Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-97-03143/USCOURTS-caDC-97-03143-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Mark A. Dickerson
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 13, 1998 Decided January 5, 1999

No. 97-3143

United States of America,

Appellee

v.

Mark A. Dickerson,

Appellant

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(96cr00434-01)

Sandra G. Roland, Assistant Federal Public Defender,

argued the cause for appellant. With her on the brief was A.

J. Kramer, Federal Public Defender.

Gregory G. Marshall, Assistant United States Attorney,

argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief were

Wilma A. Lewis, United States Attorney, John R. Fisher,

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Thomas J. Tourish, Jr., and Sima F. Sarrafan, Assistant

United States Attorneys.

Before: Silberman, Ginsburg, and Garland, Circuit

Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge Silberman.

Silberman, Circuit Judge: Appellant was convicted of possessing a firearm as a convicted felon in violation of 18 U.S.C.

s 922(g)(1) (1994). He appeals his conviction on the ground

that the district court erroneously denied his request for a

jury instruction that his out-of-court statement could not be

used to convict him unless corroborated by substantial independent evidence. We affirm the conviction.

I.

Appellant was driving his mother's minivan with two passengers in Southeast D.C. Officer John Cox noticed an

expired inspection sticker on the minivan and pulled appellant

over. Cox smelled burned marijuana when he approached

the minivan to ask for appellant's license and registration,

and observed what appeared to be loose marijuana on the

floorboard. Cox then called for back-up and ordered all three

individuals from the minivan. The officers discovered a gun,

within appellant's reach from the front seat, located in an

opening in the left wall of the passenger compartment where

a panel had been pried apart about two inches from the metal

frame of the minivan. Appellant was then handcuffed and a

more extensive search of the car uncovered next to the gun

an envelope addressed to "Mark" containing a birthday card

and a photograph of appellant and a woman, as well as

various correspondence marked for appellant in the "map

pocket" on the back of the front passenger seat. As the

officers led appellant from the scene, he asked why he had

been arrested. Upon being told that it was because of the

gun, he said that he had been "hijacked a couple of times,"

but also stated that he did not know the gun was in the

minivan.

The district court denied appellant's motion for a judgment

of acquittal at the close of the government's case. Before

trial, appellant requested that the court give "Redbook"

instruction 2.49, which tells the jury that the defendant

cannot be convicted solely on his own out-of-court statements

unless those statements are corroborated by "substantial

independent evidence of facts or circumstances which tend to

establish the trustworthiness of the statement."1 The district

court declined. Appellant was convicted and sentenced to 40

months of imprisonment.

Appellant challenges his conviction solely on the ground

that the district court erred in rejecting his proposed jury

instruction. He does not dispute that corroborative evidence

was presented--that appellant was driving his mother's car

and that the gun was within his reach and next to his

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personal effects--but he claims that the jury was entitled to

decide if the corroborative evidence was sufficient. At certain points in his brief, appellant argues as if such an instruction is necessary in all cases involving a defendant's out-ofcourt statements. Yet, in other places appellant asserts the

more narrow claim that where the evidence is so weak that

the jury was likely to disregard that evidence and convict

solely on the basis of an out-of-court statement, a corroboration instruction is required. The government responds that

there is no requirement to give such an instruction in all

cases, and that the district court properly exercised its discretion not to issue an instruction in this case because there was

substantial independent evidence corroborating appellant's

statement.

II.

The Redbook instruction at issue in this appeal derives

from a trio of Supreme Court cases setting forth the federal

rule governing the use of a defendant's out-of-court statements to convict. The rule covers both confessions and

admissions of facts that show essential elements of the crime.

The Court held in pre-Miranda cases that a conviction cannot

rest on a defendant's out-of-court statement made subsequent

__________

1 Instruction 2.49, Criminal Jury Instructions, Young Lawyers

Section, The Bar Association of the District of Columbia (4th ed.

1993).

to the crime, whether exculpatory or inculpatory, unless the

government produces substantial independent evidence which

would tend to establish the trustworthiness of the statement.

Opper v. United States, 348 U.S. 84, 92-93 (1954); Smith v.

United States, 348 U.S. 147, 155-56 (1954); United States v.

Calderon, 348 U.S. 160 (1954). The Court explained that the

purpose of the rule, which stemmed from common law, is to

prevent "errors in convictions based upon untrue confessions

alone," Smith, 348 U.S. at 153 (quoting Warszower v. United

States, 312 U.S. 342, 347 (1942)), and that the rule is supported by a "long history of judicial experience with confessions and [by] the realization that sound law enforcement

requires police investigations which extend beyond the words

of the accused," id. Confessions, it was thought, may be

unreliable because of coercion or inducement and, although

involuntary confessions are excluded from the jury, a separate corroboration rule is still necessary. That is because

voluntary statements may be unreliable if "extracted from

one who is under the pressure of a police investigation--

whose words may reflect the strain and confusion attending

his predicament rather than a clear reflection of his past."

The court noted empirical evidence of "false confessions

voluntarily made." Smith, 348 U.S. at 153; Opper, 348 U.S.

at 88.2

It is in the reasoning of these cases that appellant locates

an entitlement to a jury instruction as to the necessity of

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2 Judge Learned Hand doubted as early as 1918 whether the

corroboration rule "has in fact any substantial necessity in justice."

Daeche v. United States, 250 F. 566, 571 (2d Cir. 1918). Suffice it to

say that, post-Miranda, the need for the rule, especially insofar as

it protects against involuntary confessions, is even more questionable. See, e.g., 1 McCormick on Evidence s 145, at 563 & n.49 (4th

ed. 1992); Thomas A. Mullen, Rule Without Reason: Requiring

Independent Proof of the Corpus Delicti As a Condition of Admitting An Extrajudicial Confession, 27 U.S.F. L. Rev. 385, 401-07

(1993) (discussing various rationales for rule and concluding that

"[i]n every case, the rationale proves too much while the ... rule

delivers too little"). Of course, doubtful though we are that the

Supreme Court would today rule as it did in 1954, we are bound by

those decisions.

corroborating that he had asserted what could be thought a

purpose in possessing the gun--to protect against hijacking--

which of course suggests that he actually possessed the gun.

We begin by dispensing with both appellant's and the government's suggestion that there is a meaningful distinction between requiring a corroboration instruction in all cases and

requiring such an instruction in some, or "close," cases.3 As

we read the governing Supreme Court opinions, no defendant

can be convicted on the basis of an uncorroborated out-ofcourt statement, whether that statement is used by the

prosecution to prove a formal element of the crime charged or

a fact subsidiary to proving an element of the crime. See

Smith, 348 U.S. at 155 ("It is the practical relation of the

statement to the Government's case which is crucial, not its

theoretical relation to the definition of the offense."). And if

the requested jury instruction tracks the corroboration requirement, as appellant contends, an instruction theoretically

would be necessary in every case in which the prosecution

relies on a defendant's out-of-court statement. We do not see

a middle ground.

Implicit in appellant's argument is his contention that,

whatever the judge's role in determining the admissibility of

such a statement, the jury must ultimately decide whether

the statement is corroborated as if corroboration were a

separate element of the crime. Although we have decided a

number of corroboration cases without confronting this argument, see, e.g., United States v. Johnson, 589 F.2d 716, 718-

19 (D.C. Cir. 1978); Smoot v. United States, 312 F.2d 881,

884-85 (D.C. Cir. 1962); Bray v. United States, 306 F.2d 743,

746 (D.C. Cir. 1962), appellant is not the first to advance it.

One of the leading evidence treatises advocates the same

position, see 7 John Henry Wigmore, Evidence in Trials at

Common Law s 2073, at 530-31 (James H. Chadbourn rev.

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3 In this connection, we reject the government's argument that

the standard of review for the latter position is abuse of discretion.

We review all alleged failures to submit a jury instruction de novo,

see Joy v. Bell Helicopter Textron, Inc., 999 F.2d 549, 556 (D.C. Cir.

1993), and review for abuse of discretion only when the challenge is

to the language of the instruction.

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1978) ("The judge's ruling [is] provisional only, preliminary to

allowing the case to go to the jury; they in their turn must

conclude, without reference to the judge's ruling, whether the

corroboration exists to satisfy them.") (emphasis in original),

and it has been adopted by one of our sister circuits, see

United States v. Marshall, 863 F.2d 1285, 1288 (6th Cir.

1988), a former member of this court in dissent, see Bowles v.

United States, 439 F.2d 536, 545 n.8 (D.C. Cir. 1970) (Bazelon,

C.J., dissenting) (noting that "[c]onsideration of the 'confession' is complicated by the fact that the trial judge failed to

instruct the jury" pursuant to the Redbook corroboration

instruction), and state supreme courts applying the common

law rule which Opper and Smith adopted and modified, see,

e.g., People v. Reade, 191 N.E.2d 891, 893-94 (N.Y. 1963).

We disagree with appellant. We agree generally with the

First Circuit, see United States v. Singleterry, 29 F.3d 733,

736 (1st Cir. 1994), that the jury need not be separately

instructed on the issue for it is akin to other admissibility

issues, and therefore the trial judge alone decides whether

the corroboration test has been met. The corroboration rule

is undeniably, in part, a rule governing the admissibility of a

defendant's out-of-court statements, see Opper, 348 U.S. at 90

(comparing out-of-court statements to hearsay because neither have the "compulsion of the oath nor the test of crossexamination"); Singleterry, 29 F.3d at 737; Smoot, 312 F.2d

at 884. And it is well settled that preliminary facts relating

to the admissibility of evidence are questions for the court

and not for the jury. See Lego v. Twomey, 404 U.S. 477, 489-

90 (1972). There is, moreover, nothing exceptional about a

court deciding a question such as corroboration or trustworthiness without the jury, and in other contexts such decisions

are routine. See, e.g., United States v. Laing, 889 F.2d 281,

287 (D.C. Cir. 1989) (cautionary accomplice instruction unnecessary where court first concludes that the accomplice testimony is materially corroborated); Fed. R. Evid. 804(b)(3)

(confession by non-accused that exculpates the accused is not

admissible unless "corroborating circumstances clearly indicate the trustworthiness of the statement"). There is no

reason to think that courts are any less equipped to identify

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the "substantial independent evidence" necessary for corroboration.

To be sure, the corroboration requirement has also been

described as a rule governing the sufficiency of the evidence.

See Warszower, 312 U.S. at 347-48; Singleterry, 29 F.3d at

738; United States v. Bukowski, 435 F.2d 1094, 1106 n.7 (7th

Cir. 1970). Although the Opper Court did liken the rule to an

admissibility requirement, see Opper, 348 U.S at 90, it also

noted that the statement--without corroboration--was competent evidence. And in the two companion cases the Court

assumed that the statements without corroboration were admissible, see Smith, 348 U.S. at 155; Calderon, 348 U.S. at

161. The Court's treatment of the issue has caused some

confusion, but we think the Court created something of a

hybrid rule having elements both of admissibility and sufficiency. Although the statement would normally be admissible under rules of evidence, because of ancient common law

concerns, more is required before the trial judge can allow

the case to go to the jury. Still, that does not mean that the

jury's role is modified.

We think it telling that in each of the Supreme Court's

principal corroboration cases, the Court resolved the corroboration question on its own without any mention at all of the

necessity of jury reconsideration. See Opper, 348 U.S. at 92-

94; Smith, 348 U.S. at 150-59; Calderon, 348 U.S. at 161-69.

The Court treated corroboration essentially as a duty imposed upon courts to ensure that the defendant is not convicted on the basis of an uncorroborated out-of-court-statement.4

If the Court thought the jury played a necessary supplemen-

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4 The court in Singleterry did note however that an otherwise

admissible out-of-court statement under Opper may be inadmissible

under Fed. R. Evid. 403 if its probative value is substantially

outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. See Singleterry, 29

F.3d at 738-39. We agree with the First Circuit that the district

court may have a "continuing duty to police the jury's consideration

of a confession's probative value," a duty that is discharged by the

court's own reconsideration of its corroboration decision or through

a cautionary instruction to the jury to treat even a corroborated

tary role in making the corroboration determination, the

Court certainly could not have affirmed the convictions based

solely on its own judgment that sufficient corroborative evidence existed, without first considering whether the jury had

been instructed to do the same. In this light, appellant's

observation that the Court described the rule as a "restriction

on the power of the jury to convict," Smith, 348 U.S. at 153, is

hardly persuasive. After all, the requirement for sufficient

evidence to convict is itself a limitation on the jury's power,

but no one thinks it follows from this that the jury must be

given an opportunity to reconsider for itself the judge's

decision on a motion for judgment of acquittal.

Although we think the Court's actual application of the rule

in the Opper trio is decisive, we note that none of the

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authorities cited above in support of jury reconsideration

attempt to justify that position. We agree with the First

Circuit that no persuasive justification exists. See Singleterry, 29 F.3d at 738; see also D'Aquino v. United States, 192

F.2d 338, 357 (9th Cir. 1951); State v. Weller, 644 A.2d 839,

841-42 (Vt. 1994); Watkins v. Commonwealth, 385 S.E.2d 50,

55 (Va. 1989); McCormick s 145, at 564. Indeed, the Supreme Court rejected a similar argument for jury reconsideration even where a constitutional right (the Fifth Amendment

right not to be convicted based on an involuntary confession)

was at stake, dispensing with the notion that juries are

somehow better suited than judges to make the determination. See Lego, 404 U.S. at 489-90. It follows a fortiori that

jury reconsideration is not required where the protection

stems from a judicially created evidentiary rule. We think it

also fairly obvious that one of the main purposes of the

corroboration rule, upon which appellant relies heavily in his

brief--protecting the defendant from a jury too credulous to

evaluate confessions objectively, see Smith, 348 U.S. at 153--

is ill-served, indeed disserved, by asking the jury to deter-

__________

out-of-court statement critically. Id. We emphasize, however, that

these kinds of supervisory decisions lie within the district court's

discretion. See United States v. Lee, 506 F.2d 111, 120 (D.C. Cir.

1974).

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mine for itself whether a confession is trustworthy enough to

consider. See Corey J. Ayling, Comment, Corroborating

Confessions: An Empirical Analysis of Legal Safeguards

Against False Confessions, 1984 Wis. L. Rev. 1121, 1140-41;

Developments in the Law--Confessions, 79 Harv. L. Rev. 938,

1081-82 (1966).5

None of this precludes the jury from independently assessing the weight it wishes to attribute to the out-of-court

statement. See Lego, 404 U.S. at 486 ("[J]uries [are] at

liberty to disregard confessions that are insufficiently corroborated or otherwise deemed unworthy of belief."); Singleterry, 29 F.3d at 739. The jury's role is not to reconsider the

judge's corroboration determination under Opper, but rather

to determine for itself whether an out-of-court statement,

though meeting Opper's requirement, is sufficiently trustworthy to convince the jury, in conjunction with any other

evidence, of the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

We think that the standard reasonable doubt instruction is

adequate to inform the jury of this role. See id.; D'Aquino,

192 F.2d at 357. In so holding, we follow the Court's

cautionary advice that "application [of the rule] should be

scrutinized lest the restrictions it imposes surpass the dangers which gave rise to them." Smith, 348 U.S. at 153.6

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5 The proposed corroboration instruction is quite different,

therefore, from the cautionary instruction sometimes required in

cases involving accomplice testimony. A defendant can be convicted solely on the basis of an uncorroborated accomplice's testimony.

Lee, 506 F.2d at 118. We have held that, in certain circumstances,

it may be error for a district court to decline to instruct the jury to

treat that kind of uncorroborated testimony with caution and to

scrutinize it with care. See id. Although there is a justifiable

worry that without such an instruction the jury will not consider the

possibility that the accomplice is trying to secure lenient treatment

through his testimony, see id. at 119, we do not ask the jury to

determine for itself whether it should be allowed to convict based on

that testimony.

6 It is true that in the voluntariness context, Congress now

requires the district court, after concluding that a confession is

voluntary, to "permit the jury to hear relevant evidence on the issue

* * * *

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district

court is affirmed.

So ordered.

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of voluntariness and [to] instruct the jury to give such weight to the

confession as the jury feels it deserves under all the circumstances."

18 U.S.C. s 3501(a) (1994); Lego, 404 U.S. at 486 n.14. And courts

have held that it can be reversible error for a district court not to

give such an instruction. See United States v. Bernett, 495 F.2d

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943, 962 (D.C. Cir. 1974); see also United States v. Iwegbu, 6 F.3d

272, 274 (5th Cir. 1993). We think the federal statute mandating an

instruction to the jury sufficiently distinguishes this situation from

the one at issue in this case. In any event, we note that such an

instruction is more akin to a credibility or cautionary instruction

than it is to the reconsideration instruction requested by appellant.

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