in Smalls).

For statements that are part of an overarching narrative that is self-inculpatory, the Court may not “just assume” that an individual statement is self-inculpatory “because it is part of a fuller confession, and this is especially true when the statement implicates someone else.” Williamson, 512 U.S. at 601. The Tenth Circuit has “rejected the notion ‘that an entire narrative, including non-self-inculpatory parts (but excluding the clearly self-serving parts...) may be admissible if it is in the aggregate self-inculpatory.'” Hammers, 942 F.3d at 1010 (quoting Smalls, 605 F.3d at 781). Relying on this framework, the Court now turns to the question of whether any of Chischilly's statements are admissible under Rule 804(b)(3), and if so, which statements.

ANALYSIS

I. The portions of Chischilly's statements that are non-self-inculpatory are not admissible under Rule 804(b)(3).

Some portions of Chischilly's statements are not admissible under Rule 804(b)(3) because they are non-self-inculpatory statements. See Williamson, 512 U.S. at 600-601 (“In our view, the most faithful reading of Rule 804(b)(3) is that it does not allow admission of non-self-inculpatory statements, even if they are made within a broader narrative that is generally self-inculpatory.”); see also Hammers, 942 F.3d at 1010 (“only the portions of the suicide note specifically inculpating [the declarant] are eligible for analysis under Rule 804(b)(3). The statement exculpating Defendant . . . is not a statement against interest because it is not self-inculpatory.”).

Although Chischilly's statements to his family were self-inculpatory in the aggregate, the statements also implicated Defendant Yellowhorse. Under Williamson and Smalls, this Court must find that any portions of Chischilly's statements that implicate Yellowhorse are not admissible under Rule 804. See Williamson, 512 U.S. at 600 (“the fact that a statement is self-inculpatory does make it more reliable; but the fact that a statement is collateral to a self-inculpatory statements says nothing at all about the collateral statement's reliability.”); see also Smalls, 605 F.3d at 786 (“Williamson tells us that neither self-exculpatory nor non-self-inculpatory portions of a statement are admissible under Rule 804(b)(3) as against penal interest. Rather, Rule 804(b)(3) ‘covers only those declarations or remarks within the confession that are individually self-inculpatory.'”) (quoting Williamson, 512 U.S. at 599). Therefore, the Government may not offer into evidence the portions of Chischilly's statements to his family members that are non-self-inculpatory in that they refer to Yellowhorse's alleged participation in the charged crime.

II. The portions of Chischilly's statements that are self-inculpatory are admissible under Rule 804(b)(3) as statements against penal interest.

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