What is the current state of the law on extrajudicial statements in a joint trial?

California, United States of America


The following excerpt is from People v. Fletcher, 13 Cal.4th 451, 53 Cal.Rptr.2d 572, 917 P.2d 187 (Cal. 1996):

Without deciding whether the past practice was constitutionally permissible, we concluded in Aranda that it was "prejudicial and unfair to the nondeclarant defendant and must be altered." (People v. Aranda, supra, 63 Cal.2d 518, 530, 47 Cal.Rptr. 353, 407 P.2d 265.) We adopted "judicially declared rules of practice" for all cases in which the prosecution proposed to introduce in evidence an extrajudicial statement of one defendant that implicated a codefendant. (Ibid.) In these cases, we said, the trial court must either (1) permit a joint trial "if all parts of the extrajudicial statements implicating any codefendants can be and are effectively deleted without prejudice to the declarant"; (2) sever the trials "if the prosecution insists that it must use the extrajudicial statements and it appears that effective deletions cannot be made"; or (3) permit a joint trial but exclude the extrajudicial statement if effective deletions cannot be made. (Id. at pp. 530-531, 47 Cal.Rptr. 353, 407 P.2d 265.) We explained that "effective deletions" meant removal of "not only direct and indirect identifications of codefendants but any statements that could be employed against nondeclarant codefendants once their identity is otherwise established." (Id. at p. 530, 47 Cal.Rptr. 353, 407 P.2d 265, fn. omitted.)

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