United States v. Boyd, No. 08-6402 (6th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CaseThe defendant was convicted as an accessory after the fact to a Knoxville, Tennessee carjacking, rape, and two murders and for misprision of a felony. A videotaped interview, in which the defendant described conversations with the perpetrator, was admissible; the jury was properly instructed to consider the evidence only with respect to defendant's knowledge of the crime, not for the truthfulness of statements about the commission of the crime. The underlying statements made by the perpetrator to his friend, the defendant, were not testimonial in nature and their admission into evidence did not violate the Confrontation Clause. Rejecting a claim of duplicity, the court stated that being an accessory to several crimes is, in itself, a single crime. A medical examiner's testimony about sexual assault of the victims was probative; the government was required to prove commission of the underlying offense. The government was entitled to prove its case "free from the defendant's option to stipulate the evidence away." The prosecutor's closing argument, which included emotional characterizations of the crime and the defendant, appeals for justice, and statements concerning the credibility of witnesses, was not improper.
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