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675 So. 2d 1098

Docket No. 96-KK-0959.

State v. Johnson

STATE of Louisiana v. Larry JOHNSON, et al.

Supreme Court of Louisiana

Decided June 28, 1996.

Supreme Court of Louisiana · decided 1996-06-28

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“to a defendant whose own interlocking confession was introduced as evidence against him. However, the majority of the Court in Cruz rejected the plurality rationale espoused in Parker . The Cruz court found that the introduction of a jointly tried co-defendants confession that interlocked with the defendants confession was even more harmful to the defendant, because it corroborated the defendants own guilty confession. The Cruz court determined that a co-defendants statement remains inadmissible at a joint trial even when the defendant has given his own”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including State v. Jackson, 905 So. 2d 451 - State v. Taylor

“has not yet delineated those circumstances under which a codefendants statement may be directly admissible against the defendant.”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including State v. Jackson, 905 So. 2d 451 - State v. Taylor

Relies on Bruton v. United States · Zafiro v. United States · Lee v. Illinois

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1996-06-28

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently September 2015

8 state decisions

40199620002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1Granted; severance of the defendants is ordered. Prejudice may occur in a joint trial "when evidence that the jury should not consider against a defendant and that would not be admissible if a defendant were tried alone is admitted against a codefendant." Zafiro v. United States,506 U.S. 534, 113 S.Ct. 933, 122 L.Ed.2d 317 (1933) (citing Bruton v. United States,391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968)). The Supreme Court has not yet delineated those circumstances under which a codefendant's statement may be directly admissible against the defendant. It has made clear that such statements are presumptively unreliable to the extent that they incriminate the defendant. Lee v. Illinois,476 U.S. 530, 106 S.Ct. 2056, 90 L.Ed.2d 514 (1986), and that they remain inadmissible at a joint trial even when the defendant has given his own "interlocking" statement. See Cruz v. New York,481 U.S. 186, 107 S.Ct. 1714, 95 L.Ed.2d 162 (1987) ("[W]here a nontestifying co-defendant's confession incriminating the defendant is not directly admissible against the defendant ... the Confrontation Clause bars its admission at their joint trial....").

¶2WATSON, J., not on panel.

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