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Parties Involved:
Linwood Ashton
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 4, 2008 Decided February 17, 2009 

No. 07-3015 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

APPELLEE

v. 

LINWOOD ASHTON, 

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 06cr00173-01) 

Cheryl D. Stein argued the cause and filed the brief for 

appellant. 

Joseph P. Cooney, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the 

cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Jeffrey A. 

Taylor, U.S. Attorney, and Roy W. McLeese III and Elizabeth 

Trosman, Assistant U.S. Attorneys. 

Before: HENDERSON, ROGERS, and GRIFFITH, Circuit 

Judges. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH. 

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Opinion concurring in the judgment filed by Circuit 

Judge ROGERS. 

 GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: A jury convicted Linwood 

Ashton of unlawful possession of phencyclidine (PCP) with 

intent to distribute within 1000 feet of a school. Ashton 

appeals his conviction, arguing that two rulings of the district 

court improperly limited his ability to challenge the testimony 

of the arresting officer on which the government’s case was 

built. Finding no error, we affirm the judgment of the district 

court. 

I. 

 At around 4:30 p.m. on February 23, 2006, Metropolitan 

Police Department Officers Millard Pitts and Charles Johnson 

pulled over a light-colored Volkswagen in the 600 block of 

7th Street NE, Washington, D.C., because they believed its 

heavily tinted windows were in violation of District of 

Columbia law. The stop occurred approximately 100 feet 

from Ludlow-Taylor Elementary School. As the officers 

approached the car, they smelled a strong chemical odor. 

Officer Pitts also recognized the car’s driver, Linwood 

Ashton, whom he had recently arrested for driving without a 

license. The car’s other occupant, Andre Cole, was in the 

front passenger seat. Officer Pitts told Ashton to show his 

license, but the best Ashton could muster was a “D.C. 

identification.” Trial Tr. 153 (Oct. 18, 2006). At that point, 

the officers ordered Ashton and Cole to step out of the car. 

While Ashton and Cole stood outside the car, Officer 

Johnson reached in from the passenger’s side and grabbed a 

black bag off the front passenger-side floor. At just that 

moment, Officer Pitts, standing next to Ashton on the driver’s 

side of the car, heard Ashton say, “That’s mine, not his.” Id.

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at 154–55. Inside the bag, the officers found small vials 

containing a yellow liquid later identified as PCP residue. The 

officers placed both Ashton and Cole under arrest and, 

believing the vehicle might contain more narcotics, ordered a 

K-9 unit to the scene. The K-9 alerted the officers to the hatch 

of the car, where they found approximately 182 grams of PCP 

and a second black bag containing nearly 100 grams of 

marijuana. A later search of the area around the car’s gearshift 

yielded six small Ziploc bags containing heroin. On June 15, 

2006, a grand jury indicted Ashton on several counts, 

including unlawful possession of PCP with intent to distribute 

within 1000 feet of a school, unlawful possession of 

marijuana with intent to distribute within 1000 feet of a 

school, and unlawful possession of heroin. 

Ashton’s jury trial began in the district court on October 

18, 2006. The government offered testimony from Officers 

Pitts and Johnson. Both described the circumstances of 

Ashton’s arrest, and Officer Pitts told of Ashton’s statement at 

the scene acknowledging as his the black bag Officer Johnson 

found on the front passenger-side floor of the car. In defense, 

Ashton presented the testimony of Christal Perry, who 

explained that she dated Ashton’s cousin, Anthony 

McPhatter, a known drug dealer who had been shot and killed 

sometime before trial. It is unclear from Perry’s testimony 

whether Ashton knew his cousin was a drug dealer. Perry did 

say, however, that Ashton often borrowed a silver 

Volkswagen owned by McPhatter. Perry also testified that she 

learned of Ashton’s arrest from McPhatter. After work one 

day, she heard McPhatter say to someone on his cell phone, 

“[Ashton] got locked up in my car with my [drugs].” Trial Tr. 

338 (Oct. 19, 2006). After the phone call, McPhatter told 

Perry directly, “[Ashton] got locked up with my [drugs].” Id. 

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On the second day of Ashton’s three-day trial, defense 

counsel told the court for the first time that she wanted to call 

Detective David Adams as a witness. At the time of trial, 

Detective Adams was out on sick leave with pneumonia and 

unavailable to testify. Counsel knew Detective Adams’s 

identity approximately two weeks before trial when she 

received a police document stating that Detective Adams had 

interviewed Ashton at the police station after his arrest and 

the interview had been videotaped. Ten days before trial, 

counsel learned that the video equipment had malfunctioned 

and no tape existed, but she made no attempt to secure 

Detective Adams’s appearance at trial. Instead, she argued 

that the trial should be delayed until Detective Adams 

returned to health, citing Ashton’s Sixth Amendment right to 

compulsory service. 

According to what defense counsel argued to the district 

court, Detective Adams would testify that during his 

interview Ashton denied admitting to Officer Pitts that he 

owned any of the recovered contraband. Detective Adams 

would also testify that Ashton refused to answer any other 

questions he tried to put to him. See id. at 304 (“[Detective 

Adams] walked into the interrogation room and said, ‘I 

understand you’ve already admitted possession of some of the 

drugs in the car.’ And Mr. Ashton immediately said, ‘No, I 

didn’t. That’s not true,’ refused to waive any of his rights and 

submit to any interrogation.”). From this proffer, counsel 

argued that a jury could infer that “it is not credible that 

[Ashton] made a confession on the scene, when he was 

completely unwilling to speak to anyone at the station and 

refused to waive his rights, and immediately repudiated that 

he had made the confession.” Id. at 305. 

Defense counsel also moved to admit into evidence 

Ashton’s PD-47 “Miranda rights card,” a document Ashton 

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signed at the police station that put into writing the invocation 

of his Miranda rights. Again, counsel claimed that Ashton 

needed this document to rebut Officer Pitts’s testimony. 

 The district court denied both of Ashton’s requests, 

stating, “[Y]ou’ve made your proffer” and “I’m not going to 

permit you to put the PD-47 in, and I’m not going to stop the 

trial until the officer gets well.” Id. at 306. 

 On October 23, 2006, the jury returned verdicts of guilty 

on the PCP count and not guilty on the heroin count. The jury 

was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the marijuana 

count. The district court sentenced Ashton to 97 months in 

prison followed by six years of supervised release. Ashton 

filed a timely appeal, claiming the district court’s rulings 

violated his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. We have 

jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 (2000). 

II. 

 Ashton’s appeal challenges the district court’s exclusion 

of his Miranda rights card from evidence and its refusal to 

delay his trial to allow Detective Adams to testify. We review 

both rulings for abuse of discretion. See United States v. 

Akers, 702 F.2d 1145, 1149 (D.C. Cir. 1983) (reviewing 

district court’s decision to exclude evidence for abuse of 

discretion); United States v. Poston, 902 F.2d 90, 96 (D.C. 

Cir. 1990) (reviewing district court’s decision to deny a 

continuance for abuse of discretion). If we find error, we must 

then ask whether it was harmless. See United States v. 

Whitmore, 359 F.3d 609, 622 (D.C. Cir. 2004). 

A. 

 

 Ashton argues that the district court erred in excluding 

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his Miranda rights card from evidence. He contends that a 

jury could infer from the card that he would not have made an 

incriminating statement to the police at the scene of his arrest 

when later at the police station he refused to answer questions 

altogether. 

 We find no abuse of discretion in the district court’s 

decision to exclude the Miranda rights card. Under the 

Federal Rules, evidence is admissible only to the extent that it 

is relevant. FED. R. EVID. 402. “‘Relevant evidence’ means 

evidence having 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. Ashton asserts that the Miranda

card speaks to the probability that he admitted possession at 

the scene of his arrest. But the fact that Ashton invoked his 

Miranda rights only suggests that after he was transported to 

the police station and had time to consider his situation, he 

was unwilling to consent to custodial interrogation, at least 

without the presence of a lawyer. See Miranda v. Arizona, 

384 U.S. 436, 471–72 (1966). In its Miranda jurisprudence, 

the Supreme Court has noted the significant difference in 

circumstance between a statement made in an “interrogation 

environment,” like that in which Ashton found himself at the 

police station with Detective Adams, and a statement 

volunteered while only in police custody, like that made when 

Ashton was standing next to Officer Pitts. See id. at 457, 478; 

see also Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 300 (1980). 

Ashton’s decision to invoke his Miranda rights is thus of no 

assistance in determining whether he made an unsolicited, 

spontaneous statement at the scene, and any number of 

reasons might explain Ashton’s differing temporal 

propensities to admit possession. Accordingly, the district 

court had discretion to exclude the Miranda rights card on the 

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ground that it does not make the existence of any fact of 

consequence more or less probable. 

We also find no abuse of discretion in the district court’s 

failure to explain its reasons for exclusion. To be sure, it 

would have been better had the district court clarified the 

basis for its decision. But when the party offering evidence 

does not request that the court clarify its decision to exclude 

that evidence, a reviewing court will sustain the exclusion on 

any ground that the district court could have invoked. See 1 

MCCORMICK ON EVIDENCE 260 (6th ed. 2006) (“When 

evidence is excluded upon a mere general objection, the ruling 

will be upheld, if any ground in fact existed for the exclusion. 

It will be assumed, in the absence of any request by the 

opposing party or the court to make the objection definite, 

that it was understood, and that the ruling was placed upon the 

right ground.” (quoting Tooley v. Bacon, 70 N.Y. 34, 37 

(1877))); cf. United States v. Garrett, 720 F.2d 705, 710 (D.C. 

Cir. 1983) (“It is well settled that ‘in reviewing the decision of 

a lower court, [the decision] must be affirmed if the result is 

correct although the lower court relied upon a wrong ground 

or gave a wrong reason.’” (quoting SEC v. Chenery Corp., 

318 U.S. 80, 88 (1943)) (alteration in original) (internal 

quotation marks omitted)). The district court had discretion to 

find that the Miranda rights card was not relevant for 

determining the likelihood that Ashton confessed at the scene 

of his arrest, and thus it did not abuse its discretion in 

excluding the card from evidence. 

B. 

 Ashton next argues that the district court erred in refusing 

to delay his trial so that he could secure the testimony of 

Detective Adams. Again, we are not persuaded. 

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“In short, ‘[a] trial judge enjoys great discretion in ruling 

on a motion for a continuance.’” United States v. Gantt, 140 

F.3d 249, 256 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (quoting Poston, 902 F.2d at 

96) (alteration in original).1 In evaluating a criminal 

defendant’s request for a continuance, trial judges must 

balance the right of an accused to have compulsory service for 

obtaining witnesses in his favor with the government’s 

interest in seeing guilt or innocence promptly adjudicated. 

United States v. Haldeman, 559 F.2d 31, 83 (D.C. Cir. 1976). 

The ultimate question is whether a continuance is “reasonably 

necessary for a just determination of the cause.” Neufield v. 

United States, 118 F.2d 375, 380 (D.C. Cir. 1941). Although 

“no firm rules can be articulated as to when a continuance is 

required,” Haldeman, 559 F.2d at 83, we have found that trial 

judges should consider, among other things, (1) the 

defendant’s diligence in attempting to secure the evidence 

before trial; (2) the length of the requested continuance and 

the associated burden on the government; and (3) the 

likelihood the evidence will be favorable and relevant to the 

defense. See id. at 83–84; Neufield, 118 F.2d at 380. 

Applying these factors, we conclude that the district court 

was well within its discretion to deny Ashton’s request. 

Defense counsel failed to make diligent efforts to secure 

Detective Adams’s testimony before trial. Although Detective 

Adams was identified to Ashton as the interrogating officer 

approximately two weeks before trial, counsel first told the 

 

1

 We note that Ashton did not file a formal motion for a 

continuance, but instead requested “an effort to find out when 

[Detective Adams] would be available . . . .” Trial Tr. 304 (Oct. 19, 

2006). The district court responded, “I’m not going to stop the trial 

until the officer gets well.” Id. at 306. It is unclear, however, how 

the court could have postponed trial without granting a continuance, 

and neither party has provided clarification. As such, we treat 

Ashton’s request as equivalent to a motion for a continuance. 

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district court he was a necessary witness on the second day of 

Ashton’s three-day trial. Prior to this time, counsel made no 

attempt to obtain the detective’s testimony and explained to 

us at oral argument that she saw no need for diligence in 

ensuring the detective’s presence because the government 

typically brings all relevant officers to trial. Oral Arg. 

Recording at 11:54–12:05. Without passing on the 

reasonableness of this assumption, we conclude that the 

district court had no obligation to make accommodations for 

counsel’s defense strategy at the expense of delaying trial. 

Defense counsel also made no showing of the length of 

the delay she needed to have Detective Adams testify. Rather, 

she requested two days into trial that there “be an effort to 

find out when [Detective Adams] would be available . . . .” 

Trial Tr. 304 (Oct. 19, 2006). Because Detective Adams 

would testify as a witness for the defense, the burden was on 

Ashton to find out when his attendance at trial was a 

possibility. Counsel responds, “How could I possibly know 

when a police officer with pneumonia is going to be ready to 

come back to court?” Oral Arg. Recording at 5:04. We 

suggest she ask. 

Finally, Detective Adams’s testimony is of little 

importance to “a just determination of the cause,” Neufield, 

118 F.2d at 380. As mentioned already, according to defense 

counsel, Detective Adams would first testify that Ashton 

refused to submit to interrogation at the station and then 

would say that Ashton denied admitting the bag was his. See

Trial Tr. 304 (Oct. 19, 2006). Like the Miranda rights card, 

testimony that Ashton refused to talk with Detective Adams is 

simply not relevant. And again, Ashton is incorrect to argue 

there is a logical inconsistency between his confession at the 

scene and his denial at the stationhouse. One can think of 

many reasons why Ashton would deny admitting ownership 

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of the drugs at the police station after coming to grips with the 

ramifications of his statement to Officer Pitts at the scene of 

his arrest. 

Ashton’s alleged out-of-court denial, which defense 

counsel wanted to present through Detective Adams, would 

have added little to Ashton’s case because it is unreliable. 

After Officer Pitts testified to the admission at the scene, 

Ashton was given the opportunity to conduct crossexamination. The jury could consider Officer Pitts’s 

credibility and demeanor and determine whether he was 

telling the truth. But suppose Detective Adams testified to 

Ashton’s statement at the police station. The jury could not 

examine Ashton’s demeanor at the time the statement was 

made and assess whether Ashton was telling the truth. The 

best way to determine whether Ashton did in fact make an 

admission at the scene was to do what the district court did 

here: allow cross-examination of Officer Pitts, allow Ashton 

to examine Officer Johnson, and allow Ashton to testify on 

his own behalf. 

III. 

 For the foregoing reasons, we hold that the district court 

did not abuse its discretion in excluding Ashton’s Miranda

rights card or in refusing to delay his trial so that he could 

present the testimony of Detective Adams. The judgment of 

the district court is 

Affirmed. 

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ROGERS, Circuit Judge, concurring in the judgment: I write

to emphasize the limits of the court’s holding that the district

court did not abuse its discretion in denying a mid-trial

continuance to await Officer Adams’s testimony and in denying

admission of the Miranda rights card into evidence. 

As appellant presents his appeal, he posits a tension

between his fundamental right to present a defense and the

district court’s discretion to control its calendar and to determine

whether evidence is relevant. That tension is not dispositive

here.

The Supreme Court explained in Washington v. Texas that:

[t]he right to offer the testimony of witnesses, and to

compel their attendance, if necessary, is in plain terms

the right to present a defense, the right to present the

defendant’s version of the facts as well as the

prosecution’s to the jury so it may decide where the

truth lies. Just as an accused has the right to confront

the prosecution’s witnesses for the purpose of

challenging their testimony, he has the right to present

his own witnesses to establish a defense. This right is

a fundamental element of due process of law.

388 U.S. 14, 19 (1967); see In re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257, 273-74

(1948). At the same time, the district court enjoys broad

discretion regarding the manner in which a trial shall proceed.

See, e.g., United States v. Gantt, 140 F.3d 249, 256 (D.C. Cir.

1998); Kickapoo Tribe v. Babbitt, 43 F.3d 1491, 1497 (D.C. Cir.

1995) (citing Maurice Rosenberg, Judicial Discretion of the

Trial Court, Viewed From Above, 22 SYRACUSE L. REV. 635

(1971)). This court’s review of the district court’s determination

whether evidence is relevant is confined to assessing whether

there was an abuse of discretion, see United States v. Earle, 375

F.3d 1159, 1162 (D.C. Cir. 2004), as is review of the district

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court’s denial of continuance of a trial, United States v. Poston,

902 F.2d 90, 96 (D.C. Cir. 1990).

Given appellant’s theory of defense, it was within the

district court’s discretion to conclude that neither the officer’s

testimony nor the rights card were irrelevant and that each piece

of evidence could have bolstered appellant’s denial of making an

on-the-scene confession. Had appellant been allowed to proceed

as he requested, Officer Adams would have testified, according

to defense counsel’s proffer, that appellant denied making an onthe-scene confession. Appellant then could have argued to the

jury that his action in not signing the rights card was consistent

with his denial.

On the other hand, as regards Officer Adams, appellant

cannot show an abuse of discretion in the refusal to delay trial

based on a request made on the second day of a three-day trial,

given defense counsel’s patent lack of diligence, including

failing to alert the district court of the need for the officer’s

testimony in advance of trial. Even were defense counsel’s lack

of diligence insufficient to support the denial of the continuance,

which it is not, see Natvig v. United States, 236 F.2d 694, 698

(D.C. Cir. 1956), the record shows appellant was not deprived of

the opportunity to present his defense by other means. Given the

relatively minimal probative value of Officer Adams’s proposed

testimony, its exclusion, assuming error, was not prejudicial, id.

Similarly, as to the rights card, appellant cannot show an abuse

of discretion in the denial of its admission given “the narrow

purpose the evidence would have served,” United States v.

Bailey, 319 F.3d 514, 519 (D.C. Cir. 2003). Appellant had the

opportunity to cross examine the officers regarding the on-thescene confession he denied making, and given the card’s

minimal probative value for purposes of supporting that denial,

appellant cannot show, assuming error, prejudicial error. See id.

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constitutional standard. SeeChapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18,

24 (1967); Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 764-65

(1946). 

So understood, appellant cannot show the district court

abused its direction much less that, assuming error, he was

prejudiced. Consequently, this case presents no occasion for the

court to speculate on how a jury would, in fact, have viewed the

proffered evidence, Op. at 6, 9-10, or to impose a burden on

defense counsel to seek a statement of reasons from the district

court for its decision to exclude the evidence, Op. at 7. Such a

burden is unsupported by the cited precedent regarding “mere

general objection[s],” Op. at 7 (quoting MCCORMICK ON

EVIDENCE 260 (6th ed. 2006)), as counsel here stated reasons for

seeking admission of the evidence.

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