09-150 Michigan v. Bryant

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Criminal Procedure
Confrontation clause

A shooting victim’s identification and description of the shooter and the location of the shooting were not testimonial statements because they had a primary purpose of enabling police assistance to meet an on-going emergency.

Here, the circumstances of the encounter as well as the statements and actions of Covington and the police objectively indicate that the interrogation’s “primary purpose” was “to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency,” 547 U. S., at 822. The circumstances of the interrogation involved an armed shooter, whose motive for and location after the shooting were unknown and who had mortally wounded Covington within a few blocks and a few minutes of the location where police found Covington. Unlike the emergencies in Davis and Hammon, this dispute’s potential scope and thus the emergency encompassed a potential threat to the police and the public. And since this case involved a gun, the physical separation that was sufficient to end the emergency in Hammon was not necessarily sufficient to end the threat here. Informed by the circumstances of the ongoing emergency, the Court now turns to determining the “primary purpose of the interrogation” as evidenced by the statements and actions of Covington and the police. The circumstances of the encounter provide important context for understanding Covington’s statements to the police. When he responded to their questions, he was lying in a gas station parking lot bleeding from a mortal gunshot wound, and his answers were punctuated with questions about when emergency medical services would arrive. Thus, this Court cannot say that a person in his situation would have had a “primary purpose” “to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution.” Ibid. For their part, the police responded to a call that a man had been shot. They did not know why, where, or when the shooting had occurred; the shooter’s location; or anything else about the crime. They asked exactly the type of questions necessary to enable them “to meet an ongoing emergency.” Ibid. Nothing in Covington’s responses indicated to the police that there was no emergency or that the emergency had ended. Finally, this situation is more similar to the informal, harried 911 call in Davis than to the structured, station-house interview in Crawford. The officers all arrived at different times; asked, upon arrival, what had happened; and generally did not conduct a structured interrogation. The informality suggests that their primary purpose was to address what they considered to be an ongoing emergency, and the circumstances lacked a formality that would have alerted Covington to or focused him on the possible future prosecutorial use of his statements.

768 N. W. 2d 65, vacated and remanded.

09-150 Michigan v. Bryant

Sotomayor, J.; Thomas, J., concurring; Scalia, J., dissenting; Ginsburg, J., dissenting.

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