Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-00-03003/USCOURTS-caDC-00-03003-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
United States of America
Appellee
Gregory Williams
Appellant

Document Text:

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Submitted October 17, 2000 Decided December 8, 2000

No. 00-3003

United States of America,

Appellee

v.

Gregory Williams,

Appellant

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

District of Columbia

(99cr00033-01)

Billy L. Ponds was on the brief for appellant.

Wilma A. Lewis, U.S. Attorney, John R. Fisher, Adam L.

Rosman and Kenneth W. Cowgill, Assistant U.S. Attorneys,

were on the brief for appellee.

Before: Williams, Randolph, and Tatel, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge Randolph.

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Randolph, Circuit Judge: The issue is whether the perjury

of a prosecution expert witness, discovered after trial, entitled

Gregory L. Williams to a new trial. The jury convicted

Williams of possession with intent to distribute heroin, in

violation of 21 U.S.C. s 841(a)(1). When arrested, Williams

had 10.5 grams of heroin in 87 small plastic "baggies" in his

coat pocket, and was storing another 75.3 grams of heroin,

packaged in 638 small plastic "baggies," in an automobile.

One government expert, a forensic chemist, testified about

the tests he performed to establish that the material in the

"baggies" was heroin.

Another government witness, Detective Johnny St. Valentine-Brown, answered a question about his qualifications,

stating that he had been a narcotics expert for more than

twenty years and had served as a senior narcotics policy

analyst in the Reagan and Bush administrations. At the end

of his lengthy response, he added: "I am also a Boardcertified pharmacist. I receive, maintain compound and dispense narcotic, as well as non-narcotic substances per prescription." Without objection, the court accepted Brown as

an expert in the "distribution and use of narcotics, the

packaging of narcotics for street-level distribution, the manner in which narcotic dealers distribute narcotic substances in

the District of Columbia, the price for which narcotics are

sold, both the wholesale and the street value ... [and] ...

the Metropolitan Police Department and Drug Enforcement

Administration procedures for the safeguarding of narcotics

evidence." Brown went on to testify about the procedures

the Police Department used to store narcotic substances and

to give his opinion, in light of Williams' large collection of

small "baggies" of heroin, that "[h]eroin users don't buy this

amount of dope broken down and packaged like this for their

own personal use. It just does not happen."

After Williams' conviction, his attorney learned that Brown

was not a pharmacist and had no degree in pharmacology,

facts unknown to the prosecution during the trial. Williams

then moved for a new trial pursuant to Federal Rule of

Criminal Procedure 33, which the district court denied.

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What is the standard for ordering a new trial when the

newly discovered evidence is that perjury occurred? Rule 33

says only: "the court may grant a new trial ... if the

interests of justice so require." An ancient opinion from

another circuit lays down this test: a defendant is entitled to

a new trial if, without the perjured testimony, "the jury might

have reached a different conclusion." Larrison v. United

States, 24 F.2d 82, 87 (7th Cir. 1928). Notice that the

Larrison formulation focuses on the importance of the perjured testimony to the prosecution's case. It does not ask

whether the jury would have reached a different conclusion

had the perjury been revealed at trial, although the Seventh

Circuit has now modified the test to take this into account.

See United States v. Mazzanti, 925 F.2d 1026, 1030 & n.6 (7th

Cir. 1991). Notice too that Larrison puts the test in terms of

what "might" have happened rather than what likely would

have occurred.

Under our usual Rule 33 standard, a defendant is not

entitled to a retrial on the basis of newly discovered evidence

unless he can show that "a new trial would probably produce

an acquittal." United States v. Thompson, 188 F.2d 652, 653

(D.C. Cir. 1951) (emphasis added). This formulation, common

throughout the federal courts, has been used for nearly a

century and a half. See 3 Charles Alan Wright, Federal

Practice and Procedure s 557 (2d ed. 1982). We have

consistently followed the Thompson standard in evaluating

motions for a new trial under Rule 33. See United States v.

Gloster, 185 F.3d 910, 914 (D.C. Cir. 1999). The difference

between Larrison and Thompson is not just in the use of

"might" versus "probably." Thompson looks ahead and evaluates the outcome of a new trial; Larrison looks back and

evaluates the impact of the perjury on the jury in the original

trial.

This circuit has never adopted Larrison. In the past we

have managed to avoid choosing between it and the standard

of Thompson because the defendant was not entitled to a new

trial under either formulation. See United States v. Mangieri, 694 F.2d 1270, 1286 (D.C. Cir. 1982); United States v.

Mackin, 561 F.2d 958, 961 (D.C. Cir. 1977). Today we join

several other circuits in rejecting Larrison. See United

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States v. Sinclair, 109 F.3d 1527, 1532 (10th Cir. 1997);

United States v. Provost, 969 F.2d 617, 622 (8th Cir. 1992);

United States v. Krasny, 607 F.2d 840, 844-45 (9th Cir. 1979);

United States v. Stofsky, 527 F.2d 237, 246 (2d Cir. 1975). The

First Circuit in United States v. Huddleston, 194 F.3d 214,

219 (1st Cir. 1999), also refused to follow Larrison partly on

the basis of United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 103 (1976).

The Supreme Court there directed federal courts to overturn

convictions based on the government's knowing use of perjured testimony if there is "any reasonable likelihood that the

false testimony could have affected the judgment of the jury."

Id. From this the First Circuit reasoned: "If courts must

scrutinize the knowing use of perjured testimony under this

standard, there is no principled justification for treating the

government more harshly (such as by interposition of the

Larrison rule) when its use of perjured testimony is inadvertent." Huddleston, 194 F.3d at 220. We are not so sure.

The Agurs test, which repeats prior Supreme Court law, see

Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150, 154-55 (1972); Napue

v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264, 269-70 (1959), is quite easily satisfied. The phrases--"reasonable likelihood," "could have affected"--"mandate a virtual automatic reversal of a criminal

conviction." Stofsky, 527 F.2d at 243. It is hard to see how

Larrison could have set down an even more liberal test than

Agurs, which appears to be what the First Circuit supposed.

This is not to say that the Larrison test is difficult to

satisfy. It is not. The Second Circuit's Stofsky opinion put

the matter well: "the test, if literally applied, should require

reversal in cases of perjury with respect to even minor

matters, especially in light of the standard jury instruction

that upon finding that a witness had deliberately proffered

false testimony in part, the jury may disregard his entire

testimony." 527 F.2d at 245-46. That is reason enough to

reject Larrison.

If not Larrison, what should the standard be? One possibility is the standard laid down in Thompson for other types

of newly discovered evidence. This would mean that, when

perjury by a prosecution witness is discovered after trial and

when the prosecution did not know of the perjury until then,

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a defendant would be entitled to a new trial only if he can

establish that he would probably be acquitted on retrial.

History provides a reason for adhering to the Thompson

formulation. Rule 33's current text was adopted in 1944.

The accompanying Advisory Committee note stated that the

rule "substantially continues existing practice." Fed. R. Crim.

P. 33, advisory committee's note. The widely-accepted practice in 1944, a practice derived from a mid-19th century state

court decision, see 3 Wright, supra, s 557, at 315, 322,

required a defendant seeking a new trial to demonstrate a

likelihood of success in a future retrial. See Evans v. United

States, 122 F.2d 461, 468-69 (10th Cir. 1941); Wagner v.

United States, 118 F.2d 801, 802 (9th Cir. 1941); Prisament

v. United States, 96 F.2d 865, 866 (5th Cir. 1938); Johnson v.

United States, 32 F.2d 127, 130 (8th Cir. 1929). Larrison too

predated Rule 33, but it had not been adopted in any other

circuit, and in fact had been cited only twice in the other

courts of appeals, and then only for propositions having

nothing to do with this case. See Dale v. United States, 66

F.2d 666, 667 (7th Cir. 1933); Vause v. United States, 54 F.2d

517 (2d Cir. 1931).

Another reason for adhering to the Thompson standard is

that newly-discovered evidence of perjury is not distinguishable from other newly-discovered evidence. One author disagrees, arguing that perjury is different because it creates

"an error at trial" whereas in the case of other types of newly

discovered evidence, "the evidence at trial may have been

incomplete, but it was all true." Note, I Cannot Tell A Lie:

The Standard for New Trial in False Testimony Cases, 83

Mich. L. Rev. 1925, 1945 (1985). The difference is illusory.

Newly discovered evidence may often tend to prove that the

evidence before the jury was not "true." A third party may

confess to the crime; it may turn out that the main government witness has a string of felony convictions; proof positive

of the defendant's alibi might surface. Any one of these

items of newly discovered evidence, in various degrees,

throws doubt on the accuracy of the trial evidence pointing to

the defendant's guilt. Yet the district court, faced with Rule

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33 motions in such cases, will evaluate the motions by using

the Thompson test.

We recognize that the Second Circuit in Stofsky, while

refusing to follow Larrison, may have devised a variation of

it. Rather than asking whether the outcome of the trial

might have been different had the jury known of the witness's

lie, the Second Circuit asks whether the defendant probably

would have been acquitted. This differs from our Thompson

standard because, like Larrison, it looks at the matter retrospectively. The retrospective-prospective difference may not

matter in the mine run of cases. But we can imagine

situations in which it would matter, situations in which Stofsky would command a new trial that in all probability would

not produce a difference outcome. Because we can see no

good reason to treat newly-discovered evidence of perjury

differently than other types of newly-discovered evidence, we

reject Stofsy and adhere to our original formulation under

Thompson.

If Williams were retried, the government would have at its

disposal any number of experts who could testify that the

amount of heroin in his possession was inconsistent with

personal use. Or the government could decide not to call an

expert on this subject. Any rational juror could infer from

the fact that Williams was carrying 725 individual "baggies"

of heroin that he was intending to sell them. See United

States v. Askew, 88 F.3d 1065, 1070 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (jury

could infer from the quantity of drugs possessed that a

defendant intended to distribute them even without expert

witness). So too the fact that drugs were segregated into

"baggies" supports an inference of intent to distribute. See

United States v. Glenn, 64 F.3d 706, 711-12 (D.C. Cir. 1995)

(drugs segregated into 9 "baggies" supports inference of

intent to distribute). In either event--a different expert or

no expert--it is most unlikely that a jury would acquit

Williams in a new trial.

Affirmed.

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