State v. Bember

Summary

The court affirmed the defendant's convictions, rejecting challenges to the use of cooperating witnesses' agreements, the prosecutor's alleged vouching, the reliability determination for jailhouse-witness testimony, and the denial of suppression. The court held that the agreement-use claim was waived and independently permissible, that any improper questioning did not deprive the defendant of a fair trial, that the reliability hearing and determination were largely within the trial court's discretion, and that the defendant lacked a subjective expectation of privacy in a recorded jail call. The court also instructed trial courts to rely on objective, discovery-accessible criteria when assessing jailhouse-witness reliability.