Background
In August 2012, Jamal Cruz was shot and killed outside Monet Lounge in Providence, Rhode Island, following a verbal confrontation with two men — Terrel Barros and Stephen Bodden. A second victim, Rokiem Henley, was wounded. Officers on detail at the club arrived within seconds and arrested both men. Bodden was found with a concealed firearm; he told an arresting officer, “It’s me. It’s all me. It’s all mine.” At trial, the state relied on a dying identification by Cruz naming Barros as the shooter, and on eyewitness Gregory Zorabedian — a parking lot attendant who came forward on the eve of trial — who testified he saw Barros holding a gun. Bodden invoked his Fifth Amendment right and did not testify. The jury convicted Barros on six counts, including first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to consecutive life terms.
After his conviction was affirmed on direct appeal, Barros filed for postconviction relief. During a six-day hearing, he presented Gloria Parajon — a cousin who had been extremely close to Bodden until his murder in October 2017. Parajon testified that days after the shooting, while driving Bodden home from jail, he admitted to her that he had fired warning shots, that when the victims did not retreat he shot at them, and that Barros was simply in the “wrong place at the wrong time.” She further testified that Bodden repeated this confession in five to ten additional conversations over the following five years. She did not come forward until after Bodden’s death, when she voluntarily contacted Barros’s mother through Facebook in July 2020. The Superior Court granted postconviction relief, vacated Barros’s conviction, and ordered a new trial. The state petitioned the Supreme Court for certiorari.
The Court’s Holding
The Rhode Island Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Long, unanimously affirmed the Superior Court’s grant of postconviction relief. The central dispute was whether Parajon’s testimony about Bodden’s confessions was admissible as newly discovered evidence — specifically, whether Bodden’s out-of-court statements qualified as declarations against penal interest under Rule 804(b)(3) of the Rhode Island Rules of Evidence. The state argued the statements could not qualify because Bodden framed the shooting as self-defense, thereby minimizing rather than admitting culpability. The Court rejected this framing, holding that the proper inquiry is not whether a statement could also be read as exculpatory to the declarant, but whether “a reasonable person in the declarant’s position would not have made the statement unless the declarant believed it to be true.” Bodden had just been released from custody in a case where the central question was whether he or Barros had pulled the trigger; the Court found it eminently reasonable to treat his repeated confessions as against his penal interest under that standard.
The Court also upheld the hearing justice’s finding of sufficient corroboration. Though the Court has previously cautioned that a statement to a close family member alone does not establish trustworthiness, it found that the hearing justice properly relied on multiple factors in combination: the confession was made immediately after Bodden’s first opportunity to speak freely outside a surveillance environment; it was unsurprising to Parajon given her knowledge of Bodden’s violent character and habit of carrying guns; it was made in close temporal proximity to Bodden’s cryptic statement to Officer Pattie moments after the shooting; and Parajon reached out to Barros’s family entirely on her own initiative after Bodden’s death. The Court declined to adopt any per se rule — urged by the state from out-of-jurisdiction authority — that self-defense narratives categorically disqualify a statement from being against penal interest. Because it affirmed on the newly discovered evidence ground, the Court declined to reach the state’s remaining assignments of error, though it took the opportunity to note advancements in DNA science since trial and to encourage both parties to consider those developments should the state elect to retry Barros.
Key Takeaways
- A co-defendant’s repeated out-of-court confessions to a family member can qualify as newly discovered evidence sufficient to vacate a murder conviction if the witness was unknown and undiscoverable at the time of trial and the confessions are credible, material, and likely to change the verdict.
- Under Rhode Island Rule 804(b)(3), the test for whether a hearsay statement is against penal interest turns on reliability — whether a reasonable person would have made the statement only if they believed it true — not on whether the statement also contains a self-defense component that could reduce the declarant’s culpability.
- Corroboration for a statement against penal interest may be established through a combination of factors: the timing of the confession relative to the declarant’s release from custody, the declarant’s known character, proximity to a contemporaneous inculpatory statement to police, and the witness’s voluntary and unprompted decision to come forward.
- Justice Robinson concurred in the result but expressly disagreed with the newly discovered evidence rationale; he was moved instead by unresolved concerns about whether DNA evidence presented at trial was adequately explained to the jury, underscoring the independent weight of that issue even though the majority did not resolve it.
Why It Matters
This decision is a significant clarification of Rhode Island’s approach to the statement-against-penal-interest hearsay exception in the postconviction context. By refusing to categorically bar statements that contain a self-defense element, the Court kept the focus where Rule 804(b)(3) places it: on the reliability of the declaration. Defense counsel handling postconviction matters should take note that posthumous confessions by co-defendants — if adequately corroborated and previously unknown — can satisfy the newly discovered evidence standard even when the declarant’s account includes some self-serving elements.
The decision also illustrates the increasingly important role that evolving forensic science plays in postconviction litigation. The Court’s unprompted observation about advances in DNA interpretation — even though it was not necessary to the holding — signals that the justices are attentive to the possibility that evidence admitted at trial under an older scientific consensus may not survive scrutiny today. Practitioners in Rhode Island should treat that signal seriously when evaluating whether to seek relief or retry a defendant in cases where DNA evidence was central.