Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-02-03110/USCOURTS-caDC-02-03110-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
James Earle
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the

Federal Reporter or U.S.App.D.C. Reports. Users are requested to notify

the Clerk of any formal errors in order that corrections may be made

before the bound volumes go to press.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 19, 2004 Decided July 23, 2004

No. 02-3110

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

JAMES EARLE,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 02cr00034–01)

Lisa B. Wright, Assistant Federal Public Defender, argued

the cause for appellant. With her on the briefs was A. J.

Kramer, Federal Public Defender. Neil H. Jaffee, Assistant

Federal Public Defender, entered an appearance.

Thomas S. Rees, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause

for appellee. With him on the brief were Roscoe C. Howard,

 Bills of costs must be filed within 14 days after entry of judgment.

The court looks with disfavor upon motions to file bills of costs out

of time.

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Jr., U.S. Attorney, John R. Fisher, Roy W. McLeese III, and

Arvind K. Lal, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

Before: GINSBURG, Chief Judge, HENDERSON, Circuit Judge,

and WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Chief Judge GINSBURG.

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge HENDERSON.

GINSBURG, Chief Judge: Appellant James Earle claims the

district court impermissibly took judicial notice of and erroneously instructed the jury about irrelevant evidence that the

prosecutor then unfairly relied upon in his closing argument.

Because the prosecutor’s remarks were based upon information he knew conflicted with the record, and because the

record shows Earle was prejudiced by the prosecutor’s remarks, we vacate his convictions on three of four counts and

remand the case for a new trial on those counts.

I. Background

In January 2002 a federal grand jury returned a four-count

indictment charging Earle with (1) possession of a firearm

and ammunition by a convicted felon, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1);

(2) possession with intent to distribute cocaine base, 21 U.S.C.

§ 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(c); (3) use, carriage, and possession of a

firearm during a drug trafficking offense, 18 U.S.C.

§ 924(c)(1); and (4) possession of a controlled substance, 21

U.S.C. § 844(a). Earle was convicted on all four counts and

was sentenced to 111 months in prison. This appeal concerns

counts one, two, and three.

Earle contends he was mistakenly identified and arrested

as the individual three officers of the Metropolitan Police

Department were pursuing on the night of December 28,

2001. Earle’s claim of mistaken identify naturally gave rise

at his trial to disputed accounts of the events leading to his

arrest.

The MPD officers testified they first observed Earle in an

alley, where they began to follow him in their unmarked

police car. According to the officers, upon realizing he was

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being followed, Earle ran out of the alley and down a sidewalk. Officer Batton, who was sitting in the back seat,

testified that the man they were chasing pulled a gun from

his waistband and threw it into an adjacent yard without

breaking stride. As the officers approached a cross street,

Officer Adcock stopped the car and all three officers began

pursuing the individual on foot. Adcock testified that he

managed to close to within less than ten feet of the suspect

when he entered a Kwik Mart convenience store; Batton,

who was behind Officers Adcock and Cristomo in the chase,

put that distance at five feet. Adcock also testified that he

observed the suspect, upon entering the store, ‘‘toss a clear

object into the trash can.’’

The police entered the store, arrested Earle, and later

found 0.30 grams of cocaine base in a plastic bag in the trash

can. They also found a ‘‘ziploc bag’’ of marijuana and $329 on

Earle’s person. Batton eventually recovered a loaded gun

from the yard into which the fleeing suspect had been seen to

throw a gun.

At trial Earle was represented by Mr. Harry Tun. Previously, Earle had been represented by the Federal Public

Defender, but on July 10, 2002 — some two days before his

trial was to begin — he retained Tun, who had ‘‘represented

Mr. Earle’s brother in March [2002] TTT in Superior Court.’’

Tun immediately sought a continuance in order to prepare for

Earle’s trial. The district court held a hearing on July 11,

2001 to consider Tun’s motion for a continuance. After Tun

said he wanted to interview ‘‘five to six’’ witnesses who would

testify on Earle’s behalf, the court granted the continuance.

In the event, four witnesses testified for the defense.

Three of them testified Earle was inside the Kwik Mart when

the fleeing suspect passed along the outside of the store. Of

those three, two also testified they saw the man the police

were chasing and that it was not Earle. The fourth witness

testified that while he was walking to the Kwik Mart a

man — not Earle — ran by him and threw something and

then ‘‘ran beside the building on [sic] Kwik Stop and went

in[to an] alley.’’ On cross-examination, three of the defense

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witnesses testified they had first been interviewed by Tun’s

private investigator early in 2002, which was several months

before Tun had entered his appearance in the case. The

prosecutor questioned the witnesses at length about those

interviews and in his closing arguments, suggested the interviews never took place. Suggesting the defense witnesses

‘‘got together and TTT created this little story,’’ the prosecutor

drew the jury’s attention to two facts: the date Earle retained Tun and the absence of any notes of the alleged

interviews in early 2002.

The date of Tun’s retention had been injected into the case

when the district court, shortly before the prosecutor’s closing argument, informed the jury as follows:

The court takes judicial notice that the defendant and his

family retained Mr. Tun to represent the defendant on

July 10, 2002, and that the family had been attempting to

retain Mr. Tun for several months before that but did not

have sufficient funds to do so until July 2002.

Later, in its instructions to the jury, the district court reminded the jury that the court ‘‘took judicial notice of facts

relating to the retention of Mr. Tun by the defendant and his

family.’’* Also in its instructions the court directed the

jurors’ attention again to the absence of interview notes:

You heard some questions during the trial with respect

to whether any notes were taken by Mr. Tun or his

investigator when they met with witnesses that you

heard from. I advise you that there are no contemporaneous notes of those discussions.

II. Analysis

Earle claims the district court erred by taking judicial

notice of the date he retained Tun and by instructing the jury

about the absence of interview notes — errors he says were

* As required by Federal Rule of Evidence 201(g) of a court

taking judicial notice of adjudicative facts in a criminal case, the

district court also instructed the jury they were not required to

‘‘regard those facts as proven evidence.’’

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compounded when the district court allowed the prosecutor,

over Tun’s objections, to draw inferences during his closing

argument that were not supported by evidence in the record.

Accordingly, Earle asks this court to vacate his convictions on

counts 1, 2, and 3 and to remand the case for a new trial on

those counts.

A. Relevance

Earle argues that the date of Tun’s retention and the

absence of interview notes ‘‘say[ ] absolutely nothing’’ about

whether or when counsel’s investigator first interviewed the

defense witnesses. In response the Government claims these

facts cast doubt upon the credibility of the defense witnesses

and are relevant because ‘‘credibility is always relevant,’’ and

cites United States v. Abel, 469 U.S. 45, 52 (1984), for the

proposition that ‘‘the jury TTT has historically been entitled to

assess all evidence which might bear on the accuracy and

truth of a witness’ testimony.’’

The district court’s decision to admit evidence as relevant is

subject to review only for abuse of discretion. United States

v. Smith, 232 F.3d 236, 241 (D.C. Cir. 2000). Evidence is

relevant if it has ‘‘any tendency to make the existence of any

fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action

more probable or less probable than it would be without the

evidence.’’ FED. R. EVID. 401.

The date Earle retained private counsel and the absence of

interview notes need not be accurate indicators of whether

the claimed interviews took place in order to be deemed

relevant under Rule 401. The threshold for relevance, as

applied to the present case, is merely that the evidence tends

to make ‘‘less probable’’ the defense’s assertion that the

witnesses were interviewed early in 2002. Although, as Earle

correctly points out, Tun may well have taken preparatory

measures long before he was formally retained, we cannot say

the district court abused its discretion by allowing the jurors

to consider the evidence to which Earle now objects.

Earle next argues the date of Tun’s retention and the

absence of interview notes should have been excluded under

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Federal Rule of Evidence 403 because it was ‘‘highly likely’’

the jurors would be ‘‘confused and misled’’ by that evidence.

The court’s statement of judicial notice and its jury instructions, however, were not themselves confusing or misleading.

In fact, Earle’s objection has more to do with the inferences

the prosecutor drew from the evidence than it does the

admissibility of that evidence. Accordingly, we find the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the

evidence after having weighed its ‘‘probative value’’ against

the danger it raised of ‘‘unfair prejudice, confusion of the

issues or misleading the jury.’’ United States v. Long, 328

F.3d 655, 662 (D.C. Cir. 2003); see also FED. R. EVID. 403.

B. Impermissible inference

Even evidence deemed relevant under Rule 401 and not

prejudicial under Rule 403 may not be used as a springboard

to propound an impermissible inference. Cf. United States v.

Edmonds, 69 F.3d 1172, 1176 (D.C. Cir. 1995) (although

evidence admitted was ‘‘ ‘damaging,’ TTT there was little

danger of unfair prejudice [where] prosecutor never argued

an impermissible inference and did not emphasize the testimony’’). Earle argues the prosecutor did just that in his

closing argument by questioning Tun’s involvement in the

case prior to his retention in July 2002, despite the prosecutor’s knowledge of Tun’s contrary representations to the

court. The Government responds that there is evidence in

the record contradicting Tun’s representation about both the

date of his retention and the existence of the interview notes,

namely, Tun’s statement in his motion for continuance that

‘‘there are eyewitnesses who are essential to this case [who]

have yet to be TTT interviewed’’; therefore, according to the

Government, the prosecutor’s closing argument was ‘‘firm but

fair advocacy TTT, not prosecutorial error.’’

For a prosecutor’s statements in closing argument to warrant a new trial, they must entail a serious error that is

prejudicial to the defendant. United States v. Watson, 171

F.3d 695, 699 (D.C. Cir. 1999). It is a serious error ‘‘for

counsel to make statements in closing argument unsupported

by evidence, to misstate admitted evidence, or to misquote a

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witness’ testimony.’’ Id.; see also United States v. Blueford,

312 F.3d 962, 968 (9th Cir. 2002) (error where prosecution

‘‘propound[s] inferences that it knows to be false, or has very

strong reason to doubt’’).

Here, Earle objects to the following remarks in the prosecutor’s closing argument:

[Prosecutor]: Remember the last thing the judge did

before we started here? He took judicial notice of a fact.

And the fact that he took judicial notice of was that Mr.

Earle and his family did not retain Mr. Tun until July the

10th of 2002. They had been trying to raise the money

before for several months. Apply your common sense

here. Does it make sense to you that an investigator

would go out on behalf of an attorney who had not been

retained, who had not been paid?

Mr. Tun: Objection. That is not [the] judicial notice.

The Court: The objection is overruled. I think the way

it is phrased is admissible. Go ahead.

[Prosecutor]: Does it make sense to you that an investigator on behalf of a defense attorney who had not been

retained, who had not been paid any money, is going to

go out and start investigating a case when somebody else

represents the defendant?

Mr. Tun: Objection. That’s not in evidence.

The Court: Overruled.

[Prosecutor]: I submit to you it makes no sense. The

defense witnesses, I submit to you, got together and they

created this little story. The only problem is they forgot

to apply a little bit of common sense. Why would a

defense investigator go out and talk to them in January?

I submit to you there’s no good reason other than the

fact that they weren’t telling you the truthTTTT

During his rebuttal, the prosecutor again questioned Tun’s

involvement in the case prior to the date of his retention:

Mr. Tun would have you believe that out of the goodness

of his heart, for the passion of his work, he was involved,

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he was doing this stuff for freeTTTT To suggest that Mr.

Tun sent out an investigator when he wasn’t retained I

submit to you just doesn’t make sense. And your common sense tells you that, I submit to you. The statement that the judge read to you was that for several

months the family had been trying to retain Mr. Tun. I

ask you, is several months one? Maybe two? Maybe

three? But is it seven? The judge also told you, remember one of the witnesses, I think it was two of the

witnesses said that when the investigator was talking to

them, the investigator was taking notes? I believe the

judge advised you there are no notes.

The prosecutor made these statements to the jury despite

having heard Tun’s representations to the district court—

representations neither the court nor the prosecutor ever

questioned—that before he was formally retained he had

visited Earle in jail in connection with this case on ‘‘at least

five occasion[s] from [the] beginning of February TTT if not

earlier.’’ Tun further volunteered that the jail’s visitor log

would confirm those visits. There is not the slightest suggestion in the record that the visits did not take place or that the

prosecutor ever challenged the accuracy of Tun’s representations in any way, as Government counsel on this appeal

acknowledged at oral argument. Tun also explained to the

district court and to the prosecutor that his ‘‘normal practice

with regard to interviewing witnesses [was] not [to] take any

notes.’’ The district court did not question Tun’s practice; on

the contrary, it accepted his representation at face value. See

9/6/02 am Tr. at 9 (‘‘You don’t have to explain why you don’t

take notes, Mr. Tun. That’s not anybody’s business.’’). And

the prosecutor likewise stated, ‘‘If Mr. Tun is representing to

the court that there are no notes, then I’ll accept that.’’

The Government claims the inferences proposed by the

prosecutor were permissible because Tun’s pre-trial representations to the district court contradict his objection at trial to

judicial notice of the date of his retention. Here the Government is referring to Tun’s July 10, 2002 motion for a continuance, in which he stated:

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It is undersigned counsel’s understanding that there are

eyewitnesses who are essential to this case and that they

have yet to be subpoenaed or interviewedTTTT Undersigned counsel will not be prepared to try this matter on

July 12, 2002 due to his inability to interview, investigate

and subpoena appropriate witnesses for defendant.

There is no contradiction here. As Earle correctly points

out, Tun was merely stating that he himself had not yet

interviewed the witnesses. His request for a continuance

says nothing about whether his investigator had done so.

Nor is there any reason to doubt that an attorney would want

to interview his witnesses personally before putting them on

the witness stand even though his investigator had already

spoken to them some months before.

Based upon the record in this case, the prosecutor clearly

had every reason to doubt, and no good reason to support, the

inferences he propounded to the jury in his closing arguments. We therefore hold the district court erred by allowing the prosecutor to make those statements over Tun’s

repeated objection.

Despite that error, we must still determine whether Earle

‘‘suffered sufficient prejudice’’ to warrant a new trial. Watson, 171 F.3d at 700. We look specifically at the following

three factors: (1) ‘‘the severity of the prosecutor’s misconduct’’; (2) ‘‘the measures adopted to cure the misconduct’’;

and (3) ‘‘the certainty of conviction absent the improper

remarks.’’ Id., quoting United States v. Gartmon, 146 F.3d

1015, 1026 (D.C. Cir. 1998).

The first and second enumerated factors are easily applied

to the facts of this case. The prosecutor’s closing argument,

by suggesting Tun’s investigator had not interviewed defense

witnesses early in 2002, contrary to the testimony of three

defense witnesses, called into question the credibility not only

of those witnesses but that of Tun himself; he put Tun in the

position of having to defend his credibility and to argue to the

jury — as he did at some length — that he had worked on the

case before he was formally retained. Thus did the prosecutor make this collateral issue central to the defendant’s case.

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And his doing so may well have affected the outcome, for the

jury sent a note to the court asking: ‘‘How did the investigator locate the witnesses?’’ We cannot imagine that question

would have arisen but for the prosecutor’s suggestion that

Tun, the investigator’s employer, had not been involved in the

case when the witnesses testified the investigator had interviewed them.

With respect to ‘‘the measures adopted to cure the misconduct,’’ there simply was none. On the contrary, the district

court overruled Tun’s several objections to the prosecutor’s

impermissible comments.

Whether this is otherwise a close enough case for these

errors to undermine our confidence in the verdict is itself a

nice question. On the one hand, two police officers testified

that they saw Earle throw a gun into a yard while he was

running away from them. And three officers testified that

they had seen Earle enter the Kwik Mart. On the other

hand, three defense witnesses testified that they saw the

individual who was running from the police and that it was

not Earle. These conflicting accounts could have left a

reasonable jury with doubts about the identity of the fleeing

suspect. Indeed, the jurors in this case appear to have

harbored such doubts: They submitted two questions to the

district court specifically and pointedly directed to the question of identity. They asked: ‘‘Were there any fingerprints

on the narcotics bag?’’ (referring to the bag found inside the

convenience store); and ‘‘How does no fingerprints play in

this case (gun)?’’

Finally, as Government counsel again acknowledged at oral

argument, there was an ‘‘objective physical fact’’ tending both

to favor Earle’s description of events and to draw into

question that of the Government, namely, the undisputed

presence of Earle’s girlfriend at the Kwik Mart at the time of

his arrest. She testified that she and Earle had been out for

dinner and had stopped at the Kwik Mart on their way home

together. If Earle was in the Kwik Mart only because he

was seeking to evade police officers who had been chasing

him through the streets, then it seems passing strange that

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his girlfriend also happened to be at the store when he was

arrested. Yet the Government did nothing at trial to cast

doubt upon her testimony to that effect. On the contrary,

one officer testified: ‘‘I remember a female out thereTTTT I

think the female is the one we gave the prisoner’s property

to.’’

For the foregoing reasons, we are left with ‘‘grave doubt’’

as to whether the prosecutor’s impermissible inferences about

Tun’s involvement before his formal retention did not affect

the jury’s verdict. Watson, 171 F.3d at 700. Accordingly, we

are constrained to hold the error was not harmless.

III. Conclusion

The judgment against Earle on Counts 1, 2, and 3 is

vacated and the case is remanded for a new trial with respect

thereto.

So ordered.

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KAREN LECRAFT HENDERSON, Circuit Judge, dissenting:

Because I believe the prosecutor did nothing impermissible,

I dissent from the majority opinion reversing James Earle’s

conviction. To clarify my reasons, I will expand on the

majority’s bare-bones factual recitation.

Three days after his arrest, Earle made his initial court

appearance on December 31, 2001, represented by the Federal Public Defender’s Office. On June 11, 2002 the district

court scheduled the trial for July 12, 2002. On the eve of the

trial date new developments caught the court, the prosecutor

and Earle’s own public defender by surprise. On July 10, two

days before the trial was to begin, lawyer Harry Tun filed a

motion for continuance, stating he had been retained by

Earle’s family just that day and needed a continuance to

interview five or six newly-discovered witnesses. At a hearing the following day, Tun informed the court that Earle’s

family had contacted Tun immediately after Earle’s arrest

but at the time had been unable to pay his fee, having just

finished paying him for successfully representing Earle’s

brother, Domingo Stephenson, in a criminal trial ‘‘involving

[a] similar situation.’’ 7/11 Tr. at 3. But on the previous day,

he explained, ‘‘they were able to come up with [a] partial

amount of [the] attorney’s fee’’ and ‘‘signed a promissory note

to pay the rest of it.’’ Id. at 4. Tun told the court it was his

‘‘understanding’’ there were ‘‘five to six witnesses that need to

be interviewed and who will be able to testify on behalf of Mr.

Earle during his trial and exculpate his involvement in this

case.’’ 7/11 Tr. at 3. Earle’s public defender informed the

court he ‘‘didn’t have any knowledge’’ of the witnesses of

whom Tun spoke. Id. at 4. To accommodate Tun, the court

rescheduled the trial for September 3, 2002, although the

‘‘11th hour’’ change would ‘‘wreak[ ] havoc on the schedules of

many people,’’ id. at 10, including the prosecutor who was not

available to try the case on September 3 and would therefore

need to find a replacement.

The trial began on September 3 as scheduled, with a

substitute prosecutor. During the government’s case, Officers Adcock, Batton and Crisostomo testified that, while

pursuing Earle the night of the arrest, they observed him

withdraw a firearm from his waistband and throw it into a

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nearby yard and, after arriving at the ‘‘Kwik Mart’’ where he

was arrested, deposit in a trash can a plastic baggie that

turned out to contain 11 smaller baggies of cocaine base.

When they arrested him, the officers found a bag of marijuana and $329 in cash on his person.

The defense offered the testimony of four witnesses who

said they saw a man other than Earle running from the police

the night of the incident: George Lewis, Derrick Vaughn,

Pedram Roshan and Earle’s girlfriend, Anna Baylor.

George Lewis testified he had known Earle for ten years

but did not know his family. On cross examination he stated

Tun’s investigator served him with a subpoena about one

month before trial and spoke with him at that time but took

no notes. According to Lewis, before that time he had not

‘‘spoken to Mr. Tun or anybody associated with Mr. Tun

about th[e] case.’’ 9/5 Tr. at 109. He testified that, a couple

of days after talking with Tun’s investigator, he met with

Tun, who was writing in a notebook ‘‘[m]ost of the time’’

during the interview. Id. at 110. Lewis also admitted on

cross that, contrary to his direct testimony that he did not

know Earle’s family, he did know Earle’s brother, Domingo

Stephenson, on whose behalf he had testified at the criminal

trial that Tun mentioned at the July 11 hearing and that at

that trial he had, in similar fashion, falsely testified that he

did not know Stephenson’s family.

Derrick Vaughn testified he knew Earle because they

played basketball together. On cross-examination, Vaughn

testified he met with Tun’s investigator in January 2002. He

stated initially that she ‘‘was writing things down’’ during the

interview, then clarified that she ‘‘didn’t write everything [he]

told her’’—specifically, that she ‘‘didn’t write down what [he]

said, what [he] told her’’—and finally that he was ‘‘not sure’’

whether she wrote down anything. 9/5 Tr. at 175–76.

Vaughn stated he met with Tun a few weeks before trial but

could not recall whether Tun took any notes during the

interviews. Id. at 175.

Pedram Roshan testified that he also knew Earle from

playing basketball. On cross-examination he stated he had

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met with Tun’s investigator around the third week of January

2002 and that she was writing things down while he was

‘‘telling her [his] story.’’ 9/5 Tr. at 201.

Anna Baylor testified that she was interviewed by Tun’s

investigator a few weeks after Earle’s arrest and by Tun

twice, once while ‘‘[i]t was still cold outside,’’ 9/5 Tr. at 244.

She could not recall whether either Tun or the investigator

took notes.

At the end of the court session on September 5, the district

court, at the government’s urging, asked Tun to check his

files to see if he had any notes, taken either by himself or his

investigator, of interviews with the witnesses. The following

morning Tun reported that he had none. The government

then requested that the court instruct the jury there were no

such notes.

At the close of the defense case, the government requested

that the court take judicial notice of Tun’s representation,

contained in the continuance motion, that the ‘‘[d]efendant

and his family retained undersigned counsel to represent

defendant on July 10, 2002’’ and that the court so instruct the

jury. Tun opposed the motion, although he did not, indeed

could not, dispute the accuracy of the requested instruction.

When the court informed counsel it would advise the jury that

there were ‘‘no contemporaneous notes’’ of interviews by Tun

or his investigator, Tun agreed to the instruction. As the

majority notes, the court delivered both instructions to the

jury.

I agree with the majority that the court did not err in

taking judicial notice of the date Tun was retained as defense

counsel or in advising the jury that there were no notes of

defense interviews with the witnesses. As the majority notes,

the challenged jury instructions were neither confusing nor

misleading and the facts they relayed were relevant because

they undercut the defense witnesses’ credibility. I cannot

agree, however, that it was in any way improper for the

prosecutor to suggest to the jurors the following unremarkable inferences from the instructions: that it was unlikely Tun

paid his investigator to interview the witnesses in January

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2002, some 6 months before Tun agreed to represent Earle on

July 10 when Earle’s family came up with a down payment,

that the notes Roshan (and initially Vaughn) testified were

taken did not exist and that just maybe, then, the witnesses

were lying about the interviews. The prosecutor’s argument

was wholly proper and there is no ground to reverse. The

majority’s ‘‘rationale’’ for its contrary disposition is bewildering.

The majority finds the government’s suggestion in closing

argument that Tun’s investigator did not interview the witnesses in early January 2002 is impermissible because it is

inconsistent with the evidence or at least with Tun’s assertions to the court. The inconsistency, however, lies with the

defense. Contrary to the majority’s view, the testimony of

the three defense witnesses (and Tun’s own claims during

trial) that Tun’s investigator interviewed them in January

2002 flatly contradicts Tun’s blanket, unqualified statement

contained in the July 10, 2002 continuance motion that the

same witnesses ‘‘have yet to be subpoenaed or interviewed’’

and his separate assertion, made in the same motion, that

‘‘counsel will not be prepared to try this matter on July 12,

2002 due to his inability to interview, investigate and subpoena appropriate witnesses for defendant’’ (emphasis added).

The unambiguous meaning of the quoted language is that, as

of the motion’s date, the newly-emerged defense witnesses

had not been interviewed by either Tun or his investigator.

To bolster its position, the majority points, curiously, to

Tun’s practice of not taking notes when interviewing clients,

which I can only suppose is intended to explain the discrepancy between the defense testimony that the investigator took

notes when she interviewed them and the fact the notes do

not exist. How Tun’s personal notetaking practices are relevant to the issue eludes me. Equally inexplicable is the

majority’s reliance on Tun’s declarations about his own visits

with Earle to support the view that Tun must therefore have

paid the investigator to interview the witnesses.

I also disagree that the prosecutor’s statement necessarily

prejudiced Earle—although, given that the government’s arUSCA Case #02-3110 Document #838077 Filed: 07/23/2004 Page 15 of 17
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gument was permissible, the issue need not be reached. See

United States v. Edelin, 996 F.2d 1238, 1243 (D.C. Cir. 1993)

(in determining whether to reverse convictions on account of

misstatement in closing argument, ‘‘the court has required a

finding both that the prosecutor’s actions were improper and

that they substantially prejudiced the jury.’’ (citing United

States v. North, 910 F.2d 843, 897 (D.C. Cir. 1990))). The

unimpeached testimony of the police officers consistently and

unequivocally identified Earle as the fleeing man who discarded the firearm and the bags of cocaine and from whom, at the

time of his arrest, the police recovered a bag of marijuana

and a large sum of cash. By contrast, the defense testimony

was at times tentative, grudging, inconsistent or plainly false.

For example, on cross-examination Lewis acknowledged that

he testified incorrectly on direct that he was unfamiliar with

Earle’s family and admitted he had similarly mistestified at

Earle’s brother’s trial; as noted above, Vaughn equivocated

over whether the investigator had taken notes during his

interview; when asked if he had been convicted in Maryland

of possessing marijuana and cocaine, Roshan responded ‘‘I

don’t believe I was really convicted. I served community

service,’’ 9/11 Tr. at 195–96; and Baylor testified erratically

or evasively about when she was first interviewed by Tun,

whether the shopping mall she said she and Earle had visited

the night of the arrest had only recently opened at the time,

what route she took from the mall to the Kwik Mart and even

whether Earle was her ‘‘boyfriend’’—in fact she testified she

did not even know where Earle lived. And it is not surprising that the jury sent a note asking how the investigator

located the witnesses, maj. op. at 10, given that Roshan had

testified that Earle did not know Roshan’s last name yet the

investigator had no problem locating and identifying Roshan

on a public basketball court. Further, if the jurors during

deliberations ‘‘harbored doubts about the identity of the

fleeing suspect,’’ as the majority infers from their question

about fingerprints, maj. op. at 10, the doubts were not

resolved as a result of the allegedly improper argument,

which had already occurred—although resolved they were by

the next morning’s verdict. As for Baylor’s presence at the

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Kwik Mart, her proximity to her ‘‘boyfriend’’ was unremarkable and—along with the presence of her car—could well

account for Earle’s decision to flee there. Finally, the majority suggests that the prosecutor made ‘‘central’’ the ‘‘collateral’’ issue of Tun’s performance as a lawyer in this case. But

it was Tun who personalized the issue. He spoke at length in

his closing (filling several pages of the transcript) about what

a lawyer ‘‘who cares about his client’’ would do under the

circumstances, 9/16 Tr. at 97, and what he and his investigator in fact did before trial.

In sum, the prosecutor’s argument was simple, straightforward and entirely logical. He asked the jurors to consider

whether the defense witnesses’ testimony was credible, that

is, was it likely, as the witnesses testified, that defense

counsel would have sent his paid investigator to interview

witnesses 6 months before he agreed to represent Earle and

that during the interviews the investigator would have taken

notes that did not exist. The jurors apparently reached the

same conclusion as the prosecutor.

USCA Case #02-3110 Document #838077 Filed: 07/23/2004 Page 17 of 17