STATE OF MARYLAND v. TEVIN HINES
Court of Appeals, Greene, Nov. 10, 2016,
Joinder – Reversible error under Rule 4-253 where defendant objected to joinder and suffered “unfair” prejudice when evidence was presented at joined trial that would have been inadmissible against him.

Detectives Fuller and Carew, Officer McLean
Co-defendant gave a taped statement to police where he said that he had an alibi. The police told him that he was lying and showed video surveillance of the co-defendant with the defendant during the time he was supposedly at the alibi location. Statement was inadmissible against the defendant and implicated him by implying that the co-defendant was lying to cover up the murder they committed together.

There are two different issues with regard to severance/joinder under Rule 4-253: offense joinder and defendant joinder.

With regard to offense joinder:
Under McKnight, severance is mandated where a single defendant is jointly tried by a jury for separate offenses and evidence as to the offenses is non-mutually admissible.

The Court quotes Judge Moylan (favorably, for how else could he be quoted?), saying “[McKnight is] the case that first dramatically narrowed the range of discretion truly available to the trial judge by holding that, in a jury case at least, whenever evidence on separate charges would be mutually not admissible, severance, if timely requested, is absolutely mandated as a matter of law.”

“A trial judge, in the context of a jury trial, need not make an additional inquiry into the existence of prejudice because prejudice is inherent in the non-mutual admissibility of evidence.”

With regard to defendant joinder:

“In cases of codefendant joinder, however, it is foreseeable that in some instances, evidence that is non-mutually admissible may not unfairly prejudice the defendant against whom it is inadmissible because the evidence does not implicate or even pertain to that defendant. Due to this latter scenario, it is inappropriate to say that, as we have said in the context of offense joinder, non-mutuality equates with prejudice in the context of codefendant joinder. Instead, the defendant must show that non-mutually admissible evidence will be introducedand that the admission of such evidence will result in unfair prejudice.”

The Court specifically does not address the Bruton issue