Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-96-03024/USCOURTS-caDC-96-03024-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Michael F. Davis
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Decided October 17, 1997

No. 96-3024

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

MICHAEL F. DAVIS,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 95cr00202-01)

Robert A. DeBerardinis, Jr. was on the briefs for appellant.

Eric H. Holder, Jr., U.S. Attorney at the time the brief was 

filed, and John R. Fisher, Thomas J. Tourish, Jr., Steven D. 

Mellin and Mary-Patrice Brown, Assistant U.S. Attorneys, 

were on the brief for appellee.

USCA Case #96-3024 Document #303367 Filed: 10/17/1997 Page 1 of 5
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

Before: SILBERMAN, ROGERS, and GARLAND, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GARLAND.

GARLAND, Circuit Judge: A U.S. Park Police officer stopped 

defendant Michael Davis as he was leaving Hains Point Park 

in Washington, D.C., in a car with a cracked windshield. 

After Davis made repeated movements toward the underside 

of the driver's seat, the officer ordered him to put his hands 

on the steering wheel. When Davis nonetheless continued to 

reach under the seat, the officer asked him to step out of the 

car. A search under the seat produced a bag containing more 

than 50 grams of crack cocaine, and Davis was charged with, 

and ultimately convicted of, possession with intent to distribute cocaine base.

Defendant's appellate counsel cites three alleged errors 

that his trial counsel apparently did not perceive. We do not 

see them either. Although trial counsel's failure to object 

would render these complaints subject to review only for 

plain error, see Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(b), the standard of review 

is not significant because we find the district court did not 

commit any error at all.

I

Defendant first objects to an out-of-court viewing of the 

car's cracked windshield, conducted by the district court in 

order to determine the validity of defendant's claim that no 

"reasonable [police] officer could have seen the crack in the 

windshield before he stopped defendant's car," United States 

v. Davis, 905 F. Supp. 16, 18 (D.D.C. 1995). Defendant does 

not attack the viewing itself, but rather questions its verisimilitude, claiming that the judge improperly viewed the car 

from 30 feet, rather than from 50 feet, the distance from 

which the police officer viewed Davis' car at the time of the 

stop. Defendant may well have waived this objection altogether, as not only did his counsel not object to the conditions 

of the viewing, but he arranged them, id. at 18; 11/9/95 Tr. at 

109, 134, 139-40. In any event, there is no merit to this 

objection, as the judge made clear that he understood the 

difference between the 30- and 50-foot viewing distances, and 

that he took it into account in drawing his conclusions, Davis,

905 F. Supp. at 18; 11/13/95 Tr. at 2. See United States v. 

USCA Case #96-3024 Document #303367 Filed: 10/17/1997 Page 2 of 5
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

Gaskell, 985 F.2d 1056, 1060 (11th Cir. 1993) (conditions of 

demonstration must afford a fair comparison, but need not be 

identical to those of the actual event).

II

Second, Defendant objects on Sixth Amendment grounds to 

the district court's refusal to permit cross-examination of the 

arresting Park Police officer as to whether he had filed job 

applications for drug-investigator positions. Defendant asserts that he was trying to prove the officer's biasi.e., that 

the officer wanted to make drug arrests in order to make his 

job applications more competitiveand that the refusal to 

permit such cross-examination violated his Sixth Amendment 

right to confront the witnesses against him.

The Sixth Amendment does not require a trial court to 

permit unlimited cross-examination by defense counsel, but 

does require the court to give a defendant a "realistic opportunity to ferret out a potential source of bias." United States 

v. Derr, 990 F.2d 1330, 1334 (D.C. Cir. 1993). See Delaware 

v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 678-80 (1986). The test for a 

violation is whether "[a] reasonable jury might have received 

a significantly different impression of [the witness'] credibility 

had [defense] counsel been permitted to pursue his proposed 

line of cross-examination." Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. at 680.

In this case, the court did not bar all inquiry concerning the 

officer's potential bias. To the contrary, it permitted considerable cross-examination attacking the officer's credibility in 

general, see, e.g., 11/14/95 P.M. Tr. at 53-68, as well as 

questioning apparently intended to support defense counsel's 

primary line of attack regarding bias: an allegation that the 

officer was biased because of a desire to improve his career 

standing by making numerous drug arrests, 11/14/95 P.M. Tr. 

at 67-68, 71; see also 11/14/95 A.M. Tr. at 16-17 (opening 

statement of defense theory). The court excluded only a 

secondary elaboration on this line of attackthat the officer's 

desire to improve his career standing included a further 

desire to improve his chances to change jobs.

We agree with the government's characterization of the 

truncated line of questioning as "only marginally relevant." 

We cannot conclude that with further questioning along this 

USCA Case #96-3024 Document #303367 Filed: 10/17/1997 Page 3 of 5
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

line, "[a] reasonable jury might have received a significantly 

different impression of [the witness'] credibility," Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. at 680. Indeed, we cannot determine whether 

such questioning would have left the jury with any impression at all, since defense counsel made no proffer, and there is 

no evidence in the record, to suggest that the officer ever 

filed such job applications. Cf. United States v. Martinez,

776 F.2d 1481, 1485-86 (10th Cir. 1985) (in light of defendant's failure to make a record of what he would have shown 

on cross-examination, the court has no way to determine 

whether there was an abuse of discretion). Accordingly, we 

cannot find that the district court committed constitutional 

error in limiting cross-examination.

III

Finally, defendant objects to what he characterizes as 

improper "lay opinion" testimony rendered at trial by his 

friend, Aristede Rivers. Rivers was leaving Hains Point in a 

separate car, ahead of the defendant, when he was pulled 

over by another officer for running a stop sign. On direct 

examination, Rivers admitted that when stopped, he falsely 

denied knowing the defendanteven though the officer had 

not told him that drugs had been found in Davis' car. Davis 

argues that this amounted to testimony that it was Rivers' 

"opinion" or "inference" that Davis had drugs in his car, in 

contravention of the limits on lay opinion testimony in Fed. R. 

Evid. 701.

Rule 701 imposes limits only upon lay testimony that is "in 

the form of " opinions or inferences. Defendant's characterization of his friend's testimony here as constituting his 

"opinion" or "inference" is unpersuasive. Rivers neither was 

asked for, nor gave, an opinion on the question whether his 

friend had drugs in the car. Nor did he testify as to any 

inference he might have made regarding Davis' possession of 

the drugs. Rivers merely conceded the fact that he had lied 

about not knowing Davis. Although Rule 701 imposes limits 

on a witness' testimony about his inferences, it does not 

restrain the jury itself from drawing them. It is conceivable 

that the jury could have inferred from Rivers' desire to put 

distance between Davis and himself that Rivers, who had 

been at the park with Davis and was leaving simultaneously, 

USCA Case #96-3024 Document #303367 Filed: 10/17/1997 Page 4 of 5
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

knew his friend had drugs in his car and did not want to be 

connected to them. This would be a weak inference, but not 

an illogical one, and Rule 701 does not bar the jury from 

making it.

Defendant's trial counsel not only did not object to Rivers' 

testimony, but he had Rivers retestify to it on crossexamination. Counsel apparently did this for the purpose of 

supporting the defense's own theory that it was Rivers, not 

defendant, who put the narcotics under the seat. 11/15/95 Tr. 

at 111-12. The elicitation by the defense of the very testimony now challenged, not merely to make the best of a bad 

situation but rather for its own affirmative purposes, is an 

independent reason for finding no error in the content of 

Rivers' testimony. Cf. United States v. Barela, 973 F.2d 852, 

855 (10th Cir. 1992) (defendant "cannot complain on appeal 

about evidence that he himself used in his defense"), cert. 

denied, 506 U.S. 1069 (1993).

As we find no merit in any of Davis' allegations of error, we 

affirm the judgment of conviction.

USCA Case #96-3024 Document #303367 Filed: 10/17/1997 Page 5 of 5