Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-05-03050/USCOURTS-caDC-05-03050-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Rodney L. Moore
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued March 24, 2011 Decided July 29, 2011

No. 05-3050

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

RODNEY L. MOORE, ALSO KNOWN AS RASOO,

APPELLANT

Consolidated with 05-3051, 05-3052, 05-3053, 05-3054, 

05-3064

Appeals from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:00-cr-00157)

Stephen C. Leckar, appointed by the court, John Kenneth 

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

and Charles A. Murray argued the cause for appellants. With 

them on the briefs were A. J. Kramer, Federal Public 

Defender, and Deborah A. Persico, appointed by the court.

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Leslie Ann Gerardo, Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. 

Attorney’s Office, argued the cause for appellee. With her on 

the brief were Ronald Machen, Jr., U.S. Attorney, Roy W. 

McLeese III and Elizabeth Trosman, Assistant U.S. Attorneys, 

and Angela M. Miller, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney. 

Before: SENTELLE, Chief Judge, and ROGERS1 and 

KAVANAUGH,

2

Opinion for the Court filed PER CURIAM. 

Circuit Judges.

Opinion concurring in part in Part I filed by Circuit Judge

ROGERS.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. BATSON ..................................................................................5

 A. Batson Framework ..........................................................6

 B. Strike-by-Strike Analysis ................................................9

II. STUN BELTS .......................................................................14

III. ANONYMOUS JURY............................................................21

IV. PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT.........................................25

 A. Opening and Closing Arguments..................................25

 B. Overview Witness .........................................................33

 C. Cumulative Error...........................................................47

V. RULE 404(b) EVIDENCE .....................................................50

VI. BRADY ...............................................................................52

VII. STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS ...............................................55

VIII. JOINDER .........................................................................61

 1 Circuit Judge Rogers concurs in part in Part I, see infra

concurring opinion, and in part in Part V, see infra note 11.

2 Circuit Judge Kavanaugh does not join Parts IV.A.1 and 

IV.A.2.

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IX. CONFRONTATION CLAUSE ................................................62

X. JENCKS ACT .......................................................................73

XI. RELIGIOUS CONVERSION TESTIMONY...............................75

XII. TESTIMONY OF STEVE GRAHAM ......................................77

XIII. DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE ..........................................81

XIV. MULTIPLE CONSPIRACIES INSTRUCTIONS ......................81

XV. MOORE’S CONVICTION FOR CONTINUING CRIMINAL 

ENTERPRISE ............................................................................84

XVI. MERGER OF MOORE’S MURDER CONVICTIONS..............86

XVII. EXCLUSION OF ANTOINE WARD CONFESSION ..............87

XVIII. SMITH’S CONVICTION FOR MURDER OF ANTHONY DENT

................................................................................................91

XIX. SMITH’S INEFFECTIVE ASSISTANCE OF COUNSEL CLAIM

................................................................................................94

XX. CONSPIRACY WITHDRAWAL INSTRUCTION ...................103

XXI. AIDING AND ABETTING INSTRUCTION..........................105

XXII. SEVERANCE ................................................................113

XXIII. HANDY’S NEW TRIAL MOTIONS................................117

 A. Sufficiency of Evidence ..............................................119

 B. Brady ...........................................................................121

XXIV. CONCLUSION.............................................................127

PER CURIAM: Six defendants appeal from judgments of 

conviction in the district court on multiple charges, including 

drug conspiracy, RICO conspiracy, continuing criminal 

enterprise, murder, and other related charges in violation of 

federal and District of Columbia laws. They assert a wide 

variety of alleged errors covering, among other things, 

evidentiary issues, both as to admission and sufficiency; 

conduct of the trial; prosecutorial misconduct; and jury 

instructions. Upon review, we conclude that most of the 

asserted errors either were not erroneous or were harmless. 

As to one category of issue involving alleged violations of the 

Confrontation Clause of the Constitution, a Supreme Court 

decision intervening between the trial and our consideration 

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of the case compels us to remand convictions of some drug 

charges (Counts 126-138) for further consideration by the 

district court in light of the Supreme Court’s opinion. We 

also remand for further proceedings a claim of ineffective 

assistance of counsel raised by appellant Smith (Counts 4 and 

5). We vacate one murder conviction as to appellant Moore 

that, as the parties agree, merges with another conviction 

(Count 32).

* * *

According to the indictment in the district court and the 

evidence of the United States at trial, during the late 1980s 

and 1990s, appellants Rodney Moore, Kevin Gray, John 

Raynor, Calvin Smith, Timothy Handy, and Lionel Nunn, 

along with others, some of whom were also indicted but tried 

separately, conspired to conduct and did conduct an ongoing 

drug distribution business in Washington, D.C. In the course 

of conducting that business, various of the co-conspirators 

committed a wide-ranging course of violence including 31 

murders. The United States obtained a 158-count superseding 

indictment upon which the defendants were tried by a jury. 

After a trial lasting over ten months, the jury returned verdicts 

of guilty on several of the charges, including the drug 

conspiracy, 21 U.S.C. § 846, the RICO conspiracy, 18 U.S.C. 

§ 1962(d), continuing criminal enterprise (Moore and Gray), 

21 U.S.C. § 848(a)-(b), murder, D.C. Code § 22-2401, -3202; 

D.C. Code § 22-2101; 18 U.S.C § 1959(a)(1); 21 U.S.C. 

§ 848(e)(1)(A); 18 U.S.C. § 1512, assault with intent to 

murder (Moore and Gray), D.C. Code § 22-503, -3202, illegal 

use of a firearm (Moore, Gray, Raynor, Handy, and Nunn), 18 

U.S.C. § 924(c), distribution of cocaine base and heroin 

(Gray), 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), possession with intent to 

distribute heroin (Raynor), id., and tampering with a witness 

(Handy), 18 U.S.C. § 1512(b). The trial court entered 

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judgment imposing substantial criminal sentences generally 

amounting to terms in excess of life imprisonment from 

which the defendants now appeal.

Further details of the facts, evidence, and proceedings will 

be set forth as necessary for the discussion of the issues raised 

by appellants. 

I.3

The Constitution’s equal protection guarantee bars 

prosecutors from using peremptory challenges to strike 

prospective jurors on the basis of race. See Batson v. 

Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986). In this case, although 9 of the 

12 jurors were African-American, appellants argue that the 

prosecution unconstitutionally used its peremptory challenges 

to remove prospective jurors who were African-American. 

The district court rejected appellants’ challenge. We affirm 

the district court’s decision.

A Batson challenge proceeds in three steps: First, the 

defendant must establish “a prima facie case of discriminatory 

jury selection by the totality of the relevant facts about a 

prosecutor’s conduct during the defendant’s own trial.” 

Second, “the State [must] come forward with a neutral 

explanation for challenging jurors within an arguably targeted 

class.” Third, the “trial court then will have the duty to 

determine if the defendant has established purposeful 

discrimination.” Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. 231, 239 

(2005) (alterations and internal quotation marks omitted). In 

the district court, appellants argued that the prosecution’s use 

of 34 peremptory strikes to remove African-Americans from 

 3 Circuit Judge Rogers filed a separate opinion concurring in 

part in Part I.

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the venire for regular jurors established a prima facie case of 

discrimination. Accepting that the prima facie hurdle was 

cleared, the district court required the prosecution to explain 

each of its peremptory challenges of African-Americans. 

After the prosecution provided those explanations, the district 

court required further argument from both sides as part of 

Batson’s final stage. The court allowed the defense counsel 

to dispute the validity of each government explanation and 

required the prosecution to individually respond to the 

defense’s argument on each disputed strike. The court 

actively engaged in the entire process, consulting its notes and 

correcting and questioning counsel. At the conclusion of the 

multi-hour hearing, the district court ruled that appellants had 

not “established purposeful discrimination.” Miller-El, 545 

U.S. at 239; see also Purkett v. Elem, 514 U.S. 765, 768 

(1995) (“[T]he ultimate burden of persuasion regarding racial 

motivation rests with, and never shifts from, the opponent of 

the strike.”).

In this court, appellants dispute the district court’s 

conclusion that there was no Batson violation. 

A.

Appellants’ challenge to the district court’s Batson 

decision faces a demanding standard. “On appeal, a trial 

court’s ruling on the issue of discriminatory intent must be 

sustained unless it is clearly erroneous.” Snyder v. Louisiana, 

552 U.S. 472, 477 (2008). The Supreme Court has 

emphasized that the “trial court has a pivotal role in 

evaluating Batson claims.” Id. The Court has explained that 

the demeanor of the prosecutor exercising a challenged strike 

is often “the best evidence of discriminatory intent.” Id.

(alterations omitted). The district court, unlike this court, 

observed the prosecutor’s demeanor firsthand. Further, when 

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the asserted basis for a strike is a prospective juror’s behavior 

in court, the trial court will have observed and evaluated that 

juror’s demeanor as well. See id. For those reasons, the 

Supreme Court has stated that “in the absence of exceptional 

circumstances, we would defer to the trial court” in resolving 

a Batson claim. Id. (alterations omitted); see also Hernandez 

v. New York, 500 U.S. 352, 365-66 (1991) (plurality opinion).

Appellants argue that we should reject the district court’s 

findings because the court itself did not individually discuss 

each challenged strike on the record. Batson’s third step 

requires trial courts to closely analyze the prosecutor’s 

proffered reason for each disputed strike in light of all the 

relevant circumstances. See Miller-El, 545 U.S. at 241-42, 

251-52. The record here demonstrates that the district court 

appropriately exercised its Batson responsibilities. The 

district court required three rounds of argument on each strike 

of an African-American juror: a prosecution opening in which 

the government individually justified each strike; a defense 

response disputing those government explanations; and a 

prosecution reply to every defense argument. Throughout the 

hearing, the district court questioned counsel, reviewed its 

own notes, and corrected mistakes by counsel. The district 

court then concluded, based on the arguments and its personal 

observation of the prosecutors and of the prospective jurors’ 

demeanor, that the government’s race-neutral explanations 

were genuine. Appellants cite no controlling precedent 

requiring a trial court to render its decision in a strike-bystrike format. Given the obvious thoroughness of the district 

court’s application of Batson’s third step, we cannot conclude 

that the lack of strike-specific findings creates the sort of 

“exceptional circumstances” that would overcome our 

deference to the trial court. Snyder, 552 U.S. at 477.

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Moreover, the circumstances of this case seriously 

undermine appellants’ claim. Nine of the 12 jurors seated in 

this case were African-American. That jury composition 

mirrored the make-up of the venire, which contained 68 

African-Americans out of 90 persons in the pool from which 

regular jurors were selected. Thus, while the prosecution 

used many strikes to remove prospective African-American 

jurors, that is largely explained by the fact that the jury pool 

was predominately African-American. In addition, the 

prosecutor’s strikes did not skew the racial composition of the 

resulting jury. The circumstances here are a far cry from the 

facts of cases in which the Supreme Court has found a Batson 

violation. Cf. Snyder, 552 U.S. at 476 (all African-Americans 

in jury pool struck by prosecution); Miller-El, 545 U.S. at 

240-41 (10 of 11 African-Americans in jury pool after 

dismissals for cause or by agreement struck by prosecution); 

Batson, 476 U.S. at 100 (all African-Americans in jury pool 

struck by prosecution).

Finally, in this case there are no extrinsic indicators of 

racial discrimination of the kind found in successful Batson

challenges. For example, in Miller-El, a case in which the 

trial occurred before the 1986 Batson decision, the Court 

relied in part on the “widely known evidence of the general 

policy of the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office to 

exclude black venire members from juries.” Miller-El, 545 

U.S. at 253. In contrast, the Supreme Court has explained 

that cases where the stricken jurors are the same race as the 

majority of victims and prosecution witnesses are unlikely 

candidates for a finding of racial discrimination. See 

Hernandez, 500 U.S. at 369-70 (plurality opinion). The 

overall facts and circumstances of this case thus do not 

support appellants’ claim of intentional discrimination. See 

Snyder, 552 U.S. at 478 (“[I]n reviewing a ruling claimed to 

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be Batson error, all of the circumstances that bear upon the 

issue of racial animosity must be consulted.”).

B.

Although the circumstances of this case strongly suggest 

that the prosecution did not use its peremptory strikes to 

discriminate on the basis of race, those facts alone are not 

dispositive. The dismissal of even a single prospective juror 

on the basis of race violates equal protection principles. See 

Snyder, 552 U.S. at 478. We therefore review each of the 11 

strikes challenged by appellants. Cf. Bond v. Beard, 539 F.3d 

256, 270 (3d Cir. 2008) (finding overall circumstances 

suggest no Batson violation, but nonetheless conducting 

analysis of each strike to resolve Batson claim).

Of the 11 strikes challenged on appeal, appellants 

objected to the following seven strikes in the district court. 

We review the district court’s findings on those seven strikes 

for clear error. Snyder, 552 U.S. at 477. Because the district 

court empanelled an anonymous jury in this case, we identify 

each prospective juror using the numbers assigned by the 

district court.

2932: Among its concerns about this prospective juror, 

the prosecution noted 2932’s statement that long delays in 

bringing criminal cases to trial impaired witnesses’ memories. 

The prosecution worried that 2932 would be suspicious of the 

government’s case because this case involved long delay and 

the government was relying on witnesses’ memories of longpast events. Appellants do not rebut the plausibility of that 

specific, race-neutral objection or show that any other seated 

juror worried about the effect of delay on witnesses’ 

memories.

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3559: The prosecution explained that it struck 3559 on 

the basis of his youth. The government’s statement that it 

struck every juror age 22 or younger, regardless of race, 

remains unrebutted.

3872: The prosecution stated that it struck 3872 for 

appearing disrespectful in court. Appellants cite trial 

transcripts in an attempt to demonstrate that seated white 

jurors might have behaved just as inappropriately. This is an 

instance in which “[a]ppellate judges cannot on the basis of a 

cold record easily second-guess a trial judge’s decision.” Rice 

v. Collins, 546 U.S. 333, 343 (2006) (Breyer, J., concurring); 

see Snyder, 552 U.S. at 483. We cannot tell from the record 

whether there was anything inappropriate about those seated 

jurors’ demeanors. And contrary to appellants’ assertion, 

Snyder does not establish a rule that trial courts must make 

specific findings about demeanor. Cf. Thaler v. Haynes, 130 

S. Ct. 1171 (2010). Because appellants have not 

demonstrated any “exceptional circumstances” that require 

otherwise, we defer to the district court’s finding on an issue 

that is “peculiarly within a trial judge’s province.” Snyder, 

552 U.S. at 477.

4463: The prosecutor explained that 4463 appeared 

unstable in court and that “his voir dire indicated numerous 

answers that would make clear why the government opposes 

this juror.” May 7, 2002 PM Tr. at 75. A quick review of 

4463’s rambling statements, in which he detailed how his 

brother had been unfairly framed for distribution of crack 

cocaine, makes clear why a prosecutor would want to strike 

4463, regardless of race. Appellants’ citation to a seated 

white juror whose family also had drug problems is not 

comparable. That juror calmly related the long-past problems 

of his relatives, and expressly stated that his brother had been 

dealt with fairly.

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4730: The government claims to have struck 4730 in part 

because 4730 was suspicious of law enforcement and unsure 

that the death penalty should apply in Washington, D.C. 

Appellants question the strength of 4730’s views on this 

subject, but they point to no seated juror who expressed 

reservations about law enforcement similar to 4730’s concern 

about “rogue police officers,” and a “bad experience” with 

law enforcement that “[l]eft a bad taste.” Apr. 5, 2002 PM Tr. 

at 23-24. 4730’s views on law enforcement provided a raceneutral explanation for the prosecution’s decision to strike 

her.

5698: This prospective juror was a former special police 

officer whom the prosecutor claimed to have struck for being 

“quiet,” “submissive,” and possibly not “strong enough” to be 

an effective juror. May 7, 2002 PM Tr. at 42. To the extent 

we can discern demeanor from a written transcript, 5698’s 

colloquy with the district court suggests a passive, uncertain, 

and quiet person. And passivity can be a plausible, raceneutral reason to exclude a juror. See United States v. 

Changco, 1 F.3d 837, 840 (9th Cir. 1993). Appellants may be 

correct that former law enforcement officers are often 

desirable jurors from the prosecution’s perspective. But that 

does not bar the prosecution from dismissing any particular 

juror because the government believes her personality would 

make her a less than desirable juror from the prosecution’s 

perspective.

5773: The prosecution claimed to have struck 5773 due to 

5773’s concerns about imposing the death penalty. 

Appellants respond that seated white jurors appeared equally 

hostile to the death penalty. We disagree. As to the seated 

white juror whose views come closest to matching 5773’s, he 

repeatedly followed questions about his ability to impose the 

death penalty with notations such as “I would try to abide by 

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the Court’s instruction, not my personal belief.” By contrast, 

5773’s doubts about the death penalty were sufficiently 

salient that he used his questionnaire to indicate that he had 

concerns about his ability to be a fair juror. The prosecution 

thus had legitimate grounds to suspect that 5773 would be 

significantly more hesitant to impose the death penalty than 

the seated white juror.

In the district court the defense did not object to the 

prosecution’s strike of the following four prospective jurors. 

The district court’s rulings on these strikes are therefore 

reviewed only for plain error. See, e.g., United States v. 

Charlton, 600 F.3d 43, 50 (1st Cir. 2010).

866: The prosecution explained that it struck 866 because 

866 “had a relative who had been convicted of murder.” May 

7, 2002 PM Tr. at 35. The record shows that 866’s nephew, 

with whom she was personally close, murdered his wife and 

was then imprisoned, where 866 believes he was abused by 

his guards. Appellants’ attempts to minimize the potential 

effect of 866’s experiences with murder convictions and to 

draw comparisons to seated jurors who had relatives 

convicted of much less serious crimes are not convincing.

2486: The prosecution struck 2486 “based on things she 

said about her prior jury service . . . as well as other 

statements in her questionnaire.” May 7, 2002 PM Tr. at 39. 

2486’s questionnaire and the transcript of what she said 

during voir dire refer to her participation in an acquittal 

during her prior jury service, which she attributed to the 

prosecution’s lack of direct evidence. The record also 

demonstrates 2486’s reticence to impose the death penalty 

and suspicion of law enforcement competence. Appellants 

now contend that the prosecutor’s mere reference to 2486’s 

statements and questionnaire responses is too vague to qualify 

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as a credible, race-neutral explanation. But the prosecution 

had no reason to give a more detailed explanation, because 

appellants did not question this strike in the district court. 

Given that the record referenced by the prosecutor does in fact 

reflect an objective basis for the prosecutor’s proffered 

explanation, we cannot say that the district court plainly erred 

in finding no racial motivation for this strike.

3143: The prosecution claims that it struck 3143 because 

3143 demanded a higher standard of proof to impose the 

death penalty and was generally hostile to the death penalty. 

On appeal, appellants offer a lengthy comparison of 3143’s 

views to those of seated white jurors. The government 

attempts — with considerable success — to distinguish the 

seated jurors’ views from 3143’s, but the government also has 

a more telling point: It is difficult to say that the district court 

plainly erred in not noticing similarities between those seated 

jurors and 3143, given that none of the six defendants’ 

lawyers noticed those similarities during jury selection. We 

reject appellants’ challenge to the prosecution strike of 3143.

3505: The prosecution explained its strike of 3505 based 

on 3505’s statements in her questionnaire and during voir dire

that the death penalty is “never justified.” Appellants do not 

argue either that the prosecution’s explanation is false or that 

other seated jurors had the same views. Appellants argue 

only that 3505 also claimed to be able to set her personal 

views aside. That in no way implies that the prosecutor 

considered race in striking 3505. This challenge could not 

succeed under any standard of review, much less under plain 

error review.

In short, appellants have failed to sufficiently undermine 

the government’s race-neutral explanations for its peremptory 

strikes of prospective African-American jurors. Moreover, 

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the circumstances of this case strongly suggest that the 

prosecution did not discriminate on the basis of race. 

Especially given the deferential standard under which we 

review challenges to the district court’s decisions on this 

issue, we reject appellants’ Batson claims.

II.

A week before trial began, the government filed a motion 

requesting that the district court order appellants to wear stun 

belts during trial. Gray filed written opposition to the motion 

and, at a pretrial hearing five days later, all appellants 

opposed the motion orally. Feb. 27, 2002 PM Tr. at 36-52. 

The court granted the government’s motion, id. at 57, and 

issued a memorandum opinion in support of its order, see 

United States v. Gray, 254 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2002). 

Appellants contend that the district court violated their due 

process rights when it ordered them to wear stun belts at trial. 

The right to a fair trial is a fundamental liberty secured by 

the due process guarantee of the Fifth and Fourteenth 

Amendments. Estelle v. Williams, 425 U.S. 501, 503 (1976); 

In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 136 (1955). Invoking this fair 

trial right, the Supreme Court has stated that certain 

government practices during criminal trials prejudice 

defendants because they offend three “fundamental legal 

principles,” Deck v. Missouri, 544 U.S. 622, 630 (2005): (1) 

that “the criminal process presumes that the defendant is 

innocent until proved guilty,” id.; (2) that “the Constitution, in 

order to help the accused secure a meaningful defense, 

provides him with a right to counsel,” id. at 631; and (3) that 

“judges must seek to maintain a judicial process that is a 

dignified process,” id. When a government practice is 

prejudicial because it either inherently or in a particular 

defendant’s case offends these principles, the Court has 

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forbidden district courts from utilizing the practice unless it is 

justified by an essential state interest, such as courtroom 

security or escape prevention, specific to the defendant on 

trial. See, e.g., Deck, 544 U.S. 622; Holbrook v. Flynn, 475 

U.S. 560 (1986); Estelle, 425 U.S. 501. 

Accordingly, the Supreme Court has held it is inherently 

prejudicial to require a criminal defendant to wear jail garb 

during trial and therefore, because no state interest is ever 

served by the practice, it violates his fair trial right. See 

Estelle, 425 U.S. at 505, 512-13. Similarly, the Court has 

held that visibly restraining a criminal defendant during either 

a criminal trial or the penalty phase of a capital prosecution is 

inherently prejudicial and thus is permissible only when 

justified by an essential state interest specific to the defendant. 

See Deck, 544 U.S. at 629. In contrast, the Court has held that 

deployment of security personnel in a courtroom is not 

inherently prejudicial, and is thus permissible, regardless of 

the state interest served, as long as it is not actually prejudicial 

in a particular case. See Holbrook, 475 U.S. at 568-69, 572.

Applying these lessons to the case before us, if the use of 

stun belts to restrain criminal defendants at trial either is 

inherently prejudicial or in this case was actually prejudicial 

to the defendants, the district court had the obligation to 

determine whether the belts were justified by an essential 

governmental interest specific to the defendants on trial. 

Appellants, who argue that stun belts are inherently 

prejudicial, contend that the district court failed to meet this 

obligation for three reasons. First, they assert that the district 

court failed to make an individualized determination of 

whether a stun belt was needed to restrain each defendant. 

Second, they argue that the district court was required but 

refused to hold an evidentiary hearing to resolve factual 

disputes they raised concerning the visibility of, necessity for, 

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and alternatives to the stun belts. Finally, appellants maintain 

that the district court erroneously failed to consider how the 

stun belts would affect appellants’ right to communicate with 

counsel and assist in their own defense. On review, we hold 

that, even assuming that stun belts are inherently or were 

actually prejudicial, the district court did all that was required 

of it. 

In review of a district court’s authorization of an 

inherently or actually prejudicial governmental practice, we 

find error only when the district court has abused its 

discretion. See Deck, 544 U.S. at 629 (“[T]he Fifth and 

Fourteenth Amendments prohibit the use of physical restraints 

visible to the jury absent a trial court determination, in the 

exercise of its discretion, that they are justified by a state 

interest specific to a particular trial.”); United States v. 

Wardell, 591 F.3d 1279, 1293 (10th Cir. 2009); United States 

v. Durham, 287 F.3d 1297, 1304 (11th Cir. 2002). 

It is true, as appellants say, that prior to authorizing the 

use of an inherently or actually prejudicial government 

practice, the district court must consider each defendant 

before him and determine whether the practice serves an 

essential interest in the particular trial at hand. Deck, 544 

U.S. at 624, 633; Holbrook, 475 U.S. at 568-69. However, 

the district court did just this. In a memorandum opinion, the 

court carefully analyzed the following factors in its decision 

to require stun belts: 

1) the seriousness of the crimes charged and the severity 

of the potential sentences; 2) the numerous allegations of 

threats of violence made by the defendants against 

witnesses; 3) previous guilty pleas or convictions of a 

substantial number of the defendants to prior gun charges 

and/or violent crimes; 4) allegations of gang activity, and 

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the likelihood that associates or rivals of the alleged gang 

may be present at the trial; 5) the opinion of the U.S. 

Marshal for this District, particularly as it relates to 

knowledge of security in this courthouse and of cases of 

this nature; 6) potential prejudice to the defendants from 

the use of the stun belts; 7) likelihood of accidental 

activation of the stun belts; 8) potential danger to the 

defendants if the belts are activated; 9) the availability and 

viability of other means to ensure courtroom security; 10) 

the potential danger for the defendants and others present 

in the courtroom if other means are used to secure the 

courtroom; and 11) the existence of a clear written policy 

governing the activation of stun belts worn by defendants.

Gray, 254 F. Supp. 2d at 4. Finding that “[e]ach of the eleven 

factors” militated in favor of imposing stun belts, the district 

court concluded that the use of stun belts would “best 

preserve . . . the security of the courtroom.” Id. at 4-6. 

The district court’s memorandum opinion demonstrates 

that it considered the security concerns presented by the 

particular defendants at trial before making the determination 

that stun belts were appropriate. It thoroughly examined 

factors relevant to each defendant and, in the exercise of its 

broad discretion, made a determination based on those factors. 

That appellants shared many of the same characteristics (e.g., 

they were charged in the same conspiracy, they all faced 

either the death penalty or life sentences) does not mean the 

district court failed to consider them individually. And that 

the district court reached a result with which the defendants 

disagree does not mean it abused its discretion. 

We also reject appellants’ contention that the district court 

was obligated to hold an evidentiary hearing. When making 

the discretionary decision whether to authorize an inherently 

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or actually prejudicial government practice at trial, “[a] 

formal evidentiary hearing may not be required, but if the 

factual basis for the extraordinary security is controverted, the 

taking of evidence and finding of facts may be necessary.” 

United States v. Theriault, 531 F.2d 281, 285 (5th Cir. 1976); 

cf. United States v. Law, 528 F.3d 888, 903-04 (D.C. Cir. 

2008); United States v. Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3d 34, 101 

(D.C. Cir. 2001) (holding that district courts are not required 

to conduct evidentiary hearings prior to issuing relief in civil 

cases when “there are no disputed factual issues regarding the 

matter of relief”). Although the defense pointed out that due 

to the short notice of the hearing the evidence before the 

district court about how stun belts functioned was provided 

entirely by the government and there had “to be another side 

of the story with respect to the proffers that [the government 

has] made,” appellants did not allege any specific inaccuracy 

or misrepresentation. Feb. 27, 2002 PM Tr. at 44-46. While 

appellants disputed the government’s contention that other 

measures would be inadequate to secure the courtroom, id. at 

49, this dispute is, in essence, the ultimate question the district 

court must answer. See Durham, 287 F.3d at 1304 (“[A] 

decision to apply leg shackles to the defendant ‘must be 

subjected to close judicial scrutiny to determine if there was 

an essential state interest furthered by compelling a defendant 

to wear shackles and whether less restrictive, less prejudicial 

methods of restraint were considered or could have been 

employed.’” (quoting Elledge v. Dugger, 823 F.2d 1439, 1451 

(11th Cir. 1987) (per curiam))). Appellants must make a 

more specific factual challenge. 

The only specific factual matter relevant to the district 

court’s determination about which the government and 

appellants meaningfully disagreed was whether the stun belts 

would be visible. Feb. 27, 2002 PM Tr. at 38, 44, 56-57. 

However, in its memorandum opinion, the court accepted 

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19

appellants’ contention that there was some risk the stun belts 

would be visible. The court then specifically ordered 

precautions to reduce the visibility of the belts. The opinion 

states: “Although the Court does not believe that it is likely

that any juror will see the stun belts, the Court will take 

precautions to minimize prejudice to the defendants. The 

defendants will be brought into the courtroom before the jury 

is brought in, and will be escorted from the courtroom after 

the jury has left.” Gray, 254 F. Supp. 2d at 4. Under these 

circumstances, we hold that the district court acted within its 

discretion when it declined to hold an evidentiary hearing.

Turning to appellants’ claim that the district court erred by 

not considering the effect of stun belts on appellants’ ability 

to confer with their counsel and participate in their defense, 

we again find no error. As discussed above, whether wearing 

a stun belt affects a criminal defendant’s ability to confer with 

counsel and participate in his defense is one of the three 

questions relevant to the determination of whether, before 

authorizing such a restraint, a district court must first 

determine whether it is justified by an essential governmental 

interest specific to the defendant on trial. When the district 

court made the appropriate findings to determine that the use 

of stun belts was so justified in appellants’ case, the court 

implicitly assumed that the belts did risk negatively affecting 

appellants’ abilities in this way. It was not required to revisit 

this question in its substantive decisionmaking process. We 

also note that while appellants direct us to case law that warns 

abstractly of the potential harm of stun belts, see, e.g., 

Durham, 287 F.3d at 1305-06, they have offered us no 

evidence stun belts in any way affected their communication 

with their counsel or their participation in their defense. 

 Moore also repackages appellants’ arguments that the 

district court abused its discretion by authorizing stun belts 

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20

into an objection to the court’s refusal to grant his post-trial 

motion for a new trial. Before the district court Moore argued 

that he was entitled to a new trial because “a sufficient factual 

predicate did not exist” to justify the district court’s 

authorization of stun belts. Def. Moore’s Mot. for New Trial 

at 2 (June 8, 2003). He also maintained that a new trial was 

warranted because his stun belt was activated, outside the 

presence of the jury. On appeal, Moore argues that he was 

physically and psychologically injured by the activation of the 

stun belt and that these injuries interfered with his ability to 

communicate with his attorney and assist in his own defense. 

Moore’s stun belt was activated on November 12, 2002, 

while trial was ongoing but before trial had started on that 

day. Nov. 12, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 8. Defense counsel 

reported the incident to the court and asked the court to 

consider taking a break. Id. at 97. The court did so and, after 

reconvening, announced that it had asked a nurse to examine 

Moore and that the nurse had reported that Moore “fe[lt] that 

the use of the device was unjustified,” but that he was 

“physically . . . all right” and “was willing to go forward 

today.” Id. at 98. Moore’s counsel did not challenge these 

representations or otherwise object further. Id. 

We reject Moore’s claims. That Moore’s stun belt was 

activated does not undermine the district court’s reasoned 

decision, which we have upheld, to require him to wear a stun 

belt. Insofar as Moore now claims that the district court 

violated his constitutional rights not by requiring him to wear 

the belt but by continuing the trial after the belt’s activation, 

we again find no error. As noted, the district court acceded to 

the request for a break by Moore’s counsel, who never 

disputed the representation by the nurse, who had examined 

Moore, that Moore was ready to proceed with the trial.

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21

III.

Appellants contend that the district court erred in 

empaneling an anonymous jury insofar as the prospective 

jurors’ names, addresses, and places of employment were 

withheld. Our review is for abuse of discretion, despite 

appellants’ contention that the de novo standard applies 

because “constitutional principles are involved.” Appellants’ 

Br. at 73. The court rejected this view in United States v. 

Childress, 58 F.3d 693 (D.C. Cir. 1995), a case concerning (in 

part) whether “the use of anonymous juries violates the 

Constitution,” id. at 702 (emphasis added), because 

“[d]ecisions on . . . anonymity require a trial court to make a 

sensitive appraisal of the climate surrounding a trial and a 

prediction as to the potential security or publicity problems 

that may arise during the proceedings,” id.

In United States v. Edmond, 52 F.3d 1080 (D.C. Cir. 

1995), the court advised that “[i]n general, the [district] court 

should not order the empaneling of an anonymous jury 

without (a) concluding that there is a strong reason to believe 

the jury needs protection, and (b) taking reasonable 

precautions to minimize any prejudicial effects on the 

defendant and to ensure that his fundamental rights are 

protected.” Id. at 1090 (first alteration in original) (citation 

and quotation marks omitted). In determining whether such 

protection is warranted, the court has found its analysis aided 

by five factors identified by the Eleventh Circuit:

(1) the defendant’s involvement in organized crime, 

(2) the defendant’s participation in a group with the 

capacity to harm jurors, (3) the defendant’s past 

attempts to interfere with the judicial process, (4) the 

potential that, if convicted, the defendant will suffer a 

lengthy incarceration and substantial monetary 

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22

penalties, and (5) extensive publicity that could 

enhance the possibility that jurors’ names would 

become public and expose them to intimidation or 

harassment.

Id. at 1091 (quoting United States v. Ross, 33 F.3d 1507, 1520 

(11th Cir. 1994)). Finding that all five factors were satisfied 

here, the district court granted the government’s motion for an 

anonymous jury. As justification, the district court noted that 

appellants were charged in the superseding indictment with 

participating in a drug and RICO conspiracy that involved 

multiple acts of violence using firearms, in addition to 

threatening potential witnesses and preventing individuals 

from cooperating with law enforcement, and that if convicted 

appellants faced the maximum penalty of death or life 

imprisonment. Pointing to two Washington Post articles, the 

district court noted that this case had garnered media attention 

capable of increasing the potential danger to jurors. See 

United States v. Gray, No. 00-cr-157, at 12-13 (D.D.C. Feb. 

7, 2002) (resolving pretrial motions).

Appellants challenge the district court’s decision to 

empanel an anonymous jury on three grounds. None is 

persuasive. First, appellants maintain that the district court’s 

decision was unfounded because the superseding indictment 

did not allege any history of juror intimidation. This 

argument misunderstands and too narrowly construes the

requirements set forth in Edmond. As the court explained, 

“we do not believe such evidence [of jury tampering] is 

necessary in every case. Rather, we think the District Court 

. . . reasonably could have ascertained a threat to jurors from 

the charges in the indictment.” Edmond, 52 F.3d at 1091. 

Here, the particular allegations of “multiple acts of violence to 

prevent individuals from contacting law enforcement,” Gray, 

No. 00-cr-157, at 13 (Feb. 7, 2002), were sufficient, viewed in 

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context, for the district court to be concerned about 

appellants’ capacity to harm jurors and interfere with the 

judicial process. See Edmond, 52 F.3d at 1091-92. As 

support, the district court cited the factual findings set forth in 

its November 15, 2001 memorandum regarding appellants’ 

history of interfering with the judicial process, in resolving 

various discovery and evidentiary disclosure requests. See 

United States v. Gray, No. 00-cr-157, at 5-12 (D.D.C. Nov. 

15, 2001).

Second, appellants maintain that media interest in this 

criminal prosecution would not endanger jurors’ safety. The 

district court identified two Washington Post articles covering 

appellants’ case as a prosecution brought against “Murder, 

Inc.” Both articles appeared on the front page of the Metro 

section and described the number of alleged murders as 

historic and unprecedented. Such evidence of “initial media 

interest,” United States v. Wilson, 160 F.3d 732, 746 (D.C. 

Cir. 1998), in a high-profile prosecution of a major drug 

conspiracy involving multiple defendants over a substantial 

period of time and alleged purposeful and random acts of 

murder supports the district court’s decision.

Third, appellants suggest that the district court failed to 

take reasonable precautions to minimize any potential 

prejudice to them as a consequence of juror anonymity. In 

granting the motion for an anonymous jury, the district court 

advised that it would “use a questionnaire and extensive voir 

dire to examine the jurors’ backgrounds” and, in addition to 

instructing jurors that appellants were presumed innocent 

until proven guilty, “provide a neutral explanation to the 

jurors regarding their anonymity.” Gray, No. 00-cr-157, at 13 

(Feb. 7, 2002). These precautions were, in fact, taken. A 

combination of instructions downplaying the significance of 

jurors’ anonymity and a lengthy voir dire questionnaire can 

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24

adequately safeguard a defendant’s fundamental rights. See, 

e.g., Childress, 58 F.3d at 701-02; Edmond, 52 F.3d at 1092-

93. Here the neutral instruction, set forth in the jury 

questionnaire,4

Accordingly, we hold that the district court, having made 

the necessary findings under the Edmond factors, did not 

informed jurors that they would meet at 

specific locations to be escorted to and from the courthouse 

“for [their] convenience as well as to assure both the 

government and the defense that no one has attempted to 

contact, communicate, or influence the jury.” For voir dire, 

the 46-page jury questionnaire — at least double the length of 

the jury questionnaires that passed muster in Childress and 

Edmond — provided appellants with “a broad variety of 

personal information, including the quadrant of the city in 

which jurors resided, their educational history, marital status, 

military service, employment status and work description, 

their spouse’s and children’s employment, and their 

experience with crime, drugs, and law enforcement.” 

Edmond, 52 F.3d at 1092. This sufficed “to compensate for 

the information denied by juror anonymity” because “[i]t 

elicited information . . . far more extensive and detailed than 

the generalizations appellants might have drawn from jurors’ 

mere names and addresses.” Id. Appellants have pointed to 

no particular example of prejudice.

 4 Although appellants note in the “background” section of their 

brief that the district court’s instruction was not given orally or 

repeated during the trial, appellants do not pursue this issue in their 

argument section. We therefore have no occasion to consider 

whether a written instruction that is not orally repeated thereafter 

would alone be an adequate safeguard. See Am. Wildlands v. 

Kempthorne, 530 F.3d 991, 1001 (D.C. Cir. 2008); FED. R. APP. P.

28(a)(9).

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25

abuse its discretion in granting the government’s motion for

an anonymous jury.

IV.

Appellants raise numerous claims of prosecutorial 

misconduct, including inflaming the passions and prejudices 

of the jury, vouching for and bolstering the credibility of 

witnesses, soliciting testimony to that effect, denying 

appellants a presumption of innocence through elicitation of 

improper opinion testimony, and violating appellants’ Sixth 

Amendment right by introducing evidence that they 

associated with and often sought the advice of legal counsel.5

A.

 

We have reviewed these claims and limit our discussion to 

those having arguable merit, and concluded that even when 

appellants’ claims are viewed cumulatively, they fail to show 

a violation of their due process rights as would entitle them to 

a new trial.

6

Opening and Closing Arguments. Appellants contend that 

the prosecutor’s opening argument to the jury was improper 

and substantially prejudiced the trial proceedings by 

interfering with the jury’s ability to properly assess the 

evidence. Our review of allegedly improper prosecutorial 

arguments is for substantial prejudice where the defendants 

 5 Appellants also incorporate their arguments relating to Brady 

v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), and the federal bribery statute, 18 

U.S.C. § 201(c)(2), which are addressed in Parts VI and XII, 

respectively.

6 Circuit Judge Kavanaugh does not join Parts IV.A.1 and 

IV.A.2.

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26

lodged an objection, but we apply the plain error standard 

where they failed to object. See United States v. Small, 74 

F.3d 1276, 1281 (D.C. Cir. 1996); see also United States v. 

Catlett, 97 F.3d 565, 573 (D.C. Cir. 1996). When, as here, 

the alleged prosecutorial misconduct forms the basis for an 

unsuccessful motion for a mistrial, our review of the district 

court’s denial of that motion is for abuse of discretion. See 

Small, 74 F.3d at 1284. This court has identified three factors 

that guide the determination whether improper remarks in 

closing and opening statements prejudiced a defendant so as 

to warrant reversal, under either the substantial prejudice or 

plain error standard: “(1) the closeness of the case; (2) the 

centrality of the issue affected by the error; and (3) the steps 

taken to mitigate the error’s effects.” United States v. Becton, 

601 F.3d 588, 598 (D.C. Cir. 2010); see also United States v. 

Gartmon, 146 F.3d 1015, 1026 (D.C. Cir. 1998). In addition, 

this court will presume “that a jury acts with common sense 

and discrimination when confronted with an improper remark 

from a prosecutor and owes deference to the district court’s 

assessment of such a statement’s prejudicial impact on the 

jury.” United States v. Childress, 58 F.3d 693, 716 (D.C. Cir. 

1995) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).

The Supreme Court has described the federal prosecutor 

as occupying a position of public trust:

The United States Attorney is the representative not of 

an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a 

sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is 

as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and 

whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is 

not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be 

done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite 

sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which 

is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He 

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may prosecute with earnestness and vigor — indeed,

he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, 

he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his 

duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to 

produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every 

legitimate means to bring about a just one.

Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935); accord 

Taylor v. United States, 413 F.2d 1095 (D.C. Cir. 1969). It 

follows from this rigorous standard that, in making opening 

and closing arguments, a prosecutor has an obligation “to 

avoid making statements of fact to the jury not supported by 

proper evidence introduced during trial,” even when the 

misstatements are made in good faith. Gaither, 413 F.2d at 

1079. Equally well settled, “[a] prosecutor may not make 

comments designed to inflame the passions or prejudices of 

the jury.” United States v. Johnson, 231 F.3d 43, 47 (D.C. 

Cir. 2000); see Childress, 58 F.3d at 715. These general 

principles apply to, and inform the particular function of, the 

government’s opening and closing arguments in a criminal 

trial.

1. “The purpose of an opening statement is to provid[e] 

background on objective facts while avoiding prejudicial 

references,” and hence “[t]he prosecutor’s opening statement 

should be an objective summary of the evidence reasonably 

expected to be produced, and the prosecutor should not use 

the opening statement as an opportunity to poison the jury’s 

mind against the defendant or to recite items of highly 

questionable evidence.” United States v. Thomas, 114 F.3d 

228, 247 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (alterations in original) (citations 

and internal quotation marks omitted). So understood, 

prosecutorial misconduct exists where the government’s 

argument touches upon facts prejudicial to the defendant that 

the government fails to support by admissible evidence at 

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trial. See Small, 74 F.3d at 1283. On the other hand, a 

prosecutor’s reference in opening argument to the defendants 

as “two armed gunmen driving through the streets of D.C., 

armed to the teeth, dressed for action, carrying a load of 

dope,” although strong and vivid, was not prosecutorial 

misconduct because the statement was supported by ample 

evidence introduced at trial. United States v. Moore, 104 F.3d 

377, 390 (D.C. Cir. 1997). 

The prosecutor’s opening argument appears to have 

improperly departed from the standard in Berger and applied 

to opening arguments by this court. As in Small, 74 F.3d at 

1283, it appears “the prosecutor came close to the line . . . in 

several instances and crossed it in others.” For example, 

appellants were charged with committing 31 murders, and the 

prosecutor’s repeated use of the word “execute” at the start of 

the trial seems to run afoul of the concern expressed by the 

court in United States v. Jones, 482 F.2d 747, 753 (D.C. Cir. 

1973), in stating the court could “not condone” the 

prosecutor’s reference during closing argument to the 

defendant as an “executioner.” More generally, the opening 

argument includes a number of instances where the prosecutor 

went beyond merely providing an “objective summary of the 

evidence.” Thomas, 114 F.3d at 248 (citation and quotation 

marks omitted). Such statements referring to the murdered 

victims as “[w]here there once was face and life, now there is 

nothing but empty black space. . . . Where there once was life, 

now there’s death,” May 9, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 113, are 

neither based on evidence nor free from innuendo. Rather, 

they attempt to appeal to the jury’s emotions by dramatic 

effect. See Childress, 58 F.3d at 715. Although other 

statements listing the 31 murder victims by names and dates 

on which they were killed are grounded in admissible 

evidence that the government intended to introduce at trial, 

this evidentiary nexus became tenuous once the prosecutor 

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29

began discussing the victims’ first days of school, favorite 

songs, families, mothers, fathers, coffins, and funerals. Cf. 

United States v. Dominguez, 835 F.2d 694, 700 (7th Cir. 

1987). Indeed, the district court recognized that although the 

prosecutor’s opening argument “was fairly factually stated” it 

contained “some hyperbole,” May 9, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 

127, a disfavored technique, see United States v. North, 910 

F.2d 843, 895 (D.C. Cir. 1990); United States v. Bouck, 877 

F.2d 828, 831 (10th Cir. 1989); Dominguez, 835 F.2d at 701.7

 7 At the conclusion of the prosecutor’s opening statement, the 

district court sua sponte instructed the jury, as it had at the outset of

the trial, that

 

Although the government is not required to make its opening 

argument in a rote manner, the court has admonished that “an 

opening statement to the jury should be carefully phrased to 

avoid overstatement.” Thomas, 114 F.3d at 248. It is the 

government’s opportunity to present the jury with argument 

based “on objective facts while avoiding prejudicial 

references.” Id. at 247 (emphases added) (citation and 

quotation marks omitted).

the statements of the lawyers aren’t evidence. They’re 

intended to help you follow the evidence when the 

evidence is introduced. The defendants deny these charges, 

and you should keep an open mind until after you’ve heard 

all the evidence and I give you my final instructions on the 

law.

May 9, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 114 (paragraph break omitted). The 

district court then denied appellants’ oral motions for a mistrial. It 

explained that the jury instruction “takes care of any other 

problems” and that it “didn’t find the opening to be inflammatory in 

the sense that defense counsel saw it . . . but, rather, was fairly 

factually stated with some hyperbole.” Id. at 127.

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2. “The sole purpose of closing argument is to assist the 

jury in analyzing the evidence,” and hence courts have 

recognized that the prosecutor (as well as defense counsel) is 

afforded some leeway in “stat[ing] conclusions drawn from 

the evidence,” United States v. Bailey, 123 F.3d 1381, 1400 

(11th Cir. 1997) (citation and quotation marks omitted); see 

also Herring v. New York, 422 U.S. 853, 862 (1975); 6 

WAYNE R. LAFAVE ET AL., CRIMINAL PROCEDURE § 24.7(b) 

(3d ed. 2007). “[I]n closing argument counsel may not refer 

to, or rely upon, evidence unless the trial court has admitted 

it.” United States v. Maddox, 156 F.3d 1280, 1282 (D.C. Cir. 

1998); see also Small, 74 F.3d at 1280. But the prosecutor 

may, for instance, draw inferences from evidence that support 

the government’s theory of the case so long as the prosecutor 

does not intentionally misrepresent the evidence. See United 

States v. Deloach, 530 F.2d 990, 1000 (D.C. Cir. 1975). 

Indeed, the prosecutor “may strike hard blows,” but not “foul 

ones.” Berger, 295 U.S. at 88. Because the line between 

permissible and impermissible arguments will not always be 

clear, the inquiry is necessarily contextual. See Catlett, 97 

F.3d at 572; Deloach, 530 F.2d at 999-1000.

Some statements by the prosecutor during closing 

argument appear problematic. Illustrative is the prosecutor’s 

invitation for the jurors to “imagine Scott Downing,” one of 

the murder victims, in “the last few minutes of [his] life.” 

The prosecutor told the jury:

Scott Downing is bound with duct tape. It’s pitch 

black in the back of that U-haul. He does not know 

what’s going to happen to him. He must — he must 

wonder if he’s going to live through this night. . . . 

He’s taken out of that U-haul. He tries to talk but he 

can’t. All he can do is mumble. He feels the grass 

under his body. He feels the gravel of the road. . . . 

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31

And then a gun is placed to the back of his head and 

two bullets.

Nov. 21, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 112-13. On appeal, the 

government responds, in a footnote, that this narrative “had 

sympathetic overtones” only “[a]t a superficial level” because 

the jury heard evidence that Downing had been kidnapped, 

bound and gagged, and shot by the side of the road. 

Appellee’s Br. at 96 n.68. This response, however, misses the 

fundamental distinction between permissible and 

impermissible closing arguments. In summarizing evidence 

supporting conviction, a prosecutor may not take artistic 

license with the trial evidence, construct a more dramatic 

version of the events, provide conjecture about a victim’s 

state of mind, and then defend against a prosecutorial 

misconduct claim by maintaining the statements are “factbased.” Sensationalization, loosely drawn from facts 

presented during the trial, is still a “statement[] of fact to the 

jury not supported by proper evidence introduced during 

trial,” Gaither, 413 F.2d at 1079, clearly “designed to inflame 

the passions or prejudices of the jury,” Johnson, 231 F.3d at 

47. Although not as egregious as comparing appellants to 

Hitler, as occurred in North, 910 F.2d at 895, there are, as 

every prosecutor knows, limits to striking “hard blows,” 

Berger, 295 U.S. at 88. 

3. Nonetheless, assuming, as appellants contend, that 

prosecutorial misconduct occurred during the arguments to 

the jury, it did not substantially prejudice appellants. 

Although the specific arguments to which appellants object 

appeared at times to address central issues in the case, there 

was overwhelming evidence of appellants’ guilt of the crimes 

implicated by the prosecutor’s purported misconduct, and the 

district court gave general limiting instructions on the 

arguments of counsel to the jury at the beginning of the trial, 

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32

after the prosecutor’s opening argument, and during the final 

instructions to the jury before it began deliberating. See 

Thomas, 114 F.3d at 249; Gaither, 413 F.2d at 1079.

Appellants’ reliance on United States v. Moore, 375 F.3d 

259 (3d Cir. 2004), is misplaced. In that case the prosecutor’s 

closing argument compared the defendant to a 9/11 “terrorist” 

on the eve of the first anniversary of those events and 

referenced irrelevant evidence that the defendant was forcing 

children to sell drugs. Reversal of the convictions, however, 

was based on the fact that “[i]nadmissible evidence and 

highly inflammatory statements came rolling in unimpeded” 

throughout the trial in such a pervasive manner as to 

undermine the soundness of the jury verdict. Id. at 263-65. 

This court applies a similar standard to the prejudice inquiry: 

“[A]bsent ‘consistent and repeated misrepresentation’ to 

influence a jury, ‘[i]solated passages of a prosecutor’s 

argument, billed in advance to the jury as a matter of opinion 

not of evidence, do not reach the same proportions’” of severe 

misconduct; by contrast, “tainted closing arguments that 

follow on the heels of improper and indecorous prosecutorial 

conduct during trial are more likely to amount to the type of 

severe misconduct that justifies reversing a conviction.” 

North, 910 F.2d at 897 (second alteration in original) (quoting 

Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 646 (1974)). But 

unlike in the Third Circuit case, that standard is not met in the 

instant case.

Here, the severity of what appellants have identified on 

appeal as misconduct was limited to relatively small portions 

of lengthy opening and closing arguments. See United States 

v. Monaghan, 741 F.2d 1434, 1443 (D.C. Cir. 1984). As this 

court has observed on occasion, “the length of time between 

the prosecutor’s opening statement and jury deliberations” —

seven months in the instant case — “makes it unlikely that 

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33

specific allegations in the opening profoundly influenced 

those deliberations.” United States v. Williams-Davis, 90 

F.3d 490, 508 (D.C. Cir. 1996). Moreover, the district court 

repeated its general limiting instruction that the statements of 

counsel are not evidence at the outset of the trial and 

following the prosecutor’s opening argument, May 9, 2002 

PM Trial Tr. at 114, and again after closing arguments in 

giving final instructions to the jury, see Dec. 9, 2002 AM 

Trial Tr. at 72. This is usually a strong ameliorative 

consideration for prosecutorial misconduct during opening, 

see Thomas, 114 F.3d at 249, and closing argument, 

Childress, 58 F.3d at 716; North, 910 F.2d at 897; United 

States v. Hawkins, 595 F.2d 751, 754-55 (D.C. Cir. 1978). 

Although the type of general instruction given here is not a 

guarantee for the government as necessarily mitigating the 

prejudicial effects of prosecutorial misconduct in arguments, 

see North, 910 F.2d at 897 n.33, this is not a “particularly 

egregious case[]” that would require additional cautionary and 

limiting instructions, and the defense did not request them, 

Thomas, 114 F.3d at 249 (citation and quotation marks 

omitted). Under the circumstances, we conclude, assuming 

prosecutorial misconduct during opening and closing 

arguments to the jury, that the misconduct did not 

impermissibly and prejudicially interfere with the jury’s 

ability to assess the evidence.

B.

Overview Witness. More problematic is the government’s 

use of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) agent as an 

overview witness. FBI Agent Daniel Sparks testified as the 

first witness in the government’s case-in-chief. His testimony 

provided an overview of the government’s case, setting forth 

for the jury the script of the testimony and evidence the jury 

could expect the government to present in its case-in-chief. 

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Further, he expressed his opinion, based on his training and 

experience, about the nature of the investigation conducted in 

this case.

Appellants contend that the use of an overview witness as 

the government’s first witness improperly permitted the 

government, over defense objections, to elicit FBI Agent 

Sparks’s opinions about the charged crimes, the reasons for 

appellants’ actions in various circumstances, the nature of the 

charged conspiracy and the relationships between coconspirators, including the cooperating co-conspirators who 

testified as government witnesses, and the strength of the 

evidence — all before the government had presented any such 

evidence. Appellants suggest that FBI Agent Sparks’s 

testimony left the impression for the jury that it should accept 

that the co-conspirator cooperating witnesses would fully and 

truthfully recount the events and impressions that he outlined 

in his testimony. Hence, the question is whether such 

overview testimony is permissible, and even if permissible 

with respect to the FBI agent’s description of aspects of the 

pre-indictment investigation of which he had personal 

knowledge, whether the overview witness’s testimony here 

caused substantial prejudice to appellants. Our conclusions 

are not affected by whether appellants’ challenge is viewed as 

a question of prosecutorial misconduct, as appellants contend, 

or a claim of abuse of discretion by the district court in 

admitting inadmissible evidence, United States v. Watson, 409 

F.3d 458, 462 (D.C. Cir. 2005); United States v. Microsoft 

Corp., 253 F.3d 34, 101 (D.C. Cir. 2001).

Until recently this court had not addressed the 

appropriateness of a government overview witness at the 

outset of its case, but had identified the “obvious dangers 

posed by summarization of evidence” by a non-expert witness 

called by the government during its case-in-chief in United 

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35

States v. Lemire, 720 F.2d 1327, 1348 (D.C. Cir. 1983). The 

analysis in Lemire is instructive. In that case, the government 

called toward the end of its case-in-chief an FBI agent, who 

was also a certified public accountant, “to summarize the 

evidence about the complex cash flow through offshore 

companies” in a prosecution for wire fraud, interstate 

transportation of proceeds of fraud, and conspiracy. Id. at 

1346. The FBI agent “used four summary charts to reexamine th[e] evidence” already presented by the government 

“in a more organized fashion,” and “prefaced each piece of 

his testimony by identifying the document in evidence from 

which he obtained the information.” Id. Upon defense 

objection that the FBI agent was an improper witness under 

Federal Rule of Evidence 602,8

On appeal, this court held that the district court did not 

abuse its discretion in permitting the government to use a nonexpert summary witness because

the district court conducted a 

“full voir dire examination” before allowing the FBI agent to 

testify, “subject to limiting instructions that his testimony was 

explanatory and was not itself substantive evidence.” Id. at 

1346-47. 

neither Rule 602’s literal language nor its overriding 

purpose was violated. [The FBI agent] did not testify 

about any of the events underlying the trial: he only 

summarized evidence about cash flows that several 

 8 At the time, Rule 602 of the Federal Rules of Evidence 

provided, as relevant, that “‘[a] witness may not testify to a matter 

unless evidence is introduced sufficient to support a finding that he 

has personal knowledge of the matter.’” Lemire, 720 F.2d at 1347 

n.30 (quoting FED. R. EVID. 602). Subsequent amendments were

technical in nature. See FED. R. EVID. 602 advisory committee’s 

note.

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36

prior witnesses had already offered. As to that 

evidence, he testified from his personal knowledge of 

the transcripts and exhibits.

Id. at 1347. The court also noted that other courts had 

“permitted such summaries under Rule 1006, allowing for 

admission into evidence of summaries of documents too 

voluminous to be conveniently examined in court” even if the 

documents were already in evidence. Id.

9

 9 Rule 1006 of the Federal Rules of Evidence provides:

 That rule aside, the 

court observed that “[t]here is an established tradition that 

permits a summary of evidence to be put before the jury with 

proper limiting instructions.” Id. (citations and quotation

marks omitted). Nonetheless, this court concluded that the 

claim of unfair prejudice “raises more troubling concerns.” 

Id. at 1347-48. Initially the court noted that the non-expert 

summary evidence was cumulative and subject to challenge 

under Rule 403 as more unfairly prejudicial than probative. 

Id. at 1348. It also acknowledged that a non-expert summary 

witness “can help the jury organize and evaluate evidence 

which is factually complex and fragmentally revealed in the 

testimony of a multitude of witnesses throughout the trial.” 

Id. But the court pointed to three “obvious dangers posed by 

summarization of evidence.” Id.

The contents of voluminous writings, recordings, or 

photographs which cannot conveniently be examined in 

court may be presented in the form of a chart, summary, or 

calculation. The originals, or duplicates, shall be made 

available for examination or copying, or both, by other 

parties at reasonable time and place. The court may order 

that they be produced in court.

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37

First, the jury might treat the summary evidence as 

additional or corroborative evidence that unfairly strengthens 

the government’s case. The court was satisfied that for a 

summary witness there were adequate safeguards, including 

cross-examination and limiting instructions, that could be 

fashioned by the district court to prevent the jury from 

treating the summary evidence as substantive proof. The 

court emphasized that the defendant’s challenge to the 

personal knowledge of the summary witness was not an issue 

because the witness “had carefully reviewed the charts and 

ensured that they reflected information contained in 

documents already in evidence.” Id. at 1349 (emphasis 

added); see also United States v. Kayode, 254 F.3d 204, 212 

(D.C. Cir. 2001).

Second, summary witness testimony posed the risk 

that otherwise inadmissible evidence might be introduced. 

This concern was ameliorated, the court concluded, because 

“the judge, prosecutor and defense counsel all heard the 

evidence upon which [the witness] based his summary” and 

hence “he was unlikely to stray from that evidentiary base 

without quickly being stopped.” Lemire, 720 F.2d at 1349 

n.33. Indeed, the court noted, “at one point the witness 

inadvertently started to discuss material not in evidence, and 

the prosecutor prevented him from doing so.” Id. 

Third, a summary witness might permit the 

government to have an extra closing argument. The court 

noted, however, that the summary witness had made no 

“controversial inferences or pronounced judgment” and thus 

the district court had no need to interfere with the examination 

on this ground. See id. at 1349-50.

Other circuits to address the use of overview witnesses 

have reached uniformly negative conclusions in view of the 

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38

serious dangers of prejudice to a fair trial. The Court of 

Appeals for the First, Second, and Fifth Circuits have held 

that the use of overview testimony by the government is a 

“troubling development” for this very reason. United States 

v. Casas, 356 F.3d 104, 120 (1st Cir. 2004); see also United 

States v. Garcia, 413 F.3d 201 (2d Cir. 2005); United States v. 

Griffin, 324 F.3d 330 (5th Cir. 2003). As the First Circuit 

explained in describing the practice as “inherently 

problematic”:

[S]uch testimony raises the very real specter that the 

jury verdict could be influenced by statements of fact 

or credibility assessments in the overview but not in 

evidence. There is also the possibility that later 

testimony might be different than what the overview 

witness assumed; objections could be sustained or the 

witness could change his or her story. Overview 

testimony by government agents is especially 

problematic because juries may place greater weight 

on evidence perceived to have the imprimatur of the 

government.

Casas, 356 F.3d at 119-20 (internal citation omitted). 

Approaching the question from a different perspective, the 

Second Circuit prohibited overview witnesses from giving lay 

opinions about anticipated evidence without satisfying the 

three requirements of Federal Rule of Evidence 701 — that 

the witness’s testimony (1) be based on his personal 

perception, (2) be helpful to the jury, and (3) not be based on 

scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge. See 

Garcia, 413 F.3d at 211-17. As regards the second factor, the 

Second Circuit dismissed the notion that an overview witness 

aided the jury by framing how the government’s case-in-chief 

will unfold, observing that “[t]he law already provides an 

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39

adequate vehicle for the government to ‘help’ the jury gain an 

overview of anticipated evidence as well as a preview of its 

theory of each defendant’s culpability: the opening 

statement.” Id. at 214. To the extent the summary witness 

testified to the ultimate question of fact, the Second Circuit 

noted that “courts should be wary of opinion testimony whose 

‘sole function is to answer the same question that the trier of 

fact is to consider in its deliberations,’” id. at 210 (quoting 4 

WEINSTEIN’S FEDERAL EVIDENCE § 701.05 (2d ed. 2004), and 

citing FED. R. EVID. 704 advisory committee’s notes to 1972 

proposed rules), observing that it had previously held in two 

other cases that it was “error to allow law enforcement 

witnesses to express opinions as to [the] defendants’ 

culpability based on the totality of information gathered in the 

course of their investigations,” id. at 211 (citing United States 

v. Grinage, 390 F.3d 746, 749-51 (2d Cir. 2004); United 

States v. Dukagjini, 326 F.3d 45, 54 (2d Cir. 2003)). The 

court held that “the foundation requirements of Rule 701 do 

not permit a law enforcement agent to testify to an opinion . . . 

based [on investigative work] and formed if the agent’s 

reasoning process depended, in whole or in part, on his 

specialized training and experience.” Id. at 216.

This court recently observed that the First, Second, and 

Fifth Circuits “have viewed agents’ hearsay-laden or hearsaybased overview testimony at the onset of trial as a rather 

blatant prosecutorial attempt to circumvent hearsay rules.” 

United States v. Smith, 640 F.3d 358, 367 (D.C. Cir. 2011) 

(citations omitted). In Smith, the defendant was charged with 

drug and firearm offenses. An FBI agent testified at the start 

of the trial that Smith and a co-conspirator “were working 

together putting their money together and going to New York 

to buy heroin.” Id. at 366. On appeal, Smith contended that 

the overview testimony — the single sentence — was based 

on inadmissible hearsay and thus violated Federal Rules of 

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40

Evidence (“FRE”) 701 and 802. Assuming the same 

prohibition against inadmissible hearsay testimony by an 

overview witness applied as in the other circuits, the court 

concluded that the FBI agent’s objected-to single-sentence 

testimony was not based on otherwise inadmissible hearsay 

because the underlying statements were either admissions of a 

party-opponent or co-conspirator statements under FRE 

801(d)(2), see id. at 367-68, and if error, was harmless, see id.

at 368. The court reached the same ultimate conclusion with 

respect to the agent’s lay opinion testimony about the 

meaning of slang used by Smith and his co-conspirators 

during recorded conversations; although the lay opinion 

testimony was inadmissible under FRE 701 because it was 

based on specialized knowledge gained from working on 

other drug investigations, id. at 365 (citing United States v. 

Wilson, 605 F.3d. 985, 1026 (D.C. Cir. 2010)), the error was 

harmless because the agent would have qualified as an expert 

under FRE 702 and offered the same testimony, id. at 366.

The district court is ordinarily afforded broad discretion 

to determine the manner in which evidence will be received. 

See Huddleston v. United States, 485 U.S. 681, 690 (1988). 

But in Lemire, this court concluded that “the pervasiveness of 

the[] dangers [it had identified with summarization of 

evidence] requires that we review the use of a summary 

witness closely.” 720 F.2d at 1348. Indeed, it was only 

“under appropriate circumstances with appropriate 

instructions” that this court “in the past approved the use of 

summary witnesses . . . in jury trials.” Microsoft Corp., 253 

F.3d at 101. We accordingly review FBI Agent Sparks’s 

overview testimony closely, aware that there was no voir dire

before his testimony and a limiting instruction was given to 

the jury only after he completed his testimony, and then only 

with regard to opinions, not otherwise described, that he may 

have offered while testifying.

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41

All three dangers identified by this court in Lemire are 

evident from the record in this case: FBI Agent Sparks 

testified about evidence not yet presented while opining that 

the cooperating witnesses would present truthful evidence 

because they were insiders and were guilty themselves, 

strengthening the government’s yet-to-be presented case and 

offering inadmissible evidence while providing the 

government with a second opening argument. For example, 

upon being shown a map of the District of Columbia, FBI 

Agent Sparks confirmed that the 31 circles located on the map 

accurately reflected the locations of the 31 charged murders, 

and that murders clustered in certain locations occurred 

toward the beginning of the charged conspiracy. See May 15, 

2002 AM Trial Tr. at 68-69. But no such evidence was before 

the jury and FBI Agent Sparks did not purport to testify from 

personal knowledge of each murder. At other points, FBI 

Agent Sparks referred to witness testimony that was never 

presented to the jury during the course of the trial. In one 

exemplary circumstance, FBI Agent Sparks testified on 

redirect examination that co-conspirator Erskine Hartwell had

described his role in the conspiracy as supplying drugs and 

introducing Moore and Gray to Oscar Veal. See May 16, 

2002 AM Trial Tr. at 56. When asked by the district court 

whether this information was “based on what [Hartwell] told 

[him],” FBI Agent Sparks agreed, prompting the district court 

to state: “The jury is going to hear his testimony.” Id. at 57. 

Yet when asked only moments later by the prosecutor “if 

Erskine Hartwell will be a witness in this case or not,” FBI 

Agent Sparks replied that he “d[idn’t] know for sure if 

[Hartwell] will.” Id. at 59. From portions of the transcript 

submitted by the parties to this court, there is no indication 

that Hartwell testified at trial and hence “later testimony . . . 

differe[d] [from] what the overview witness assumed.” 

Casas, 356 F.3d at 119-20. The prosecutor thus 

impermissibly invited the jury to “rely upon the alleged facts 

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42

in the [overview] as if [those] facts had already been proved.” 

Griffin, 324 F.3d at 349 (alterations in original) (citation and 

internal quotation marks omitted).10

Likewise, FBI Agent Sparks impermissibly commented 

on the strength of the government’s yet-to-be introduced 

evidence, vouched for the credibility of witnesses the 

government intended to call at trial, and gave his personal 

opinion as to guilt or innocence. Weighing trial evidence and 

making “[d]eterminations of credibility are for the jury,” 

United States v. Boyd, 54 F.3d 868, 871 (D.C. Cir. 1995) 

(citation and quotation marks omitted); see also Jackson v. 

Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979), as is “draw[ing] the 

ultimate conclusion of guilt or innocence,” United States v. 

Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 514 (1995); see also Garcia, 413 F.3d 

at 210-11; United States v. Peterson, 483 F.2d 1222, 1238 

(D.C. Cir. 1973). FBI Agent Sparks’s testimony crossed the 

line in a number of instances. For example, he testified that it 

was important, in his view, to use cooperating witnesses in 

this case because it was “the only way” to gain “access to the 

inside information.” May 15, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 25. 

Acknowledging that cooperating witnesses were “themselves 

. . . criminals[,] unfortunately,” he further testified that the 

cooperating co-conspirator witnesses nonetheless

know what’s going on, they have the information, 

they’re the eyewitnesses, ear-witnesses, they hear 

what these guys are talking about after they commit a 

murder, they witness a murder, they know where the 

stash locations are for drugs. . . . [T]hey are present 

 10 Other co-conspirator cooperating witnesses testified to 

Hartwell’s role in the conspiracy. See, e.g., May 20, 2002 PM Trial 

Tr. at 139; Aug. 26, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 113-16.

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43

when drug deals are done. They have been with these 

people day in and day out, and you need that kind of 

testimony. That’s the only way to put these kind[s] of 

cases together.

Id. He also testified that the goal in a debriefing session was 

to “[g]et[] complete and truthful information” and that it was 

important to “try and verify” the information “[j]ust to make 

sure the person is truthful, that they are complete.” Id. at 15, 

16. On redirect examination, FBI Agent Sparks reinforced 

the notion that the cooperating witnesses were guilty of 

committing crimes in their capacity as the defendants’ coconspirators:

Q: You were asked a lot of questions on crossexamination about cooperating witnesses, and you 

continually referred to them as criminals.

A: Yes.

Q: Any doubt in your mind about that?

A: None whatsoever.

May 16, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 59.

All of this was opinion testimony that went far beyond 

“constructing the sequence of events in the investigation . . . 

to provide background information and to explain how and 

why the agents even came to be involved with [a] particular 

defendant.” United States v. Flores-de-Jesús, 569 F.3d 8, 19 

(1st Cir. 2009) (citations and internal quotation marks 

omitted). Instead, these statements suggested both directly 

and indirectly to the jury that an experienced and highly 

trained FBI agent had determined that the cooperating coUSCA Case #05-3050 Document #1321413 Filed: 07/29/2011 Page 43 of 140
44

conspirators who would testify at trial were to be treated as 

credible witnesses and that appellants were guilty of the 

charged crimes. The clear implication was that the 

government had selected only truthful co-conspirator 

witnesses for the pre-indictment investigation, from whom the 

jury would hear during the trial. 

In sum, FBI Agent Sparks’s testimony was improper in 

offering his non-expert opinions about the charged conspiracy 

and appellants, vouching for the reliability of the investigation 

and of the cooperating co-conspirator witnesses the 

government planned to have testify at trial, and discussing 

evidence that had yet to be introduced. Given the dearth of 

taped conversations and videotaped evidence — none as to 

Moore — and almost exclusive reliance on co-conspirator 

cooperators’ testimony, the government understandably might 

seek at the outset to enhance its case in the jury’s mind with 

the imprimatur of an FBI agent. But the prosecutor went too 

far in questioning, allowing FBI Agent Sparks to act as an 

expert witness with respect to gang investigations and to refer 

to evidence that would never be introduced at trial. The 

district court, in turn, failed to sustain appropriate defense 

objections to FBI Agent Sparks’s testimony that purported to 

offer opinion testimony and to confirm government evidence 

that had yet to be introduced. 

Because a witness presenting an overview of the 

government’s case-in-chief runs the serious risk of permitting 

the government to impermissibly “paint a picture of guilt 

before the evidence has been introduced,” Griffin, 324 F.3d at 

349, and may never be introduced, see Flores-de-Jesús, 569 

F.3d at 17, we join the circuits that have addressed the issue in 

condemning the practice. Casas, 356 F.3d at 119 (1st Cir.); 

Garcia, 413 F.3d at 214 (2d Cir.); Griffin, 324 F.3d at 349 

(5th Cir.). See generally 6 WEINSTEIN’S FEDERAL EVIDENCE

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§§ 1006.04[3], 1006.08[4]. The use of overview witnesses 

exacerbates the “obvious dangers” this court identified in 

Lemire in the use of non-expert summarization evidence. 

Overview testimony offers an opportunity to “poison the 

jury’s mind against the defendant or to recite items of highly 

questionable evidence.” Thomas, 114 F.3d at 248 (citation 

and internal quotation marks omitted). Avoidance of those 

dangers is largely beyond the ability of the district court, 

much less the defense, to prevent. As the record here 

demonstrates, a trained law enforcement officer is likely to go 

as far as the questions allow, presenting a picture for the jury 

of a solid prosecution case based on his opinion of the 

strength and credibility of the witnesses the government plans 

to call to testify at trial for reasons made persuasive in view of 

the officer’s training and experience. See, e.g., May 15, 2002 

AM Trial Tr. at 15-16 (prosecutor asking FBI Agent Sparks 

why truthful information is important). After-the-fact limiting 

instructions can, at best, mitigate prejudice, rather than 

invariably eliminate its effects completely. See United States 

v. Curley, 639 F.3d 50, 57 (2d Cir. 2011); Woodcock v. 

Amaral, 511 F.2d 985, 994 (1st Cir. 1974). The view of the 

government’s case has been implanted in the mind of the jury 

by an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who 

worked on the case — he should know! 

The government remains free to call as its first witness a 

law enforcement officer who is familiar with the preindictment investigation or was otherwise personally 

involved, where permissible under the Rules of Evidence and 

consistent with constitutional guarantees. See Old Chief v. 

United States, 519 U.S. 172, 186-88 (1997); United States v. 

Curtis, 481 F.3d 836, 838 (D.C. Cir. 2007). Such a witness 

may, for example, be able to provide relevant background 

information as to the investigation’s duration and scope or the 

methods of surveillance, based on personal knowledge. See 

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Flores-de-Jesús, 569 F.3d at 19. Put another way, a law 

enforcement officer may “describe a complicated government 

program in terms that do not address witness credibility,” but 

he may not offer “tendentious testimony.” Griffin, 324 F.3d 

at 349. Thus, FBI Agent Sparks could properly describe, 

based on his personal knowledge, how the gang investigation 

in this case was initiated, what law enforcement entities were 

involved, and what investigative techniques were used. See, 

e.g., May 13, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 50-51. What he could not 

do was present lay opinion testimony about investigative 

techniques in general and opine on what generally works and 

what does not, as illustrated by informants who pled guilty. 

Neither could he anticipate evidence that the government 

would hope to introduce at trial about the charged offenses or 

express an opinion, directly or indirectly, about the strength of 

that evidence or the credibility of any of the government’s 

potential witnesses, including the cooperating co-conspirators. 

Although the question is close, we conclude for the 

following reasons that the prejudice resulting from the 

admission of FBI Agent Sparks’s overview testimony, to the 

extent it was inappropriate, was ameliorated: (1) Each 

instance of FBI Agent Sparks’s improper testimony identified 

by appellants was later confirmed by admissible evidence at 

trial, see Appellee’s Br. at 105-07; supra note 10; see also 

Griffin, 324 F.3d at 350. (2) Appellants’ defense was limited 

to cross-examining testifying cooperating co-conspirators and 

other government witnesses (such as Margarita Simmons, an 

eyewitness to the murder of her son, Richard Simmons, see

infra Part XXIII.B), see Garcia-Morales, 382 F.3d at 18. (3) 

The district court instructed at the conclusion of FBI Agent 

Sparks’s testimony in the government’s case-in-chief that the 

jury was to disregard any opinion testimony he offered, see 

May 16, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 90. (4) There was 

overwhelming evidence of appellants’ guilt, see, e.g., infra 

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Parts VII, XVIII, XXIII.B. And as to some of his 

impermissible opinion testimony, FBI Agent Sparks might 

have qualified as an expert, see Smith, 640 F.3d at 366. 

Accordingly, the error did not “affect[] the outcome of the 

district court proceeding[],” United States v. Sumlin, 271 F.3d 

274, 281 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (citation and quotation marks 

omitted), and hence appellants are not entitled to reversal of 

their convictions because of improper overview testimony by 

FBI Agent Sparks.

The inauspicious beginning of the government’s case-inchief is easily avoided in the future. No less than the court, 

the Department of Justice recognizes the high standard set for 

the prosecution by the Supreme Court in Berger, 295 U.S. at 

88. Similarly, this court’s long-held view of the purpose of 

the opening statement to the jury, namely to allow the 

prosecutor the opportunity to provide the jury with an 

objective overview of the evidence that the government 

intends to introduce at trial, see Thomas, 114 F.3d at 247-48, 

has long afforded the prosecutor the opportunity to do that for 

which the prosecutor improperly used FBI Agent Sparks, see 

Garcia, 413 F.3d at 214. This court now having made clear 

the exacerbated “obvious dangers” of the overview witness 

testifying about evidence yet to be admitted before the jury 

affords all parties clear direction to avoid unnecessary risks 

— for the prosecutor of an overturned conviction, for the 

defense of an unfair trial, and for the district court of having 

to retry a case.

C.

Much for the reasons stated in the government’s brief, 

appellants’ litany of prosecutorial misconduct claims do not, 

in their cumulative effect, warrant reversal. In this regard, we 

have considered the probable aggregate effect of any 

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48

impermissible prosecutorial conduct that may have occurred 

on the jury’s ability to judge the evidence fairly. See United 

States v. Celis, 608 F.3d 818, 847 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (citing 

Egan v. United States, 287 F. 958, 971 (D.C. Cir. 1923)); see 

also Thomas, 114 F.3d at 246. In addressing only two of 

appellants’ claims of prosecutorial misconduct, we implicitly 

have indicated that any other prosecutorial misconduct that 

may have occurred was minor in itself and had no prejudicial 

effect in view of limiting instructions. For example, 

appellants maintain that the prosecutor impermissibly 

vouched for the credibility of the government’s witnesses, 

particularly co-conspirator cooperating witnesses, during 

closing rebuttal argument. Although statements such as 

“[t]hey’re telling the truth about their experiences,” Dec. 4, 

2002 AM Trial Tr. at 86, impermissibly express the personal 

opinion of the prosecutor, they were responses, based on 

evidence introduced at trial, to appellants’ attacks on the 

credibility of the government’s witnesses during closing 

argument. See United States v. Young, 470 U.S. 1, 17-19, 

(1985); United States v. Brown, 508 F.3d 1066, 1075-76 

(D.C. Cir. 2007); United States v. Robinson, 59 F.3d 1318, 

1323 (D.C. Cir. 1995). The prosecutor emphasized to the 

jurors, however, that it was their province to weigh the 

credibility of witnesses regardless of the arguments of 

counsel. See Dec. 4, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 69; cf. United 

States v. Nnanyererugo, 39 F.3d 1205, 1209 (D.C. Cir. 1994). 

Importantly, the district court instructed the jury that it alone 

determined “the weight, the effect and the value of the 

evidence and the credibility of the witnesses,” which evidence 

did not include counsels’ opening and closing arguments. See 

Dec. 9, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 70, 72; see also Childress, 58 

F.3d at 716; North, 910 F.2d at 897; United States v. Hawkins, 

595 F.2d 751, 754-55 (D.C. Cir. 1978).

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Other claims of prosecutorial misconduct, including 

appellants’ arguments relating to Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 

83 (1963), and the federal bribery statute, 18 U.S.C. 

§ 201(c)(2), see infra Parts VI and XII, are without merit. 

Similarly, appellants’ claim that the prosecutor, by eliciting 

testimony that appellants had sought the advice of a certain 

named attorney to defend against criminal charges not at issue 

in this case, inappropriately implied that appellants were 

guilty because they took steps to retain this counsel, thus 

penalizing appellants for exercising their constitutional right 

to counsel under the Sixth Amendment, is without merit. See 

United States ex rel. Macon v. Yeager, 476 F.2d 613 (3d Cir. 

1973). Although some testimony might impermissibly have 

revealed privileged attorney-client conversations, an argument 

appellants do not make, there was not a direct statement by 

the prosecutor, as in Yeager, that appellants retained counsel 

in the instant case because they were guilty. Cf. United States 

v. Liddy, 509 F.2d 428, 442-45 (D.C. Cir. 1974) (en banc). 

Rather, the evidence demonstrated that the attorney linked 

several members of the conspiracy, including Moore and 

Gray.

Having considered all of appellants’ claims of 

prosecutorial misconduct, we conclude, in light of the district 

court’s limiting instructions regarding statements of counsel 

and regarding particular arguments or evidence, and the 

overwhelming evidence of appellants’ guilt insofar as any 

prosecutorial misconduct is concerned, that the cumulative 

effect of any prosecutorial misconduct of which appellants 

complain did not affect the outcome of the trial, and therefore, 

was harmless. See Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 

776 (1946); see also Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24 

(1967).

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V.

At trial, the government introduced evidence about 

Moore’s role in an uncharged drug-trafficking conspiracy run 

by Rayful Edmond; Nunn’s role in an uncharged conspiracy 

with Phyllis Webster; the apprehension of Rodman Lee, who 

was not a charged co-conspirator, while he was with Gray, 

and the contemporaneous discovery in Lee’s car of cocaine 

and cocaine base, none of which the government claims 

pertained to the charged conspiracy; several uncharged 

murders and shootings; and Gray’s uncharged conduct as a 

juvenile and others’ perceptions of Gray as a leader while he 

was detained at the Oak Hill Juvenile Facility. Appellants 

argue that this evidence was irrelevant and highly prejudicial, 

admitted in violation of Rules 404(b) and 403 of the Federal 

Rules of Evidence. The cumulative effect of these evidentiary 

errors, appellants claim, deprived them of due process of law. 

Rule 404(b) declares inadmissible evidence of “other 

crimes, wrongs, or acts . . . to prove the character of a person 

in order to show action in conformity therewith.” FED. R.

EVID. 404(b). But not all evidence of uncharged crimes, 

wrongs, or acts is barred by this rule. When evidence of such 

acts is “intrinsic” to the charged crime, it is not evidence of 

“other” acts and is thus wholly unregulated by Rule 404(b). 

See United States v. Alexander, 331 F.3d 116, 124-27 (D.C. 

Cir. 2003); United States v. Bowie, 232 F.3d 923, 927-28 

(D.C. Cir. 2000); United States v. Badru, 97 F.3d 1471, 1473-

75 (D.C. Cir. 1996). “Intrinsic” evidence encompasses 

evidence that is either “of an act that is part of the charged 

offense” or is of “acts performed contemporaneously with the 

charged crime . . . if they facilitate the commission of the 

charged crime.” Bowie, 232 F.3d at 929. 

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Rule 403 provides that even evidence otherwise 

admissible “may be excluded if its probative value is 

substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, 

confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by 

considerations of undue delay, waste of time, or needless 

presentation of cumulative evidence.” FED. R. EVID. 403. 

Rule 403 requires the district court to engage in “on-the-spot 

balancing of probative value and prejudice” and to exclude 

even factually relevant evidence when it fails the balancing 

test. Sprint/United Mgmt. Co. v. Mendelsohn, 552 U.S. 379, 

384 (2008) (quoting 1 S. CHILDRESS & M. DAVIS, FEDERAL 

STANDARDS OF REVIEW § 4.02, at 4-16 (3d ed. 1999)) 

(internal quotation marks omitted).

Appellants claim that the district court should have barred 

the government from introducing the evidence of uncharged 

conduct in question because it was not “intrinsic” to the 

charged conduct and was therefore evidence of “other crimes, 

wrongs, or acts” barred by Rule 404(b). Appellants also 

contend that such evidence was erroneously admitted under 

Rule 403 because its risk of prejudice to the defendants 

substantially outweighed its probative value. Although 

appellants are likely correct that the district erred by 

permitting the government to introduce the evidence of 

uncharged conduct at issue, particularly of Moore’s role in the 

Rayful Edmond conspiracy, Nunn’s role in the Phyllis 

Webster conspiracy, and Gray’s unlawful conduct as a 

juvenile, we hold that any error was not reversible.11

 11 Circuit Judge Rogers would find error under Rule 404(b) as 

to the introduction of certain evidence, but nonetheless conclude the 

errors were harmless beyond a reasonable doubt for the reasons 

stated by the court. Exemplary is the testimony of Rayful Edmond, 

a notorious drug kingpin in the District of Columbia serving 

multiple life sentences in prison following his conviction. See 

United States v. Edmond, 52 F.3d 1080, 1083-84, 1087 (D.C. Cir. 

 Even 

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52

assuming constitutional error, we will not reverse a conviction 

if the error was “harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” 

Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24 (1967). In light of 

the amount and strength of the evidence the government 

presented of the charged crimes, we find that any potential 

error was harmless.

VI.

In 1996, Gray murdered Ricardo Bailey. Gray did so at 

the request of Rodman Lee. Gray and Lee were arrested 

while fleeing the scene of the murder, and a search of Lee’s 

van revealed approximately five kilograms of cocaine hidden 

in a secret compartment. Lee pled guilty to the ensuing drug 

charges. Documents related to that plea show that Lee was a 

major drug dealer, that Lee was senior to Gray in status as a 

 

1995). Edmond testified for two days at trial concerning a separate, 

violent conspiracy that predated the Moore and Gray conspiracy 

charged in the superseding indictment. The fact that Moore was 

involved in Edmond’s conspiracy was irrelevant to the charged 

conspiracy, as the trial transcript belies the government’s assertion

that the Edmond conspiracy was the genesis of, and template for, 

Moore’s drug-trafficking operation. Accordingly, Edmond’s 

testimony about Moore’s prior criminal activity can only be viewed 

as propensity evidence introduced to demonstrate Moore’s bad 

character, see United States v. Douglas, 482 F.3d 591, 596 (D.C. 

Cir. 2007), and to “complete [Moore’s] story” or “explain [his] 

circumstances,” a practice this court rejected in United States v. 

Bowie, 232 F.3d 923, 929 (D.C. Cir. 2000). The same is true of

evidence regarding Gray’s unlawful conduct as a juvenile, which 

evidence the government purported was designed to demonstrate 

the formation and scope of the charged conspiracy. The evidence 

went beyond the fact that Gray met members of the charged 

conspiracy while incarcerated in a facility for juvenile delinquents 

and served no purpose other than to show his bad character. See 

Douglas, 482 F.3d at 596.

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drug dealer, and that Lee was transporting most of the cocaine 

in his van to a distributor who was not implicated in the 

Moore and Gray conspiracy.

Appellants claim that the government’s failure to disclose 

the information in Lee’s plea documents to the defense 

violated the government’s obligations under Brady v. 

Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963).

“There are three components of a true Brady violation: 

The evidence at issue must be favorable to the accused, either 

because it is exculpatory, or because it is impeaching; that 

evidence must have been suppressed by the State, either 

willfully or inadvertently; and prejudice must have ensued.” 

Strickler v. Greene, 527 U.S. 263, 281-82 (1999). 

Appellants’ Brady claim fails because some of this 

information was not favorable to appellants, and because the 

government’s failure to disclose the remainder did not cause 

prejudice.

The evidence showing that Lee was a higher-level drug 

dealer than Gray would not have aided appellants. The 

government itself contended that Lee was “at a higher level in 

terms of drugs than Kevin Gray.” May 9, 2002 PM Trial Tr. 

at 69. According to the government, it was Lee’s status as a 

major cocaine supplier that motivated Gray to murder Bailey 

on Lee’s behalf.

With respect to the evidence that the drugs in Lee’s van 

were destined for someone outside the Moore and Gray 

conspiracy, appellants’ Brady claim fails because they cannot 

show prejudice. To show prejudice, appellants must 

demonstrate “a reasonable probability that, had the evidence 

been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding 

would have been different.” United States v. Pettiford, 627 

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54

F.3d 1223, 1227 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (quoting Strickler, 527 U.S. 

at 280). “The defendant bears the burden of showing a 

reasonable probability of a different outcome.” United States 

v. Johnson, 519 F.3d 478, 488 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (citing 

Strickler, 527 U.S. at 291).

The evidence that the drugs in Lee’s van were not 

destined for the Moore and Gray organization would have 

been of minimal value to the defense. In its opening 

statement, the government mentioned the drugs’ destination 

only in passing, during a lengthy description of Gray 

murdering Bailey. See May 9, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 71. The 

government made no other claims about those particular 

drugs’ intended recipient, and the drugs’ destination was not 

material to the government’s case. Rather, the drugs were 

significant simply because their presence corroborated the 

government’s claim that Lee was a major drug dealer for 

whom Gray would be willing to kill others.

Moreover, the evidence that Lee had distributors outside 

the Moore and Gray organization would not have materially 

aided appellants. The defense had already shown that 

members of the Moore and Gray conspiracy were also

involved in other drug rings. Corroboration of that fact would 

have had little importance, because the government did not 

deny that Lee, Gray, or others had illegal business not directly 

related to Moore and Gray’s conspiracy. Criminals may of 

course participate in more than one conspiracy. See, e.g., 

United States v. Marino, 277 F.3d 11, 25 (1st Cir. 2002); see 

also United States v. Childress, 58 F.3d 693, 711 n.3 (D.C. 

Cir. 1995) (“[T]he fact that certain conspirators engage in 

independent drug transactions does not on its own negate the 

existence of a single conspiracy.”). The fact that some 

appellants did so does not contradict the overwhelming 

evidence that Moore and Gray continued to collaborate on 

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crimes long after the defense claimed they had parted ways. 

See Pettiford, 627 F.3d at 1227 (“The court . . . has a 

responsibility to evaluate the impact of the undisclosed 

evidence not in isolation, but in light of the rest of the trial 

record.” (citation and quotation marks omitted)). 

The government did not violate Brady with respect to the 

Lee evidence.

VII.

In a superseding indictment filed on November 17, 2000, 

appellants and other indicted and unindicted co-conspirators 

were charged with participating in a drug and RICO 

conspiracy jointly led by Moore and Gray for over 12 years, 

from approximately 1988 through March 2000. Under the 

five-year statute of limitations applicable to these charges, see 

18 U.S.C. § 3282, the government had to prove that Moore 

and Gray’s joint leadership continued into the limitations 

period, beginning November 17, 1995.12

Appellants contend that there was insufficient evidence 

for the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Moore and 

See United States v. 

Seher, 562 F.3d 1344, 1364 (11th Cir. 2009). Applying wellsettled law that the court must accept the jury’s guilty verdict 

if “any rational trier of fact could have found the essential 

elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt,” we affirm 

the judgment of conviction on these charges. United States v. 

Dykes, 406 F.3d 717, 721 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (citation and 

quotation marks omitted).

 12 This is the latest relevant date by which the government had 

to prove the jointly-led conspiracy and continuing criminal 

enterprise existed as to any appellant. For ease of analysis we 

address the sufficiency of evidence as to this date for all appellants.

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Gray jointly led a unified conspiracy through November 17, 

1995. They maintain that the evidence showed there were 

multiple conspiracies — essentially that Moore and Gray split 

up their drug operations in the 1993-1994 time frame and 

thereafter operated separate conspiracies in different sectors 

of the city that came into contact with each other only 

casually. See generally United States v. Tarantino, 846 F.2d 

1384, 1391-93 (D.C. Cir. 1988). Rather than maintain that 

the government failed to prove the traditional elements for a 

single conspiracy — common goal, interdependence, and, to a 

lesser extent, overlap of participants, see id. at 1393 —

appellants identify the “crux of this issue” to be whether the 

government presented sufficient evidence that “Moore and 

Gray jointly led the charged conspiracies and [the continuing 

criminal enterprise] within the statute of limitations periods,” 

Reply Br. at 88, as charged.

As support for their position, appellants point to the 

evidence describing Moore’s relocation from the Southeast to 

Northeast quadrant of Washington, D.C., prior to November 

17, 1995, leaving Gray to operate separately in Southeast. An 

examination of this evidence shows that it falls short of 

undermining the jury’s verdict that Moore and Gray’s joint 

leadership of a single conspiracy continued after Moore’s 

move. For instance, appellants emphasize Raymond 

Sanders’s testimony that Moore “dropped out of Southeast” in 

1993 or 1994 and was not seen in Southeast thereafter. See 

May 20, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 126-27. The jury, however, 

could reasonably have credited other testimony that Moore 

continued to have dealings in Southeast. See United States v. 

Eppolito, 543 F.3d 25, 54 (2d Cir. 2008); see also Dykes, 406 

F.3d at 721. Moreover, “shifting emphases in the location of 

operations do[es] not necessarily require a finding of more 

than one conspiracy.” United States v. Jones, 482 F.3d 60, 72 

(2d Cir. 2006). As in United States v. Carson, we reject the 

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argument that multiple conspiracies can be shown through 

“attempts artificially to split one conspiracy into two based 

simply on geographic lines.” 455 F.3d 336, 376 (D.C. Cir. 

2006) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).

The central issue is whether Moore’s and Gray’s actions 

following Moore’s relocation to Northeast are inconsistent 

with the jury’s finding that they continued to jointly lead the 

charged conspiracy past November 17, 1995. On this point, 

appellants maintain that Moore’s relationship with Gray 

changed, as shown by evidence that, according to Sanders, 

after the move Moore supplied Gray with cocaine only “a few 

times.” May 20, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 138. This 

mischaracterizes Sanders’s testimony. On the previous page 

of the transcript of his testimony Sanders admits that he had 

no knowledge of who was regularly supplying cocaine to 

Gray, and that Gray told him of “a few times” that Moore had 

supplied cocaine. Id. at 137-38. This is not the same as 

evidence that Moore supplied Gray’s operations in Southeast 

only a few times. Further, Maurice Andrews testified that 

Moore was Gray’s primary supplier of large quantities of 

cocaine starting in 1995 and continuing at least into 1996. 

See July 9, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 54-56; see also Dykes, 406 

F.3d at 721. There was also evidence that Gray may have 

initially obtained cocaine from Ronald Alfred, and Frank 

Howard confirmed a separate conspiracy between himself, 

Alfred, and Rodman Lee, see July 17, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 

135. Such evidence is neither factually nor legally 

inconsistent with a finding that Moore and Gray continued to 

lead the charged conspiracy together. Here, much as in 

United States v. Maynard, 615 F.3d 544, 554 (D.C. Cir. 

2010), as regards “[t]he two purportedly separate conspiracies 

. . . , each comprises the core conspiracy charged.” And “the 

fact that certain conspirators engage in independent drug 

transactions does not on its own negate the existence of a 

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58

single conspiracy.” United States v. Childress, 58 F.3d 693, 

711 n.3 (D.C. Cir. 1995).

The government offered ample evidence of a jointly led 

conspiracy through November 17, 1995. This evidence 

extends to both the conspiracy’s geographic scope and its 

twin principal aims: to unlawfully distribute drugs and 

commit murders. See Superseding Indict. at 4-5. The key 

testimony as regards the drug operation in Northeast came 

from Andrews, who accompanied Gray on a daily basis in 

1996. July 9, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 88. Andrews testified that 

Gray “had a lot of guys over [in Northeast],” including 

Moore’s cousins, uncles, and brother. Id. at 82-84. Each of 

these family members participated in Gray’s Northeast drug 

business, which involved Moore as well. See id. at 85, 86. 

Indeed, Andrews testified that Moore was the person “in 

particular responsible for overseeing the drug operation in that 

area of 7th and H, Northeast.” Id. at 88. Moore and Gray’s 

joint stewardship in Northeast after November 17, 1995, is 

established most clearly by Andrews’s answers on the 

government’s direct examination:

Q: How often, when you were hanging out with Kevin 

Gray every day, Mr. Andrews, how often would you 

go over to Northeast, Washington?

A: Every day.

Q: And why would you go over to Northeast every day?

A: [Gray] had money over there to pick up and 

basically we’ll go to see [Moore] and then meet 

[Moore] and them.

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Q: And did that occur right on up through at least 1995 

and 1996 and into 1997?

A: Correct.

Id. at 88-89.

There was also sufficient evidence that Moore and Gray’s 

joint leadership of the conspiracy continued after November 

17, 1995, at a Southeast apartment complex located on Halley 

Terrace. Gray oversaw the drug operation in which Andrews, 

David Arnold, and Jermaine Vick participated. Although 

Arnold testified that “Moore never had any dealings with us 

down on Halley Terrace,” Aug. 22, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 16, 

Vick and Andrews testified that Moore supplied the Southeast 

operation with drugs. See Sept. 10, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 11 

(Vick); Oct. 16, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 56 (Andrews); see also 

Dykes, 406 F.3d at 721. Moreover, Andrews’s testimony 

makes clear that this relationship at Halley Terrace continued 

for six to eight months until a temporary two-month fallout 

between Moore and Gray around the time of the February 

1998 NBA All-Star Game in New York. See Oct. 16, 2002 

AM Trial Tr. at 56-60. Contrary to appellants’ contention that 

Moore’s actions hardly reflected that of a “leader,” 

Appellants’ Br. at 161, Vick recalled that Moore came to see 

Gray “[w]hen he need[ed] to see [Gray] or, you know, he 

need[ed] to deliver some important information or something 

like that, or he needed somebody to carry out a task.” Sept. 

10, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 12 (emphasis added). Likewise, 

Oscar Veal testified that he met Moore at Halley Terrace to 

discuss murders of targets in Northeast through 1997. See

Aug. 27, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 13. From this evidence, the 

jury could reasonably infer that Moore’s absence from time to 

time did not necessarily point toward a non-leadership role; 

instead it might suggest that Moore was a principal acting in a 

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supervisory role, while Gray coordinated the day-to-day 

operations.

Finally, the jury could have reasonably relied on evidence 

concerning Veal’s 1998 murder of Roy Cobb, a rival drug 

dealer, well into the statutory limitations period. As Veal 

recounts, Gray drove both of them from Southeast to meet 

Moore at a location in Northeast. Once there, and in the 

presence of other members of the conspiracy, Moore and 

Gray discussed killing Cobb. Having already devised a plan 

for the murder, Moore and Gray walked Veal to a specific 

location where it was known that Cobb would stop at an 

intersection, and instructed Veal on how to go about killing 

Cobb. Although Moore and Gray continued to refine and 

change the plan, Gray provided Veal with the gun used to 

murder Cobb and afterward Moore compensated Veal with 

cash and cocaine. See id. at 50-55, 90; see also Oct. 16, 2002

AM Trial Tr. at 108-11, 116-20.

In sum, the evidence on which appellants rely in 

attempting to demonstrate that Moore and Gray ceased to 

serve as joint leaders of the charged conspiracy in 1993 or 

1994 does not support the weight they place upon it, could 

reasonably have been rejected by the jury in light of other 

witnesses’ contrary testimony, or is irrelevant to the existence 

of joint leadership. Mindful that “‘the prosecution’s evidence 

is to be viewed in the light most favorable to the government, 

drawing no distinction between direct and circumstantial 

evidence, and giving full play to the right of the jury to 

determine credibility, weigh the evidence and draw justifiable 

inferences of fact,’” Dykes, 406 F.3d at 721 (quoting United 

States v. Foster, 783 F.2d 1087, 1088 (D.C. Cir. 1986)), we 

hold that sufficient evidence supported the jury’s finding that 

Moore and Gray jointly led the charged conspiracy within the 

limitations period.

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VIII.

Appellants argue that all charges under the District of 

Columbia Code were improperly joined to their federal 

indictment under Rule 8(b) of the Federal Rules of Criminal 

Procedure. Because joinder was improper, appellants 

maintain, the district court lacked jurisdiction to hear those 

charges under § 11-502(3) of the District of Columbia Code, 

which provides that “the United States District Court for the 

District of Columbia has jurisdiction of . . . [a]ny offense 

under any law applicable exclusively to the District of 

Columbia which offense is joined in the same information or 

indictment with any Federal offense.” 

We have interpreted the term “joined” in § 11-502(3) to 

mean “properly joined under [Federal Rule of Criminal 

Procedure] 8.” United States v. Jackson, 562 F.2d 789, 793 

(D.C. Cir. 1977). Under Rule 8(b), joinder of the local 

charges was proper here only if all the offenses charged were 

part of the same “series of acts or transactions.” See id. at 794 

(holding that “the propriety of joinder in cases where there are 

multiple defendants must be tested by Rule 8(b) alone and 

that Rule 8(a) has no application”); FED. R. CRIM. P. 8(b) 

(“The indictment or information may charge 2 or more 

defendants if they are alleged to have participated in the same 

act or transaction, or in the same series of acts or transactions, 

constituting an offense or offenses.”). Appellants’ contention 

is that the superseding indictment and the evidence adduced at 

trial demonstrate that the local charges were not properly 

joined under Rule 8(b), and that the district court therefore 

lacked jurisdiction. We disagree.

We have held that “a ‘series of acts or transactions’ is 

‘two or more acts or transactions connected together or 

constituting parts of a common scheme or plan.’” United 

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States v. Brown, 823 F.2d 591, 598, (D.C. Cir. 1987) (quoting 

United States v. Perry, 731 F.2d 985, 990 (D.C. Cir. 1984)). 

Construing the facts of the superseding indictment as true, as 

we must, United States v. Zicree, 605 F.2d 1381, 1387 (5th 

Cir. 1979); see United States v. Carson, 455 F.3d 336, 372-73

(D.C. Cir. 2006); United States v. Spriggs, 102 F.3d 1245, 

1255-56 (D.C. Cir. 1996), the local offenses charged were 

committed as acts in furtherance of the charged conspiracy 

and/or as predicate acts in the charged RICO conspiracy. All 

of the charged offenses, local and federal, were thus part of a 

common scheme or plan, which means that, for purposes of 

Rule 8(b), they were part of the same series of acts or 

transactions. See Carson, 455 F.3d at 373-74. Because we 

conclude that the superseding indictment establishes that 

joinder of the local offenses was proper, we hold the district 

court had jurisdiction under § 11-502(3). 

Even if the evidence adduced at trial had demonstrated 

that all of the offenses were not part of the same series of acts 

or transactions — a proposition we reject — this would not 

strip jurisdiction from the district court. If the indictment 

establishes proper joinder under Rule 8(b), trial evidence 

cannot render joinder impermissible and is thus irrelevant to 

our inquiry. Spriggs, 102 F.3d at 1255 (“Rule 8(b) can be 

satisfied . . . by the indictment alone . . . .”); Perry, 731 F.2d 

at 990 (explaining that “[q]uite obviously, the indictment 

might satisfy th[e] requirement” for Rule 8(b) joinder).

IX.

Appellants contend that the introduction into evidence of 

autopsy reports authored by the Office of the Chief Medical 

Examiner of the District of Columbia and reports of drug 

analyses performed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement 

Administration (“DEA”) violates the Confrontation Clause of 

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the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution because the reports’ 

authors were not available for cross-examination. Our review 

of the district court’s legal conclusions regarding the 

Confrontation Clause is de novo, United States v. Carson, 455 

F.3d 336, 362 (D.C. Cir. 2006), and subject to constitutional 

harmless error analysis pursuant to Chapman v. California, 

386 U.S. 18, 23-24 (1967), see United States v. Smith, 640 

F.3d 358, 364 (D.C. Cir. 2011); United States v. Wilson, 605 

F.3d 985, 1014 (D.C. Cir. 2010).

The landscape of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on 

the Confrontation Clause has changed since appellants’ trial 

concluded in 2003. The governing rule at the time, set forth 

in Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 65-66 (1980), was that outof-court statements admitted against a criminal defendant 

avoided the requirements of the Confrontation Clause if they 

came within traditional hearsay exceptions or were otherwise 

reliable. In 2004, however, the Supreme Court relied on the 

Confrontation Clause’s historical underpinnings to hold that 

“testimonial” out-of-court statements of a declarant not 

testifying at trial were inadmissible under the Confrontation 

Clause unless the declarant was unavailable and previously 

subject to cross-examination. Crawford v. Washington, 541 

U.S. 36, 53-54, 59 (2004). Statements qualifying as 

“testimonial” included “ex parte in-court testimony or its 

functional equivalent — that is, material such as affidavits, 

custodial examinations, prior testimony that the defendant 

was unable to cross-examine, or similar pretrial statements 

that declarants would reasonably expect to be used 

prosecutorially,” other “formalized” materials such as 

“affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions,” and 

“statements that were made under circumstances which would 

lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the 

statement would be available for use at a later trial.” Id. at 

51-52 (citations and quotation marks omitted). The Court 

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applied Crawford in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 129 S. 

Ct. 2527, 2531-32 (2009), to hold that the state’s use of a 

forensic laboratory report to prove that seized cocaine was of 

a certain quality and quantity violated the Confrontation 

Clause because no live witness competent to testify to the 

truth of the statements made in the report was available for 

cross-examination.

The Supreme Court’s most recent decision on the 

Confrontation Clause is Bullcoming v. New Mexico, No. 09-

10876 (U.S. June 23, 2011). After failing field sobriety tests 

and refusing a breath test, Bullcoming was arrested and 

required to give a blood sample for the purpose of 

determining his blood-alcohol concentration (“BAC”). 

Bullcoming’s blood sample was sent to the New Mexico 

Department of Health, Scientific Laboratory Division, where 

a forensic analyst signed a “certificate of analyst,” part of a 

standard form titled “Report of Blood Alcohol Analysis,” 

recording Bullcoming’s BAC as 0.21 grams per hundred 

milliliters. New Mexico charged Bullcoming with aggravated 

driving under the influence of intoxicating liquor, which 

requires proof of a BAC of 0.16 grams per hundred milliliters. 

At trial the prosecutor introduced the report and certificate of 

analyst into evidence as a business record. The forensic 

analyst who authored the report did not testify at trial and was 

not otherwise subject to cross-examination by Bullcoming. 

Instead, the prosecutor called as a witness a scientist from the 

same laboratory who had not signed the Report of Blood 

Alcohol Analysis, and neither participated in nor observed the 

test on Bullcoming’s blood sample. The testifying scientist 

was, however, familiar with blood-alcohol analysis and the 

laboratory’s testing protocols. Bullcoming, slip op. at 1-5. 

Defense counsel objected on Confrontation Clause grounds, 

and noted that “her opening, indeed, her entire defense ‘may 

very well have been dramatically different’” had the 

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prosecution disclosed prior to the day of the trial that it would 

not be calling the certifying analyst as a witness. Id. at 5-6 

(citation omitted).

The Supreme Court held that the Report of Blood Alcohol 

Analysis was “testimonial” and therefore within the ambit of 

the Confrontation Clause, a resulted dictated by MelendezDiaz. Id. at 14-16. It further clarified that the “surrogate 

testimony” of the substitute witness “does not meet the 

constitutional requirement [of cross-examination]. The 

accused’s right is to be confronted with the analyst who made 

the certification, unless that analyst is unavailable at trial, and 

the accused had an opportunity, pretrial, to cross-examine that 

particular [analyst].” Id. at 2. Three aspects of the Court’s 

reasoning are noteworthy here: First, the Court framed the 

question presented as whether “the Confrontation Clause 

permit[s] the prosecution to introduce a forensic laboratory 

report containing a testimonial certification . . . through the 

in-court testimony of an analyst who did not sign the 

certification or personally perform or observe the 

performance of the test reported in the certification.” Id. at 7-

8; see also id. at 5-6 (Sotomayor, J., concurring in part). 

Second, the Court rejected the argument that Bullcoming’s 

“true accuser” was the gas chromatagraph machine that 

generated the BAC figure and that the analyst’s role was that 

of a “mere scrivener.” Id. at 10 (majority opinion). Third, the 

Court explained that a surrogate witness knowledgeable as to 

the equipment and protocol used in administering the test was 

ill-equipped to “convey what [the certifying analyst] knew or 

observed about the events his certification concerned, i.e., the 

particular test and testing process he employed. Nor could 

such surrogate testimony expose any lapses or lies on the 

certifying analyst’s part.” Id. at 12.

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The facts of the instant case resemble in part those of 

Bullcoming. The government called as witnesses Dr. 

Jonathan Arden, then-Chief D.C. Medical Examiner, and 

Jerry Walker, a DEA senior forensic chemist. Dr. Arden 

testified as to the contents of approximately 30 autopsy 

reports authored by other medical examiners in his office, but, 

as in Bullcoming, insofar as the record provided by the parties 

shows, he neither performed nor observed the autopsies and 

his signature does not appear on any of the reports.13

This case differs from Bullcoming in three relevant 

respects. First, because Walker testified that he authored four 

DEA reports, see Oct. 23, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 68, and he 

was available for cross-examination at trial, these four DEA 

reports present no Confrontation Clause problem under 

Bullcoming.

 

Similarly, Walker’s testimony concerned 24 drug analyses, 20 

of which were performed by other DEA forensic chemists on 

drugs seized in the course of the investigation of the charged 

conspiracy, the results of which were memorialized in DEA 

reports. The autopsy and DEA reports were admitted into 

evidence over appellants’ objection that “there is no way to . . 

. confront under the Sixth Amendment” unless the 

government calls the reports’ authors as witnesses. Oct. 23, 

2002 PM Trial Tr. at 90.

14

 13 The autopsy report of Jaime Pereira, performed by a medical 

examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia, was admitted into 

evidence pursuant to stipulation, and thus raises no Confrontation 

Clause issue. See Bullcoming, slip op. at 1.

 The other 20 DEA reports, however, remain at 

issue.

14 Of the four Walker-authored DEA reports, only the DEA 

report dated May 15, 2000, relating to the March 20, 2000 seizure 

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Second, Walker personally reviewed, but did not author, 

one DEA report shortly after its creation, testifying that “[he] 

look[ed] at what the results [were] . . . and ma[d]e sure that 

[the analyst] used proper scientific-based knowledge to come 

up with [the] results.” Id. at 80. Although the analysis in 

Bullcoming indicates that the degree of participation by the 

surrogate witness can alter the Confrontation Clause analysis, 

see Bullcoming, slip op. at 12; id. at 5-6 (Sotomayor, J., 

concurring in part), Walker’s role appears to be much like that 

of the surrogate witness in Bullcoming because he was unable 

to “convey what [the authoring forensic chemist] knew or 

observed about the events his certification concerned, i.e., the 

particular test and testing process he employed,” or “expose 

any lapses or lies on the [authoring forensic chemist’s] part,” 

id. at 12 (majority opinion). Walker did not observe the test 

being performed and did not sign the DEA report as the 

approving official. Rather, Walker testified that, in 

performing his review, he was “making an assumption that 

the chemist used the sample and did the analysis. . . . I’m 

making the assumption that they did do each of the tests that 

they wrote down on their worksheet.” Oct. 23, 2002 PM Trial 

Tr. at 81. In holding there was constitutional error in 

Bullcoming, the Supreme Court relied on a similar statement 

by the testifying surrogate witness: “you don’t know unless 

you actually observe the analysis that someone else conducts, 

whether they followed th[e] protocol in every instance.” 

Bullcoming, slip op. at 12 n.8 (alteration in original) (citation 

and quotation marks omitted). 

Third, Dr. Arden testified as the Chief D.C. Medical 

Examiner, and prior to trial he may well have had either a 

 

of drugs from Nunn, appears to have been made a part of the multivolume record on appeal provided by the parties.

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“supervisor[y]” role with regard to the reports from his Office 

or even “a personal, albeit limited, connection to the 

[autopsies] at issue.” Id. at 5 (Sotomayor, J., concurring in 

part). Whether such reports would be inadmissible under the 

Confrontation Clause despite his testimony is a question left 

open in Bullcoming, where the Court was confronted only 

with a testifying lab technician who had “no involvement 

whatsoever in the relevant test and report.” Id. at 6. 

The government’s attempts to avoid the Confrontation 

Clause, on the grounds that the autopsy reports rank as nontestimonial and that the DEA reports contain “raw data,” 

rather than “statements,” Appellee’s Br. at 185-87, 189, are 

foreclosed by Bullcoming.

15

 15 The government suggests that Dr. Arden’s and Walker’s 

testimony was permissible as expert testimony pursuant to Federal 

Rule of Evidence 703. Appellee’s Br. at 187, 189. The authority 

on which the government relies is distinguishable because the 

forensic reports in those cases were not introduced into evidence at 

trial. See, e.g., United States v. Pablo, 625 F.3d 1285, 1294 (10th 

Cir. 2010); United States v. Turner, 591 F.3d 928, 932-33 (7th Cir. 

2010). It could well be a different case where an expert witness 

discussed out-of-court testimonial statements that “were not 

themselves admitted as evidence.” Bullcoming, slip op. at 6 

(Sotomayor, J., concurring in part); see also People v. Williams, 

939 N.E.2d 268 (Ill. 2010), cert. granted, No. 10-8505 (U.S. June 

28, 2011). Any expert testimony by Dr. Arden and Walker does 

not avoid the fact that the autopsy and DEA reports were admitted 

into evidence at appellants’ trial. Moreover, we note but need not 

decide whether Dr. Arden’s or Walker’s testimony qualifies as 

proper expert opinion based on testimonial statements inadmissible 

under the Confrontation Clause absent live in-court testimony by 

the declarant. Other courts have held that an expert runs afoul the 

Confrontation Clause when he “parrot[s] out-of-court testimonial 

statements . . . directly to the jury in the guise of expert opinion.” 

 

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First, “solemn declaration[s] or affirmation[s] made for 

the purpose of establishing or proving some fact” are 

testimonial statements. Melendez-Diaz, 129 S. Ct. at 2532 

(citation and quotation marks omitted). Put another way, “[a] 

document created solely for an ‘evidentiary purpose,’ . . . 

made in aid of a police investigation, ranks as testimonial.” 

Bullcoming, slip op. at 14 (quoting Melendez-Diaz, 129 S. Ct. 

at 2532). The Supreme Court concluded the certifications in 

the laboratory report analyzing Bullcoming’s BAC were 

testimonial because “a law-enforcement officer provided 

seized evidence to a state laboratory required by law to assist 

in police investigations,” the certifying forensic analyst 

“tested the evidence and prepared a certificate concerning the 

result of his analysis,” the certificate was formalized in a 

signed document and headed a “report,” and the document 

referenced court rules relating to the admissibility of certified 

blood-alcohol analyses. Id. at 15. 

 

United States v. Johnson, 587 F.3d 625, 635 (4th Cir. 2009) 

(citation and internal quotation marks omitted); see, e.g., Pablo, 

625 F.3d at 1291-95. Here, the testimony by Dr. Arden and Walker 

often relayed the contents of reports. For example, responding to 

the prosecutor’s question about what “the report indicate[s]” 

regarding soot or gunpowder marks on the arm of Anthony Dent, 

Dr. Arden testified that “[the report] specifically says that . . . soot 

or gunpowder tattooing . . . are mentioned as being absent.” June 4, 

2002 AM Trial Tr. at 9. Likewise, examination relating to the DEA 

reports typically consisted of Walker confirming a lab number on 

an exhibit and stating the conclusion of the report regarding the 

tested drugs. See, e.g., Oct. 23, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 97, 98, 106, 

111, 114, 118-20, 122-25.

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Analogous circumstances make the autopsy reports here 

testimonial.16

 16 Certain duties imposed by the D.C. Code on the Office of the 

Medical Examiner demonstrate, the government suggests, that 

autopsy reports are business records not made for the purpose of 

litigation. It is unnecessary to decide as a categorical matter 

whether autopsy reports are testimonial, and, in any event, it is 

doubtful that such an approach would comport with Supreme Court 

precedent. See Melendez-Diaz, 129 S. Ct. at 2532; cf. Michigan v. 

Bryant, 131 S. Ct. 1143, 1155-56 (2011).

 The Office of the Medical Examiner is required 

by D.C. Code § 5-1405(b)(11) to investigate “[d]eaths for 

which the Metropolitan Police Department [“MPD”], or other 

law enforcement agency, or the United States Attorney’s 

Office requests, or a court orders investigation.” The autopsy 

reports do not indicate whether such requests were made in 

the instant case but the record shows that MPD homicide 

detectives and officers from the Mobile Crimes Unit were 

present at several autopsies. Another autopsy report was 

supplemented with diagrams containing the notation: “Mobile 

crime diagram (not [Medical Examiner] — use for info 

only).” Still another report included a “Supervisor’s Review 

Record” from the MPD Criminal Investigations Division 

commenting: “Should have indictment re John Raynor for this 

murder.” Law enforcement officers thus not only observed 

the autopsies, a fact that would have signaled to the medical 

examiner that the autopsy might bear on a criminal 

investigation, they participated in the creation of reports. 

Furthermore, the autopsy reports were formalized in signed 

documents titled “reports.” These factors, combined with the 

fact that each autopsy found the manner of death to be a 

homicide caused by gunshot wounds, are “circumstances 

which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe 

that the statement would be available for use at a later trial.” 

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Melendez-Diaz, 129 S. Ct. at 2532 (citation and quotation 

marks omitted).

Second, as to the suggestion that the DEA reports 

contained only “raw data,” the Supreme Court rejected the 

same characterization that “Bullcoming’s true accuser . . . was 

the [gas chromatography] machine, while [the] testing 

analyst[’s] . . . role was that of mere scrivener.” Bullcoming, 

slip op. at 10 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). 

The Court emphasized that the analyst “reported more than a 

machine-generated number” when he

certified that he received Bullcoming’s blood sample 

intact with the seal unbroken, that he checked to make 

sure that the forensic report number and the sample 

number “correspond[ed],” and that he performed on 

Bullcoming’s sample a particular test, adhering to a 

precise protocol. He further represented, by leaving 

the “[r]emarks” section of the report blank, that no 

“circumstance or condition . . . affect[ed] the integrity 

of the sample or . . . the validity of the analysis.” 

These representations, relating to past events and 

human actions not revealed in raw, machine-produced 

data, are meet for cross-examination.

Id. (alterations and ellipses in original) (internal citations 

omitted). Likewise here, the forensic chemists who authored 

the DEA reports made several representations, for example, 

that they were trained DEA chemists who followed certain 

procedures regarding the marking of containers and the 

inspection of seals, and that the chemical reagents and/or 

analytical instruments used were free from contamination and 

operating properly. The record in this court submitted by the 

parties does not indicate appellants had an opportunity to 

cross-examine the forensic chemists about their 

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72

representations. And just as the Supreme Court concluded 

that the performance of a blood-alcohol analysis using gas 

chromatography was a “matter . . . not so simple or certain,” 

id. at 4 n.1, and subject to “human error . . . at each step,” id.

at 4, the DEA drug analysis process requires forensic chemists 

to weigh substances, make calculations, and choose the 

correct “color test for a particular kind of exhibit,” Oct. 23, 

2002 PM Trial Tr. at 130, a process also subject to human 

error. Indeed, one type of test used by the DEA forensic 

chemists involved gas chromatography. See id.

Non-structural constitutional error, such as violation of the 

Confrontation Clause, requires vacation of a conviction only 

where the error was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. 

See Wilson, 605 F.3d at 1014 (citing Chapman, 386 U.S. at 

24). As regards the autopsy reports, there was other evidence 

at trial that the 31 murders occurred by gunshots fired by 

members of the charged conspiracy. For example, there was 

testimony by cooperating co-conspirators that Gray claimed 

credit for shooting Anthony Dent and that Handy claimed 

credit for murdering Demetrius Green, and there was 

eyewitness testimony that Handy shot Richard Simmons. 

Assuming error with respect to admission of the autopsy 

reports, and thus not reaching the question left open in 

Bullcoming, slip op. at 5-6 (Sotomayor, J., concurring in part), 

we hold the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. 

With respect to those drug convictions dependent on a 

specific weight and/or quality and quantity (Counts 126-138 

of the superseding indictment), any improperly admitted DEA 

reports, which were testimonial and within the ambit of the 

requirements of the Confrontation Clause, may have caused 

prejudicial error. The parties’ briefs could not address 

Bullcoming, which was decided by the Supreme Court after 

oral argument, and the parties did not address which specific 

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counts of the superseding indictment may or may not be 

sustained on other grounds. Accordingly, we remand to the 

district court to determine whether the admission of the DEA 

reports was error under Bullcoming and which counts 

underlying the judgment of conviction must be vacated, see 

Smith, 640 F.3d at 364, because the government cannot 

establish that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable 

doubt.

X.

Under the Jencks Act, prosecutors must disclose “any 

statement” of a government witness “which relates to the 

subject matter as to which the witness has testified.” 18 

U.S.C. § 3500(b). A statement includes “a written statement 

made by said witness and signed or otherwise adopted by 

him,” as well as any “substantially verbatim recital” of the 

witness’s oral statements “recorded contemporaneously with 

the making of such oral statement.” Id. § 3500(e). In the 

course of its lengthy investigation of appellants, the 

government created reports of many witness interviews. 

Appellants argue that the district court abused its discretion 

when it declined to review, in camera, all of the reports of 

interviews of government witnesses who later testified at trial, 

in order to determine whether any of those records contained 

Jencks Act statements. We disagree.

A district court has an “affirmative duty” to “engage in an 

adequate inquiry into the nature of the documents before 

ruling against Jencks Act production.” United States v. 

Stanfield, 360 F.3d 1346, 1355 (D.C. Cir. 2004). However, a 

defendant cannot compel a district court judge to sift through 

every record in the government’s possession merely by 

speculating that somewhere in those records there might be 

Jencks Act statements. Rather, the defense must raise a 

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“colorable claim” that a specific document or set of 

documents contains Jencks statements. See, e.g., United 

States v. Price, 542 F.3d 617, 621 (8th Cir. 2008); United 

States v. Roseboro, 87 F.3d 642, 646 (4th Cir. 1996).

The interview reports in question here were written by law 

enforcement officers, not by the witnesses themselves. Such 

reports generally do not qualify as Jencks Act statements; 

they are not usually a “substantially verbatim recital” of the 

witness’s words or “adopted or approved by” the witness. Cf. 

Price, 542 F.3d at 621; Roseboro, 87 F.3d at 646. Moreover, 

even if the interviewer wrote down a few of the witness’s 

exact words, there is no “substantially verbatim recital” if the 

interviewer engaged in “substantial selection” in quoting the 

witness. United States v. Donato, 99 F.3d 426, 433 (D.C. Cir. 

1996) (quoting Palermo v. United States, 360 U.S. 343, 352-

53 (1959)). There is thus little reason to believe that the 

interview reports in this case generally contained Jencks 

statements, and no reason to insist that the district court 

review every such report.

On two occasions, appellants cross-examined government 

witnesses in an attempt to establish a colorable claim that 

specific witnesses’ prior interviews had produced Jencks 

statements. The closest appellants came was the following 

exchange:

Defense: Do you recall whether or not while you were 

speaking and the times when these people were 

taking notes whether they asked you to slow 

down so they could write something down that 

you were saying?

Witness: No.

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Defense: Did you [sic] anyone ask you to repeat 

yourself?

Witness: Probably so. I’m not sure.

A witness’s guess that an interviewer probably asked him to 

repeat himself at some point during an interview does not 

create anything more than speculation that the report of that 

interview is a “substantially verbatim recital” of the interview. 

Cf. Roseboro, 87 F.3d at 646. Under those circumstances, the 

district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to 

review the resulting report, much less every interview report 

created during the investigation.

XI.

At trial, the government elicited testimony from two 

former members of the Moore and Gray conspiracy that they 

had converted to Islam and that their religious conversion 

motivated them to testify for the prosecution. On crossexamination, the defense attempted to demonstrate that the 

conversions of those two witnesses were a sham. The defense 

also questioned the legitimacy of many other government 

witnesses’ religious beliefs, even though the government had 

not raised the issue on direct examination of those witnesses. 

The government in turn sought to defend the genuine nature 

of its witnesses’ religious beliefs.

Appellants contend that the government’s elicitation of 

testimony with respect to its witnesses’ faith violated Federal 

Rule of Evidence 610. That rule states: “Evidence of the 

beliefs or opinions of a witness on matters of religion is not 

admissible for the purpose of showing that by reason of their 

nature the witness’ credibility is impaired or enhanced.” 

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The government responds that the testimony of the two 

witnesses did not fall within Rule 610 because the evidence 

was offered “for the purpose of showing interest or bias 

because of” religious beliefs. FED. R. EVID. 610 advisory 

committee’s notes. According to the government, the 

witnesses’ religious conversion refuted an accusation of bias 

— namely, the accusation that the witnesses were testifying 

solely to receive favorable plea agreements. The government 

thus argues that this testimony went to the witnesses’ motive, 

not their credibility.

We need not decide which side has the better argument, 

because even assuming arguendo that there was error in 

allowing this testimony, the error was harmless. See FED. R.

CRIM. P. 52(a). The government elicited very little religious 

testimony of its own accord. It made no mention of that

testimony in opening or closing; it never urged the jury to 

credit its witnesses on account of their faith. Cf. United States 

v. Spinner, 152 F.3d 950, 961-62 (D.C. Cir. 1998). Whatever 

slight influence those two witnesses’ religious conversions 

could have had on the jury is insignificant alongside the 

overwhelming evidence of appellants’ guilt in this case. See

Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 765, 776 (1946).

Moreover, the defense thoroughly probed the issue of 

religious faith not only with the two witnesses who discussed 

their religion on direct examination, but with many others as 

well. Appellants admit that they did so both to impugn the 

government witnesses’ credibility and to support their own 

claim that the government witnesses used Friday prison 

prayer services to coordinate false testimony against 

appellants. On this record, the defense’s extensive crossexamination on this topic cannot be used to transform a 

government error (assuming error) that was a relatively minor 

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part of the trial into a reversible error. See Lurk v. United 

States, 296 F.2d 360, 361 (D.C. Cir. 1961).

XII.

Nunn maintains that the district court erred in denying his 

motion for a new trial. See United States v. Gray, 292 F. 

Supp. 2d 71, 91-94 (D.D.C. 2003). Although the motion 

raised four issues, this part addresses only Nunn’s contention 

that the testimony of Steve Graham was procured by the 

government in violation of the federal bribery statute, 18 

U.S.C. § 201(c)(2), which provides that “[w]hoever . . . gives, 

offers, or promises anything of value to any person, for or 

because of the testimony under oath or affirmation given or to 

be given by such person as a witness upon a trial . . . shall be 

fined . . . or imprisoned for not more than two years, or 

both.”17

Graham was indicted for participating in the charged drug 

and RICO conspiracies, but his trial was severed from that of 

the other co-conspirators. After refusing offers by the 

government to enter into a plea agreement and cooperate with 

the government, he was convicted by a jury of conspiracy to 

distribute heroin or cocaine base and possession with intent to 

distribute heroin. The district court sentenced Graham to two 

concurrent 210-month terms of incarceration, followed by two 

 Graham testified that Nunn was Gray’s drug supplier 

and described two drug transactions between Gray and Nunn. 

See Nov. 4, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 14-26. Our review of the 

district court’s denial of a new trial is for abuse of discretion. 

United States v. Johnson, 519 F.3d 478, 487 (D.C. Cir. 2008).

 17 Nunn’s claims regarding Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) 

and severance pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 14 

are addressed in Parts V and XXII, respectively.

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concurrent sentences of five years’ incarceration, and three 

years of supervised release. See United States v. Graham, 

317 F.3d 262, 265-66 (D.C. Cir. 2003). More than a year 

after sentencing, this court in December 2001 appointed new 

counsel to represent Graham on appeal. New counsel 

explained the benefits of cooperating with the government 

and the terms of such cooperation, something that Graham 

claims his trial counsel failed to do. See Nov. 6, 2002 AM 

Trial Tr. at 66-67, 70.

In March 2002, Graham contacted the prosecutor’s office 

to express his desire to cooperate. On October 11, 2002, the 

government and Graham entered into an agreement whereby 

Graham would cooperate fully with the government and 

testify truthfully at appellants’ trial. The agreement stipulated 

that “the usefulness of the information supplied . . . could not 

have reasonably been anticipated by [Graham] until more than 

a year after his sentencing and that [Graham] promptly 

provided information to the government after its utility was 

reasonably apparent to him.” Gray, 292 F. Supp. 2d at 92. 

This language tracks an amendment now found in Federal 

Rule of Criminal Procedure 35(b)(2)(C),18

 18 Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35(b)(2)(C) provides:

effective 

(2) Upon the government’s motion made more than one 

year after sentencing, the court may reduce a sentence if 

the defendant’s substantial assistance involved:

* * *

(C) information the usefulness of which could not 

reasonably have been anticipated by the defendant until 

more than one year after sentencing and which was 

promptly provided to the government after its 

usefulness was reasonably apparent to the defendant.

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December 2002, providing an additional basis for granting a 

sentencing reduction based on a defendant’s substantial 

assistance to the government. The agreement also 

memorialized the government’s intention to file a Rule 35 

motion. See Gray, 292 F. Supp. 2d at 92.

In Nunn’s view, Graham cooperated with the government 

and testified against appellants because the government 

agreed to file an untimely and improper Rule 35(b) motion on 

his behalf. This agreement constituted, in Nunn’s words, a 

“Faustian bargain,” Appellants’ Br. at 194, because it 

represented that Graham realized the importance of the 

information he possessed only upon appointment of new 

appellate counsel more than one year after sentencing, when, 

according to Nunn, Graham possessed this information at the 

time of his arrest and knew of its potential value. Nunn thus 

contends that the government, aware that Graham was 

ineligible for a Rule 35(b)(2)(C) sentence reduction, 

nonetheless unlawfully offered Graham leniency in exchange 

for his cooperation.

United States v. Ramsey, 165 F.3d 980 (D.C. Cir. 1999), is

controlling. Ramsey was convicted of a drug crime based on 

testimony by an informant named Fierro. Ramsey challenged 

his conviction on the ground that the federal bribery statute 

made it unlawful for the government to offer Fierro leniency 

in exchange for his cooperation and testimony. This court 

affirmed, holding that the bribery statute was not by its terms 

applicable to the United States when read in conjunction with 

the Dictionary Act, 1 U.S.C. § 1, and reasoned that a contrary 

 

The advisory committee notes that “[w]hat constitutes ‘prompt’ 

notification will depend on the circumstances of the case.” FED. R.

CRIM. P. 35 advisory committee’s note to 2002 amendments.

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conclusion would deprive the federal government of its 

longstanding ability to plea bargain, thereby creating absurd 

results. See Ramsey, 165 F.3d at 986-91. As additional 

justification, this court concluded that “even if federal 

prosecutors were subject to [the federal bribery statute], that 

fact would not justify excluding Fierro’s testimony” under the 

exclusionary rule because Congress had prescribed only a 

monetary fine and imprisonment as punishments. Id. at 991.

Counsel for Nunn conceded at oral argument that “the 

cases are legion[] that the government is allowed to exchange 

leniency for testimony.” Oral Arg. Tr. at 55. Even if the 

federal bribery statute were applicable, a violation would not 

change the course of Nunn’s trial because the exclusionary 

rule would not operate to prevent the government from 

eliciting Graham’s testimony. United States v. Singleton, 165 

F.3d 1297 (10th Cir. 1999) (en banc), is not to the contrary. 

Nunn relies on a concurring opinion for the proposition that 

“[p]rosecutors may offer only those incentives that Congress 

has approved, and may bargain and execute agreements only 

within the narrow, specific procedures that Congress and the 

courts have articulated.” Id. at 1308 (Lucero, J., concurring). 

The majority likewise stated: “Our conclusion in no way 

permits an agent of the government to step beyond the limits 

of his or her office to make an offer to a witness other than 

one traditionally exercised by the sovereign.” Id. at 1302 

(majority opinion). A motion under Rule 35 is functionally 

little different from the plea bargain at issue in Singleton and 

the leniency afforded to the informant in Ramsey, save for the 

timing. Cf. United States v. Ridge, 329 F.3d 535, 541 (6th 

Cir. 2003); United States v. Vargas-Deleon, 124 F. App’x 

854, 858-59 (5th Cir. 2005). Because the district court acted 

within its discretion in crediting Graham’s stipulation that he 

realized the usefulness of the information he possessed only 

upon the explanation by new appellate counsel, the 

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government’s Rule 35 motion meets the Singleton test, even 

assuming arguendo its applicability here.

Accordingly, we hold that the district court did not abuse 

its discretion in denying Nunn’s motion for a new trial motion 

based on Graham’s testimony.

XIII.

Gray’s contention that the district court abused its 

discretion in denying his request for a destruction of evidence 

instruction is manifestly without merit. This court has no 

authority to depart from Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U.S. 51 

(1988), requiring bad faith destruction, see Agostini v. Felton, 

521 U.S. 203, 237 (1997), a showing Gray concedes he 

cannot make, see Appellants’ Br. at 204.

XIV.

Appellants requested that the district court instruct the 

jury on its theory that the government demonstrated, at most, 

that they engaged in multiple independent conspiracies, not a 

single joint conspiracy. Appellants submitted several 

proposed instructions to the court on this theory; the district 

court refused to give appellants’ proposed instructions, four of 

which are now at issue on appeal. See Nov. 20, 2002 PM 

Trial Tr. at 47-56.

We have held that a “theory-of-defense instruction is in 

order if there is ‘sufficient evidence from which a reasonable 

jury could find’ for the defendant on his theory.” United 

States v. Hurt, 527 F.3d 1347, 1351 (D.C. Cir. 2008) 

(quoting United States v. Glover, 153 F.3d 749, 754 (D.C. 

Cir. 1998)). However, we have also made clear that a failure 

to provide a requested defense instruction is not reversible 

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error unless the instruction: “(1) is substantively correct; (2) 

was not substantially covered in the charge actually delivered 

to the jury; and (3) concerns an important point in the trial so 

that the failure to give it seriously impaired the defendant’s 

ability to effectively present a given defense.” United States 

v. Taylor, 997 F.2d 1551, 1558 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (quoting 

United States v. Grissom, 645 F.2d 461, 464 (5th Cir. 1981)) 

(internal quotation marks omitted).

No one disputes that appellants were entitled to an 

instruction on their theory that the government had proven, at 

most, multiple conspiracies rather than a single conspiracy. 

Indeed the district court gave such an instruction:

The defendants contend that the government’s proof at 

trial is at variance from the conspiracy charged in 

Count One of the indictment; that is, that the evidence 

presented at trial, if believed, would constitute 

multiple conspiracies rather than a single overall 

conspiracy. Whether a single conspiracy, multiple 

conspiracies or no conspiracy at all existed is for you 

to decide. . . . Proof of several separate conspiracies is 

not proof of the single overall conspiracy charged in 

the indictment. What you must determine is whether 

the single conspiracy as charged in Count One existed 

between two or more conspirators. If you find that no 

such conspiracy existed, you must acquit the 

defendants of this charge. If, however, you find the 

government has proved beyond a reasonable doubt 

that the defendants were involved at any point during 

the period charged in the indictment in an integrated, 

ongoing, common effort to distribute controlled 

substances, then you may find them guilty of the 

single conspiracy charged in Count One. In making 

this determination, you should consider whether the 

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conspirators share a common goal . . . . You may also 

consider the extent to which members of the 

conspiracy depended on one another to accomplish the 

goal of narcotics distribution, the overlap of 

participants in the various operations of the 

conspiracy, and the quality, frequency, and duration of 

each conspirator’s transactions.

Dec. 9, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 108-10. Rather, the question 

here is whether the court’s refusal to provide the specific 

instructions requested by appellants constitutes reversible 

error. We hold that it did not.

Appellants requested the following instructions: 

Instruction 3. To determine whether the evidence supports 

a single conspiracy as opposed to multiple conspiracies, 

you must examine whether the defendants shared a 

common goal, any interdependence among the 

participants, and any overlap among the participants in the 

allegedly separate conspiracies. The overlap requirement 

is satisfied only if the main figures in the alleged 

conspiracy are involved in all of the conspiracy’s alleged 

scheme.

Instruction 4. In this case, the government alleges what is 

known as a ‘hub and spoke’ conspiracy. The government 

alleges that Mr. Gray and Mr. Moore were at the hub of 

the conspiracy, and that the other defendants, in addition 

to other conspirators, were the ‘spokes.’ However, in 

order to prove such a conspiracy, it must be shown that 

there is a direct conspiratorial interrelationship, also 

known as ‘interdependence,’ among those on the ‘spokes’ 

of the conspiracy, in addition to their relationship to those 

at the hub.

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Instruction 5. In order for the defendants to be convicted 

of Count One, the evidence must demonstrate beyond a 

reasonable doubt that each defendant knew or had reason 

to know the scope of the distribution and retail 

organization involved, and had reason to believe that their 

own benefits derived from the operation [were] dependent 

upon the success of the entire venture.

Instruction 6. A single conspiracy exists if there is one 

overall agreement among various parties to perform 

different functions in order to carry out objectives of [the] 

conspiracy, while multiple conspiracies exist if each of the 

conspirators’ agreements has its own end and constitutes 

an end in itself.

We cannot conclude that the failure to provide any of the 

proposed instructions “seriously impaired the defendant’s 

ability to effectively present a given defense.” Taylor, 997 

F.2d at 1558. In light of the district court’s comprehensive 

instructions to the jury about the defense’s multipleconspiracies theory, which mentioned all of the factors 

relevant to the jury’s determination, we find that appellants 

were able to effectively present their defense. 

XV.

Count 2 charged Moore with engaging in a continuing 

criminal enterprise (“CCE”), in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 848. 

To convict under § 848, the government must prove that the 

defendant committed: “1) a felony violation of the federal 

narcotics law; 2) as part of a continuing series of violations; 

3) in concert with five or more persons; 4) for whom the 

defendant is an organizer or supervisor; 5) from which he 

derives substantial income or resources.” United States v. 

Hoyle, 122 F.3d 48, 50 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (citation and 

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85

quotation marks omitted). A “continuing series of 

violations,” 21 U.S.C. § 848(c)(2), requires participation in 

three or more predicate offenses, one of which may be a drug 

conspiracy charged under 21 U.S.C. § 846. See United States 

v. Harris, 959 F.2d 246, 252-54 (D.C. Cir. 1992), overruled 

on other grounds, Bailey v. United States, 516 U.S. 137 

(1995); see also Dec. 9, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 120. The jury 

convicted Moore upon finding seven proven predicate 

offenses. Moore challenges his CCE conviction on the 

ground that there was insufficient evidence to support the 

jury’s finding of three or more predicate offenses. This court 

“must accept the jury’s guilty verdict” where a rational trier of 

fact could have reasonably found that Moore committed at 

least three predicate offenses. United States v. Dykes, 406 

F.3d 717, 721 (D.C. Cir. 2005).

The predicate offenses found by the jury included (1) the 

drug conspiracy charged in Count 1, see 21 U.S.C. § 846; (2) 

Gray’s possession with intent to distribute cocaine base on 

October 5, 1996 (Count 1, Overt Act 78); and (3) Raynor’s 

possession with intent to distribute heroin on February 8, 

1997 (Count 1, Overt Act 90). The latter two were 

attributable to Moore as a co-conspirator pursuant to 

Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640, 645-48 (1946): “As 

long as a substantive offense was done in furtherance of the 

conspiracy, and was reasonably foreseeable as a ‘necessary or 

natural consequence of the unlawful agreement,’ then a 

conspirator will be held vicariously liable for the offense 

committed by his or her co-conspirators.” United States v. 

Washington, 106 F.3d 983, 1012 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (quoting 

Pinkerton, 328 U.S. at 647-68); see also United States v. 

Baker, 432 F.3d 1189, 1235 (11th Cir. 2005); United States v. 

Hoover, 246 F.3d 1054, 1057-58 (7th Cir. 2001).

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Moore’s challenge to these CCE predicate offenses rests 

on his contention that the charged conspiracy terminated 

before the statute of limitations period, when it split into 

separate conspiracies operating in different quadrants of the 

city more than five years prior to the filing of the superseding 

indictment. It follows, Moore maintains, that the 

government’s failure to prove the charged conspiracy negates 

the jury’s finding that these CCE predicate offenses were 

proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Moore suggests his 

conviction for the Count 1 drug conspiracy would be vacated 

and he would not be vicariously liable under Pinkerton for 

Gray’s and Raynor’s acts because there was no charged 

conspiracy to be furthered. See Washington, 106 F.3d at 

1012. Because we conclude that Moore and Gray jointly led 

the charged drug conspiracy within the limitations period, see 

supra Part VII, and Moore identifies no other grounds for 

disturbing the jury’s verdicts as to these CCE predicate 

offenses, such as challenging the sufficiency of evidence that 

Gray and Raynor committed these Count 1 overt acts, they are 

properly considered CCE predicate offenses.

Accordingly, Moore’s challenge to the jury’s finding of 

these Count 1 CCE predicate offenses fails.19

XVI.

The government and Moore agree that Moore’s 

convictions for the felony murder and the premeditated 

 19 Any violation of the Confrontation Clause in admitting the 

DEA chemist report certifying the substance possessed by Raynor 

to be heroin, see supra Part IX, is rendered harmless beyond a 

reasonable doubt by Raynor’s guilty plea to Overt Act 90, see Oct. 

7, 2002 Trial Tr. at 131-33; see also Chapman v. California, 386 

U.S. 18 (1967).

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murder of Ronald Powell merge. We therefore vacate 

Moore’s felony murder conviction for the murder of Powell.

XVII.

The jury convicted Smith of murdering Eric Moore. 

During the initial police investigation of Moore’s murder, 

another man, Antoine Ward, claimed to have killed Moore. 

Smith argues that the district court improperly excluded 

evidence of Ward’s confession. We conclude that the district 

court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the Ward 

evidence.

Eric Moore was found shot to death in his bedroom closet, 

with a pillow on the floor nearby and the room ransacked. At 

trial, a government witness testified: that he drove Smith and 

an accomplice to Moore’s apartment with the intent of 

robbing Moore; that Smith was carrying a handgun; that 

Smith and the accomplice returned from Moore’s apartment 

carrying bags of clothes; and that Smith told the witness he 

had shot Moore in Moore’s closet after placing a pillow over 

Moore’s head to muffle the sound. Another government 

witness testified that Smith had confirmed those details in a 

conversation with the government witness.

Before the above evidence came to light, the police had 

found a fingerprint belonging to Ward in Eric Moore’s 

apartment. Ward therefore became the first target of the 

police investigation into this murder. When questioned, Ward 

admitted that he knew Moore and initially claimed that he 

participated in Moore’s robbery with three other men, one of 

whom killed Moore. Ward later altered his story, naming a 

different person as the murderer. Still later, Ward changed his 

account entirely, claiming that he killed Moore himself during 

an argument, and denying that any others were involved. 

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Then, in his fourth and last statement, Ward recanted his 

previous three accounts and denied any involvement in 

Moore’s robbery or death. The government did not pursue 

charges against Ward because it did not find sufficient 

evidence to corroborate his involvement.

Ward’s counsel informed the government that Ward 

would invoke his Fifth Amendment right against selfincrimination if called to testify at Smith’s trial. Smith claims 

that the district court should have told the government to 

immunize Ward for purposes of testifying, and if the 

government refused, dismissed the charges against Smith.

But the district court had no authority to immunize Ward, 

or to compel the government to immunize Ward. The 

decision to grant immunity from prosecution rests solely with 

the Executive Branch. See 18 U.S.C. § 6003; United States v. 

Doe, 465 U.S. 605, 616-17 (1984) (“Congress expressly left 

this decision exclusively to the Justice Department.”).

Smith contends that the district court should have 

dismissed the murder charge against Smith because the 

government refused to immunize Ward, citing the D.C. Court 

of Appeals’ decision in Carter v. United States, 684 A.2d 331, 

339-46 (D.C. 1996) (en banc). Carter allows trial courts to 

impose sanctions on the prosecution — including dismissal of 

charges — if the prosecution creates a “distortion of the factfinding process” by unjustifiably refusing to grant immunity 

to a defense witness. Id. at 342-43. Even assuming that 

Carter applies here (given that Smith was charged with 

murder under the D.C. Code), the district court did everything 

that the Carter decision would require: The government had 

interviewed Ward when it investigated him, and decided not 

to grant him immunity because Ward’s accounts were selfcontradictory and likely to result in perjury. The district court 

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accepted that as a valid reason for the prosecution not to 

immunize Ward, and declined to impose sanctions on the 

prosecution. The district court’s decision was well within the 

bounds of Carter. Cf. Butler v. United States, 890 A.2d 181, 

190 (D.C. 2006); Carter, 684 A.2d at 342-43.

Smith also argues that the district court should have 

admitted into evidence the third of Ward’s four contradictory 

statements regarding Eric Moore’s murder, the statement in 

which Ward claimed to have killed Moore.

Ward’s confession is hearsay, but under Federal Rule of 

Evidence 804(b)(3) such hearsay was admissible if: (1) the 

declarant was unavailable, (2) the statement was against the 

declarant’s interest, and (3) “corroborating circumstances 

clearly indicate the trustworthiness of the statement.”20

 20 Under the version of Rule 804(b)(3) in effect during Smith’s 

trial, the requirement for clear corroboration only applied to 

statements, such as Ward’s, “tending to expose the declarant to 

criminal liability and offered to exculpate the accused.” That 

portion of the rule was amended in 2010. The new text applies to 

any statement “offered in a criminal case as one that tends to 

expose the declarant to criminal liability.” FED. R. EVID. 804(b)(3) 

(2011). That change is not relevant here; both versions of the rule 

apply to Ward’s statement. The 2010 amendment broadened the 

rule so that it applies to statements against penal interest offered by 

the prosecution as well as statements offered by the defense (such 

as Ward’s confession here). See FED. R. EVID. 804(b)(3) advisory 

committee’s note to 2010 amendments.

 The 

party offering the statement bears the burden of establishing 

that the statement meets these requirements. See United 

States v. Jackson, 540 F.3d 578, 588 (7th Cir. 2008); United 

States v. MacDonald, 688 F.2d 224, 233 (4th Cir. 1982).

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There is no dispute that Ward was unavailable because he 

had invoked his Fifth Amendment right against selfincrimination. There is also no dispute that Ward’s 

confession to killing Eric Moore is a statement against his 

interest. The issue here is thus whether corroborating 

circumstances “clearly indicate” the trustworthiness of 

Ward’s statement. FED. R. EVID. 804(b)(3) (emphasis added).

Rule 804(b)(3)’s standard is demanding. The requirement 

for clear indications of trustworthiness serves to prevent 

someone whose reliability cannot be tested by crossexamination (such as Ward) from exonerating a guilty party 

by incriminating himself. The rule thus contemplates that 

some out-of-court admissions of guilt will be excluded, 

despite their relevance, because they possess insufficient 

indications of trustworthiness. See United States v. Salvador, 

820 F.2d 558, 561 (2d Cir. 1987); United States v. Silverstein, 

732 F.2d 1338, 1346-47 (7th Cir. 1984); MacDonald, 688 

F.2d at 233; see also United States v. Edelin, 996 F.2d 1238, 

1241-42 (D.C. Cir. 1993).

Smith’s argument that Ward’s confession is “clearly” 

corroborated for purposes of Rule 804(b)(3) rests largely on 

general facts that do not directly confirm Ward’s claim to 

have killed Eric Moore. Ward’s fingerprint proves that Ward 

was in Moore’s apartment at some point. But in his 

statement, Ward claimed that he was in an ongoing romantic 

relationship with Moore and regularly stayed with him. The 

fingerprint thus does not corroborate Ward’s claim that he 

was present during the murder, much less that he committed 

it. Smith’s other examples of corroborating evidence suffer 

from similar problems: Evidence tending to demonstrate that 

Ward knew certain things about Moore only corroborate 

Ward’s claim that he knew Moore, not that he killed him.

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Against those general facts, Smith must deal with the fact 

that Ward contradicted his statement multiple times. Ward 

made four separate statements to police regarding Eric 

Moore’s death. In three of those four statements, Ward 

denied killing Moore. Moreover, the details of Ward’s story 

vary significantly in each of the four accounts he gave, and he 

denied killing Moore both before and after claiming that he 

did. Other circuits have held that such contradictions can 

alone render an otherwise admissible statement 

untrustworthy. See United States v. Jackson, 540 F.3d 578, 

589-90 (7th Cir. 2008); United States v. Lumpkin, 192 F.3d 

280, 287 (2d Cir. 1999); see also United States v. Bumpass, 

60 F.3d 1099, 1102 (4th Cir. 1995) (listing consistency of 

declarant’s statements as a factor in assessing trustworthiness 

under Rule 804(b)(3)). 

Under the deferential abuse of discretion standard, we 

cannot conclude that the district court erred in excluding 

Ward’s statement. Rule 804(b)(3)’s requirement to show 

clear indications of trustworthiness is a strict one. On three 

separate occasions, Ward contradicted his claim to have killed 

Eric Moore. Under those circumstances, the general 

corroboration advanced by Smith was not so clear that we can 

say that the district court abused its discretion in excluding 

Ward’s hearsay confession. 

XVIII.

Smith also challenges the sufficiency of the evidence 

supporting his conviction for the murder of Anthony Dent. 

We have little trouble concluding that the evidence sufficed 

for a rational jury to find Smith’s guilt beyond a reasonable 

doubt. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 318 (1979).

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The government alleged that Smith assisted Moore and 

Gray in murdering Dent because Dent was delinquent in a 

debt to Moore. The government presented testimony from 

two witnesses who observed the circumstances of Dent’s 

murder. Both witnesses saw Smith, Gray, and Moore 

searching Dent’s block prior to the murder. The first witness 

testified that Moore, while in Smith’s company, asked the 

witness where to find Dent. The first witness also noted that 

Smith and Gray were wearing dark clothes when the witness 

spoke with Moore. The second witness saw a single person in 

dark clothes shoot Dent, but could not see the shooter’s face. 

The second witness also saw Smith, Gray, and Moore in the

vicinity of the murder soon after the killing occurred.

The second witness also related a conversation that 

occurred years after the murder, when that witness had 

himself become a lieutenant to Gray. According to the 

second witness, Gray stated that Moore had agreed to pay 

$5,000 for Dent’s murder. Gray told the witness that while 

Smith, Gray, and Moore searched for Dent, Smith argued with 

Gray over who would actually shoot Dent and receive the 

$5,000. Gray apparently won the argument, and, after 

locating Dent with Smith and Moore’s help, killed Dent.

The eyewitness testimony of both witnesses placed Smith 

at the scene of the murder, working with his fellow murderers 

to locate their victim and acting as a lookout during the 

murder. The second witness’s report of the later Gray 

conversation provided evidence that Smith knew the purpose 

of the search was to kill Dent and that Smith intended to bring 

about that result. That evidence is sufficient to support 

Smith’s conviction. Cf. United States v. Wilson, 160 F.3d 

732, 737-39 (D.C. Cir. 1998).

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Smith’s challenges to this evidence are unavailing. He 

suggests alternate explanations of the eyewitness testimony 

and an alternate theory of the crime, but on sufficiency of the 

evidence review we must view the evidence in the light most 

favorable to the government. See United States v. Alexander, 

331 F.3d 116, 127 (D.C. Cir. 2003). Smith also objects that 

the testimony of accomplices is unreliable (both government 

witnesses had been drug dealers in the Moore and Gray 

organization), but in this Circuit accomplice testimony alone 

can support a conviction. See United States v. Lee, 506 F.2d 

111, 118 (D.C. Cir. 1974). And Smith objects to the 

admission of the second witness’s later conversation with 

Gray, but this court “must consider all admitted evidence —

whether admitted erroneously or not — in reviewing the 

sufficiency of the evidence.” Alexander, 331 F.3d at 128 

(citing Lockhart v. Nelson, 488 U.S. 33, 39-42 (1988)).21

 21 Even if we construed Smith’s argument against admission of 

the Gray conversation as a separate argument under the Federal 

Rules of Evidence, that argument would fail. Under Federal Rule 

of Evidence 801(d)(2)(E), admissions “by a coconspirator of a party 

during the course and in furtherance of the conspiracy” are not 

hearsay. When Gray gave his account of the murder to the 

government witness, that witness was Gray’s assistant and thus a 

member of the conspiracy. Contrary to Smith’s argument, Smith 

also remained a member of the conspiracy at the time of this 

conversation. See infra Part XX (Smith’s claim to have withdrawn 

from the conspiracy fails). And this court has held that recounting 

past violent acts to members of a violent gang is a statement in 

furtherance of the conspiracy because it provides useful information 

on the conspiracy’s activities and motivates conspiracy members’ 

continued participation. See United States v. Carson, 455 F.3d 336, 

367 (D.C. Cir. 2006).

 We 

therefore reject Smith’s challenge to his conviction for the 

murder of Anthony Dent.

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XIX.

Somewhat as a corollary to his sufficiency of evidence 

challenge as regards his conviction for the murder of Anthony 

Dent, Smith contends that his trial counsel failed to provide 

constitutionally adequate assistance in electing not to call Leo 

Benbow as a witness. Benbow, according to Smith, witnessed 

Dent’s murder and would have identified Clayton Thomas as 

the shooter.

To succeed on a Sixth Amendment claim of ineffective 

assistance of counsel, a defendant must show both “that 

counsel’s performance was deficient” and “that the deficient 

performance prejudiced the defense.” Strickland v. 

Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687 (1984). To establish 

deficiency “the defendant must show that counsel’s 

representation fell below an objective standard of 

reasonableness,” id. at 688; to establish prejudice “[t]he 

defendant must show that there is a reasonable probability 

that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the 

proceeding would have been different,’” id. at 694. See also 

Porter v. McCollum, 130 S. Ct. 447, 452 (2009). This court 

typically remands an ineffective assistance of counsel claim 

raised for the first time on direct appeal to the district court 

for an evidentiary hearing “unless the trial record alone 

conclusively shows that the defendant either is or is not 

entitled to relief,” United States v. Shabban, 612 F.3d 693, 

698 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (citation and quotation marks omitted), 

and provided that the defendant has raised a “colorable claim” 

by making “factual allegations that, if true, would establish a 

violation of his sixth amendment right to counsel,” United 

States v. Burroughs, 613 F.3d 233, 238 (D.C. Cir. 2010) 

(citation and quotation marks omitted).

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There was sufficient evidence upon which the jury 

reasonably could find that Smith aided and abetted Gray in 

murdering Dent. See supra Part XVIII. Smith defended 

against this charge at trial by offering evidence, pursuant to 

Winfield v. United States, 676 A.2d 1 (D.C. 1996) (en banc); 

see also United States v. Wilson, 160 F.3d 732, 742-43 (D.C. 

Cir. 1998), that Thomas, a third party with whom Smith had 

no affiliation, committed the crime. An understanding of how 

that defense unfolded at trial and the context in which Smith’s 

counsel chose not to call Benbow to testify requires some 

background.

During opening statements, Smith’s counsel forecasted to 

the jury that, as to the murder of Dent, “you will find that 

there is an eyewitness that identified other people and not 

Calvin Smith as being present and involved.” May 13, 2002 

AM Trial Tr. at 92. As groundwork for this defense, Smith 

introduced expert testimony that bullets fired from a gun used 

in the attempted murder of Michael Taylor were “tantalizingly 

close to being a perfect match” to those collected following 

Dent’s murder a day later. Nov. 12, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 33. 

The expert opined that it was “likely” the bullets were fired 

from the same pistol. Id. at 34. Building on this connection 

between the Taylor and Dent shootings, which occurred at the 

same location, see Nov. 14, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 124; see 

also Counts 4-5, Superseding Indict. at 104-05, Smith 

intended to establish, through identifications made by Taylor 

and Benbow, that Thomas and two others, neither of them 

Smith, were involved in both crimes. See Nov. 14, 2002 PM 

Trial Tr. at 76.

Before any witnesses were called as to the identifications, 

the prosecutor advised the district court that the government’s 

response to Smith’s third-party defense might cause a 

potential issue to arise under Bruton v. United States, 391 

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U.S. 123, 127-28 (1968), which held that a defendant’s Sixth 

Amendment right to cross-examination is violated when, in a 

joint trial, a non-testifying defendant’s out-of-court admission 

is introduced against a codefendant. The prosecutor 

explained that one of the assailants identified by both Taylor 

and Benbow was a tall man named Rodney, who the 

government believed to be charged conspiracy co-principal 

Rodney Moore, and therefore the prosecutor would seek the 

identification of all three assailants on cross-examination of 

Benbow and other fact witnesses. See Nov. 14, 2002 PM 

Trial Tr. at 76. Counsel for Moore appeared to agree 

regarding the Bruton problem, stating that “given [the 

government’s] proffer . . . [t]his could really come back and 

bite us,” but demurred when pressed by the district court to 

articulate the concern. Id. at 81-82.

The evidence concerning Taylor’s identification of 

Thomas as one of his assailants consisted of testimony by two 

D.C. police officers who investigated the incident. Officer 

Will stated that the attempted murder occurred on “October 8 

of 1990, [in the] 3100 block of 15th Place, Southeast, late 

evening,” that he directed Detective Fluck to show 

photographs to Taylor for purposes of identifying the 

perpetrator, and that ultimately an arrest warrant was issued 

for Thomas. Nov. 14, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 84. Detective 

Fluck, in turn, recounted visiting Taylor in the hospital to do a 

“photo spread,” prompting the prosecutor to object to the 

admission of an out-of-court identification by Taylor. See id. 

at 86. Following a colloquy at the bench, the district court 

sustained the objection, thereby limiting the direct 

examination of Detective Fluck to the fact that an 

identification was made by Taylor, without revealing the 

name of the person (Thomas) identified. See id. at 86-89, 91. 

Detective Fluck testified on direct examination in accordance 

with the ruling. 

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Before cross-examination of Detective Fluck, however, 

the prosecutor noted that the direct examination had resulted 

in an “incomplete accounting of what Mr. Taylor said” to 

Detective Fluck insofar as “Mr. Taylor actually talked about 

three people being involved in the shooting.” Id. at 97. 

Consequently, the prosecutor indicated his intent “to flesh out 

all of the identification,” including the fact that a man named 

Rodney was involved. Id. at 97-98. The district court, likely 

mindful the prosecutor had raised the specter of a Bruton

problem, inquired whether the prosecutor could “sanitize” the 

cross-examination and avoid a Bruton problem by “[a]sk[ing] 

the officer if it is true . . . that Mr. Taylor also identified other 

individuals.” Id. at 98. In response, however, the prosecutor 

stated that he “d[idn’t] think it is a Brut[]on problem, because 

it isn’t a defendant testifying against another defendant. I 

think that’s the Brut[]on line [of authority], essentially limited 

to a defendant testifying against another.” Id. The district 

court directed the prosecutor to sanitize the crossexamination. Id. at 99. The parties and the district court then 

engaged in the following exchange, which is central to 

Smith’s allegation of constitutionally inadequate counsel:

Moore’s Counsel: I do just want to note a concern that 

even that sanitized testimony, when 

viewed together within the testimony of 

what I’m told to anticipate from — the 

next witness may provide — could 

present a very serious continuing 

Brut[]on type problem for us.

The Court: What is next?

Smith’s Counsel: Your Honor, I’ll be frank with the 

Court. It is not my intention to call 

Benbow to go into the Dent shooting. 

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If I did, I think we would have a 

mistrial.

* * *

I will tell the Court that the government 

is free to call Benbow. They know 

where he is. He’s out there in the 

witness program. If they choose. They 

want to open up this can of worms, 

they’re free to do that.

But I won’t be introducing it, based on 

the limited ability of myself and my 

limited ability to go into this through 

these two officers. Severely 

hamstrung. First of all, I’m missing 

photographs that I can’t go into with 

Benbow because they’re not in the 

jacket. They’re missing the 

photographs from [Dent] and Michael 

Taylor.

The Court: Look, I can’t solve all the problems of 

the whole case here. Let’s finish this 

witness. Do what I suggested.

Id. at 99-100 (emphasis added). Proceeding in this sanitized 

manner, the prosecutor elicited from Detective Fluck that, 

according to Taylor, “Thomas was one of three men who shot 

[Taylor]” and that “there were three men, all of whom were 

firing at [Taylor] at the same time.” Id. at 101-02.

Based on the foregoing, we conclude that Smith has made 

a “colorable claim” that his counsel’s decision not to call 

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Benbow to testify was constitutionally deficient, and that he 

was prejudiced by his counsel’s conduct. See Burroughs, 613 

F.3d at 238. First, Smith has made a plausible claim that his 

counsel’s decision not to call Benbow to testify fell below an 

objective standard of reasonableness. Why Smith’s counsel 

believed that calling Benbow would precipitate a mistrial, see

Nov. 14, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 99, and how the district court’s 

evidentiary rulings or other circumstances “[s]everely 

hamstrung” the presentation of the third-party defense, id. at 

100, is difficult to discern from the current record. Bruton

applies only where, unlike here, there is an “admission of 

incriminating out-of-court statements made by a nontestifying 

codefendant,” United States v. Wilson, 605 F.3d 985, 1017 

(D.C. Cir. 2010) (emphasis added), which Benbow was not. 

Moreover, although Smith’s counsel was unable to elicit 

Taylor’s identification of Thomas on direct examination of 

Detective Fluck, the jury could infer this fact from the 

issuance of an arrest warrant for Thomas and, in any event, 

Thomas was ultimately identified during the prosecutor’s 

cross-examination of Detective Fluck.

The parties’ briefs discuss at length whether the 

government could have proved that the “Rodney” who 

purportedly participated in the Taylor shooting was Rodney 

Moore, and, if so, whether this factored into defense counsel’s 

decision not to call Benbow. The government suggests that 

“[t]he possibility that Benbow would implicate Moore in one 

or both shootings would have prejudiced Moore, but more 

importantly, it would also have had a direct prejudicial impact 

on Smith’s own defense,” Appellee’s Br. at 276, insofar as the 

government had introduced evidence in its case-in-chief that 

Moore, Gray, and Smith were searching for Dent shortly 

before the shooting, see May 21, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 137-

38. The current record, however, is inconclusive as to 

whether the allegations “reflect the trial counsel’s informed 

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tactical choice or a decision undertaken out of ignorance of 

the relevant law.” United States v. Reeves, 586 F.3d 20, 26 

(D.C. Cir. 2009) (citation and quotation marks omitted). 

Similarly, Smith’s assertion that his counsel erroneously 

believed there was a Bruton problem fails to find conclusive 

support in the current record. See id.

Second, the extent to which an error, if any, prejudiced 

Smith’s third-party defense is also unclear from the current 

record. The lack of clarity stems in part from an inability to 

pin down the precise nature of Benbow’s testimony. In his 

brief, Smith proffers that Benbow would have testified: “[I] 

saw three men — Smith not being one of them — kill Dent.” 

Appellants’ Br. at 275. According to Smith, Benbow’s 

eyewitness account of the Dent murder would have changed 

the course of the trial in light of the weak circumstantial 

evidence offered against Smith, thereby implicating Thomas 

and fully exonerating Smith of participating in the crime. The 

government disagrees, maintaining that the absence of 

Benbow’s testimony was insufficient to satisfy the second 

Strickland prong because the evidence would not have been 

exculpatory of Smith. Recall that Smith, Gray, and Moore 

were seen together near the scene of the Dent murder shortly 

before and after it occurred and that the government 

introduced evidence to establish that Smith served as a 

lookout from an alley for Gray, the shooter. See supra Part 

XVIII. From this, the government concludes that Benbow’s 

account of the Dent murder does not rule out Smith’s 

participation because Benbow would not have seen Smith 

hiding in the alley. This may or may not be so, depending on 

a number of variables. 

Benbow’s proffered testimony (“[I] saw three men —

Smith not being one of them — kill Dent”) is subject to 

varying interpretations. On the one hand, it may be that 

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Benbow saw three men simultaneously shoot at Dent, none of 

them Smith, and that Benbow was in a position to confirm 

that Smith was not standing in the alley. Smith was not 

completely hidden from view since Sanders was able to 

identify him. See May 21, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 140, 142. 

On the other hand, in stating that three men “kill[ed] Dent,” 

Benbow might have meant that three men participated in the 

murder, one of whom was the shooter and two of whom 

served as lookouts. Such a statement could be exculpatory of 

Smith depending on where the lookouts were standing and, 

again, if Benbow were in a position to see into the alley. The 

trial record does not make clear which interpretation is 

correct. Compare Nov. 14, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 76 

(“Benbow . . . identified three people being involved in both 

shootings . . . .” (emphasis added)), with id. at 124 (“Clayton 

Thomas is identified both in [Dent] and in the Michael Taylor 

[shootings] as being the one that shot.” (emphasis added)), 

with id. at 125 (“Thomas is identified as one of the three

shooters.” (emphasis added)).

The current record also does not allow a conclusive 

determination that Benbow’s testimony was immaterial or 

cumulative such that it defeats a colorable prejudice claim. 

See United States v. Toms, 396 F.3d 427, 434-35 (D.C. Cir. 

2005). The jury heard fact testimony that Taylor identified 

Thomas as a person who shot at him, see Nov. 14, 2002 PM 

Trial Tr. at 101-02, and expert opinion testimony that the 

bullets fired at Taylor and Dent were “tantalizingly close to 

being a perfect match,” Nov. 12, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 33. 

Benbow would have provided corroboration for Smith’s thirdparty defense insofar as he witnessed Thomas shoot Dent, 

thereby strengthening the connection between Thomas and 

the two shootings. This evidence would not have been 

cumulative. It is conceivable that Smith could have pursued 

his defense based solely on Taylor’s identification of Thomas 

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in the first shooting and the similarity in the bullet markings 

between the shootings, but there was no other evidence in the 

record linking Thomas directly to Dent’s murder. See 

Sussman v. Jenkins, 636 F.3d 329, 358-59 (7th Cir. 2011). 

Notably, Benbow would have provided the only eyewitness 

identification of the shooter at the scene. See Harrison v.

Quarterman, 496 F.3d 419, 428 (5th Cir. 2007). But cf. 

United States v. McNeil, 911 F.2d 768, 774 (D.C. Cir. 1990). 

Without Benbow’s eyewitness account of the Dent murder 

and identification of Thomas, the jury was left to infer from 

Smith’s evidence that Thomas shot Dent and to weigh this 

inference against the testimony of government witnesses that 

Gray, with Smith’s assistance, committed the murder and later 

claimed credit for it.

The government’s theory at trial was that Gray murdered 

Dent while Smith served as a lookout. Smith’s defense was 

that Thomas and his cohort murdered Dent. No evidence 

linked the two groups; there was only the government’s 

conjecture that one of Thomas’s accomplices, identified as 

“Rodney,” was in fact Rodney Moore. There is a “colorable” 

argument that Benbow’s testimony would not have 

precipitated a mistrial or hampered Smith’s defense, yet 

would have significantly altered the balance of evidence, 

tipping the scales in Smith’s favor. See Porter, 130 S. Ct. at 

455-56; Strickland, 466 U.S. at 693-94. Accordingly, because 

the current record does not conclusively resolve Smith’s 

claim, we remand Smith’s “colorable claim” of ineffective 

assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment to the 

district court so that it may hold an evidentiary hearing and 

address this claim in the first instance.

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XX.

In its instructions to the jury prior to deliberation, the 

district court explained: “If you find that the evidence at trial 

did not prove the existence of the narcotics conspiracy at a 

point in time continuing in existence within five years before 

. . . May 5th, 2000 for defendant Calvin Smith . . . you must 

find the defendant[] not guilty of Count One.” Dec. 9, 2002 

AM Trial Tr. at 104-05. After deliberating for nearly 12 days, 

the jury asked the court: “If we find that the Narcotics or 

RICO conspiracies continued after the relevant date under the 

statute of limitations, but that a particular defendant left the 

conspiracy before the relevant date under the statute of 

limitations, must we find that defendant not guilty?” Over 

appellants’ objections, the district court told the jury that 

“[o]nce the Government has proven that a defendant was a 

member of a conspiracy, the burden is on the defendant to 

prove withdrawal from a conspiracy by a preponderance of 

the evidence.”

Smith contends that the district court erred in instructing 

the jury that he rather than the government bore the burden of 

persuasion to show that he had withdrawn from the 

conspiracy. He believes that, because he met his burden of 

production to show that he withdrew from the charged 

conspiracy prior to the relevant statute of limitations period, 

due process required the government to prove beyond a 

reasonable doubt that he was a member of the conspiracy 

during the relevant period.

In a criminal trial due process requires the government to 

prove beyond a reasonable doubt all elements of the offense. 

In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970); see also Dixon v. United 

States, 548 U.S. 1 (2006); Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 

197 (1977); Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U.S. 684 (1975). As a 

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consequence, when a defendant raises (by meeting his burden 

of production) a defense that negates an element of the 

charged offense, the government bears the burden of 

persuasion to disprove the defense. See Dixon, 548 U.S. at 11 

(“We require[] the Government to prove the defendant’s 

sanity beyond a reasonable doubt because the evidence that 

tended to prove insanity also tended to disprove an essential 

element of the offense charged.” (citing Davis v. United 

States, 165 U.S. 373, 378 (1897))).

Conspiracy is a crime that presumes continuity until 

accomplishment or termination; once a defendant becomes a 

member of a conspiracy, he remains a member until he 

affirmatively withdraws or the conspiracy ends. Hyde v. 

United States, 225 U.S. 347, 368-70 (1912). Therefore, once 

the government proves that a defendant was a member of an 

ongoing conspiracy, it has proven the defendant’s continuous 

membership in that conspiracy unless and until the defendant 

withdraws. The question here then is whether withdrawing 

from a conspiracy prior to the statute of limitations period 

negates an element of the conspiracy such that the 

government must prove that the defendant did not so 

withdraw. 

Our sister circuits have differed on this issue. While some 

have said that the burden of proving withdrawal always rests 

on the defendant, see, e.g., United States v. Eppolito, 543 F.3d 

25, 49 (2d Cir. 2008); United States v. Arias, 431 F.3d 1327, 

1340 (11th Cir. 2005); United States v. Brown, 332 F.3d 363, 

374 (6th Cir. 2003); United States v. Hughes, 191 F.3d 1317, 

1322 (10th Cir. 1999); United States v. Pettigrew, 77 F.3d 

1500, 1514 (5th Cir. 1996), others have held that, once the 

defendant meets his burden of production that he has 

withdrawn prior to the relevant limitations period, the burden

of persuasion shifts to the government, see, e.g., United States 

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v. Read, 658 F.2d 1225, 1232-33 (7th Cir. 1981); United 

States v. Antar, 53 F.3d 568, 582-83 (3d Cir. 1995), 

abrogated on other grounds by Smith v. Berg, 247 F.3d 532 

(3d. Cir. 2001); United States v. Lothian, 976 F.2d 1257, 

1261-62 (9th Cir. 1992); United States v. West, 877 F.2d 281, 

289 (4th Cir. 1989); United States v. Dyer, 821 F.2d 35, 39 

(1st Cir. 1987).

Our circuit, however, does not write on a blank slate. We 

previously have said unequivocally, albeit in the context of 

sentencing, that the defendant, not the government, “has the 

burden of proving that he affirmatively withdrew from the 

conspiracy if he wishes to benefit from his claimed lack of 

involvement.” United States v. Thomas, 114 F.3d 228, 268 

(D.C. Cir. 1997); see also United States v. Mitchell, 49 F.3d 

769, 784 (D.C. Cir. 1995); United States v. Dale, 991 F.2d 

819, 854 (D.C. Cir. 1993). We are obliged to follow our 

precedent, and we thus hold that the district court correctly 

instructed the jury that the defendant bore the burden of 

persuasion to show that he withdrew from the conspiracy 

outside of the statute of limitations period. 

XXI.

Smith and Raynor were convicted of killing in furtherance 

of a continuing criminal enterprise, 21 U.S.C. § 848(e)(1)(A) 

(2000), murder in aid of racketeering, 18 U.S.C. § 1959, and 

first-degree murder under D.C. Code § 22-2401 (1981) 

(current version at D.C. Code § 22-2101). See also 18 U.S.C. 

§ 2 (aiding and abetting); D.C. Code § 22-105 (1981) (current 

version at D.C. Code § 22-1805) (same). The murders were 

committed by other members of the charged conspiracy, with 

Smith or Raynor participating. With regard to the principles 

of liability, the district court instructed the jury that “[a]n 

aider and abettor is legally responsible for the acts of other 

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persons that are the natural and probable consequences of the 

crime in which he intentionally participates.” Dec. 9, 2002 

AM Trial Tr. at 95 (emphasis added).

Smith and Raynor challenge their federal and D.C. murder 

convictions on the ground that the “natural and probable 

consequences” formulation of the aiding and abetting 

instruction permitted the jury to render a guilty verdict 

without requiring the government to prove beyond a 

reasonable doubt that Smith and Raynor acted with the 

requisite specific intent to kill. Because they did not raise this 

objection in the district court, our review is for plain error. 

See United States v. Wilson, 605 F.3d 985, 1020 (D.C. Cir. 

2010). To prevail Smith and Raynor must therefore identify a 

legal error that was “plain,” meaning “clear” or “obvious,” 

and demonstrate that such error affected substantial rights and 

“seriously affect[ed] the fairness, integrity or public 

reputation of judicial proceedings.” United States v. Olano, 

507 U.S. 725, 732-37 (1993) (citation and quotation marks 

omitted). “[W]here the law at the time of trial was settled and 

clearly contrary to the law at the time of appeal . . . [,] it is 

enough that an error be ‘plain’ at the time of appellate 

consideration.” Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 468 

(1997). 

For the following reasons we conclude that even assuming 

error by the district court in using the “natural and probable 

consequences” instruction for the aiding and abetting charges, 

given the forfeiture of an argument by Smith and Raynor, the 

error was not prejudicial in view of the district court’s 

instruction on co-conspirator liability for acts reasonably 

foreseen as a necessary or natural consequence of the 

unlawful agreement. See Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 

640, 645-48 (1946).

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With respect to the first-degree murder convictions under 

the D.C. Code, Wilson-Bey v. United States, 903 A.2d 818 

(D.C. 2006) (en banc), controls. There, the D.C. Court of 

Appeals reversed a conviction for first-degree premeditated 

murder while armed, in violation of D.C. Code § 22-2401, 

because the “natural and probable consequences” aiding and 

abetting instruction “omitted the mens rea element of the 

offense charged,” namely “premeditation, deliberation, and 

intent to kill.” Id. at 822. The court rejected the “natural and 

probable consequences” formulation because its use was at 

odds with the longstanding requirement that an accomplice 

“knowingly associate[] herself with the commission of the 

crime, that she participate[] in the crime as something she 

wished to bring about, and that she intended by her actions to 

make it succeed.” Id. at 835. To hold otherwise, the court

reasoned, “would permit liability to be predicated upon 

negligence even when the crime involved requires a different 

state of mind,” id. at 837, and eviscerate the distinction 

between traditional first-degree murder and the unique 

foreseeability test of felony murder, see id. at 838-39. The 

government concedes as regards Smith’s and Raynor’s firstdegree murder convictions under the D.C. Code that the 

district court’s use of the “necessary and probable 

consequences” instruction was plain error. See Perez v. 

United States, 968 A.2d 39, 93 (D.C. 2009).

With regard to the CCE and RICO murder convictions 

under the U.S. Code, this court in reversing the aiding and 

abetting conviction in United States v. Wilson, 160 F.3d 732 

(D.C. Cir. 1998), held that aiding and abetting liability 

requires proof of some shared intent by the aider and abettor 

with that of the principal actor. There, the jury convicted 

Ralph and Louis Wilson of a conspiracy to kill a witness 

named Leroy Copeland, killing a witness with intent to 

prevent him from testifying, both in violation of the U.S. 

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Code, and first-degree murder while armed in violation of the 

D.C. Code. In addition, the jury found Marcellus Judd guilty 

of these crimes as an aider and abettor for his role in 

informing the Wilsons that Copeland could be found nearby. 

An aiding and abetting conviction required proof that Judd 

had: “(1) the specific intent to facilitate the commission of a 

crime by another; (2) guilty knowledge (3) that the other was 

committing an offense; and (4) assisting or participating in the 

commission of the offense.” United States v. Gaviria, 116 

F.3d 1498, 1535 (D.C. Cir. 1997). In concluding that there 

was insufficient evidence to convict Judd as an aider and 

abettor, this court reasoned:

To prove aiding and abetting the government must 

show that Judd shared some intent with the Wilson 

brothers and took some affirmative action to assist 

them in carrying out their plan to kill Copeland. See 

Gaviria, 116 F.3d at 1535. Although the intent of the 

aider and abettor need not be identical to that of the 

principal, see United States v. Walker, 99 F.3d 439, 

442 (D.C. Cir. 1996), the government still was 

required to show that Judd had sufficient knowledge 

and participation to allow a reasonable juror to infer

that he “knowingly and willfully participated in the 

offense in a manner that indicated he intended to make 

it succeed.” Teffera, 985 F.2d at 1086 (quoting United 

States v. Raper, 676 F.2d 841, 849 (D.C. Cir. 1982)).

Wilson, 160 F.3d at 738. Evidence that Judd knew the 

Wilsons were looking for Copeland was insufficient to show 

that he knew the Wilsons were intending to kill Copeland and 

that he had decided to assist them in that enterprise. See id.

The shared-intent standard for aiding and abetting in a 

conspiracy case is at odds with the “natural and probable 

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consequences formulation” of the aiding and abetting 

instruction insofar as the jury may substitute a foreseeability 

test for the mens rea requirement. Such use of the “natural 

and probable consequences” formulation functionally 

transforms aiding and abetting liability into conspiratorial 

liability, when the Supreme Court has recognized the two are 

distinct. Nye & Nissen v. United States, 336 U.S. 613, 620 

(1949) (“Aiding and abetting has a broader application. It 

makes a defendant a principal when he consciously shares in 

any criminal act whether or not there is a conspiracy.”); see 

id. at 630 (Murphy, J., dissenting) (the former involving “real 

participation” and the latter “more remote plotting”); accord

Wilson-Bey, 903 A.2d at 839-42. Appellants contend that the 

district court erred in instructing the jury with respect to the 

federal murder charges that “[a]n aider and abettor is legally 

responsible for the acts of other persons that are the natural 

and probable consequences of the crime in which he 

intentionally participates.” Dec. 9, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 95. 

Although the above-referenced quote from Wilson might tend 

in appellants’ direction, we note that the Supreme Court in 

2007 cited United States v. Walker, 99 F.3d 439, 443 (D.C. 

Cir. 1996), in listing states and circuits that continue to apply 

the “‘natural and probable consequences’ doctrine.” Gonzales 

v. Duenas-Alvarez, 549 U.S. 183, 190-91, 197 (2007). 

Although the instructional issue was not raised in Walker, this 

court described the “natural and probable consequences” 

instruction with approval. See 99 F.3d at 443 (citing United 

States v. Sampol, 636 F.2d 621, 676 (D.C. Cir. 1980)). 

Fortunately, we need not resolve any actual or apparent 

conflict between Walker and Wilson in order to decide the 

present issue, because the plain error standard of review 

applies. We can hardly say the district court plainly erred by 

following the same construction of precedent as the Supreme 

Court. We further note that Smith and Raynor fail to show 

how any such error “seriously affect[ed] the fairness, integrity 

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or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” Olano, 507 

U.S. at 732 (citation and quotation marks omitted). This is 

because the district court’s co-conspirator liability instruction 

cured any prejudice.

As a threshold matter, Smith and Raynor cursorily 

contend that their murder convictions may not be sustained 

under this alternative theory of liability because it is 

impossible to know whether the jury arrived at its verdict by 

following the district court’s aiding and abetting instruction or 

its Pinkerton instruction. They provide no citation for this 

argument, see Appellants’ Br. at 303 n.167, and it is 

mentioned only in a footnote. Hence the argument is 

forfeited. See Bush v. District of Columbia, 595 F.3d 384, 

388 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (citing FED. R. APP. P. 28(a)(9)(A)); Am. 

Wildlands v. Kempthorne, 530 F.3d 991, 1001 (D.C. Cir. 

2008).22

 22 We note, however, that the Supreme Court held in Yates v. 

United States, 354 U.S. 298, 312 (1957), that “the proper rule to be 

applied is that which requires a verdict to be set aside in cases 

where the verdict is supportable on one ground, but not on another, 

and it is impossible to tell which ground the jury selected.” The 

Court narrowed this holding in Griffin v. United States, 502 U.S. 

46, 59 (1991), to situations in which one of the grounds upon which 

the jury could have reached its verdict was legally, as opposed to 

factually, inadequate. See United States v. Johnson, 216 F.3d 1162, 

1165 n.2 (D.C. Cir. 2000). Although the prejudice inquiry might 

normally be cut short by application of the Yates rule where, as 

here, the challenge is to the legality of the aiding and abetting 

instruction, this court has suggested that review under the plain 

error standard, as opposed to the harmless error standard, in a Yates

case “would significantly affect the way in which [the court] 

analyze[s] [the] appeal” to the extent there is overwhelming 

evidence to support the conviction under the proper jury instruction, 

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The D.C. Court of Appeals’ post-Wilson-Bey decisions in 

Wheeler v. United States, 977 A.2d 973 (D.C. 2009), and Neal 

v. United States, 940 A.2d 101 (D.C. 2007), are instructive. 

In both cases, the court held that, despite an erroneous aiding 

and abetting instruction, a Pinkerton instruction preserved the 

convictions for a given crime because the jury, having 

convicted the aider and abettor of a charged conspiracy, could 

have found that the crime was foreseeable and committed in 

furtherance of the charged conspiracy. Smith and Raynor 

correctly respond that Wheeler concerned a conspiracy to 

commit a single overt act of murder, and the jury necessarily 

found that Wheeler acted with the specific intent to kill in 

convicting him of conspiracy to commit murder. 977 A.2d at 

984. Here, by contrast, the conspiracy count contains 236 

overt acts and such a conclusion cannot be drawn. But their 

argument misunderstands the relationship between the two 

 

but had no occasion to decide which was the appropriate standard. 

United States v. Perkins, 161 F.3d 66, 73-74 (D.C. Cir. 1998). 

Other circuits have held that Yates does not apply under the plain 

error standard because the burden of establishing harm is on the 

defendant. See United States v. Hastings, 134 F.3d 235, 242-44 

(4th Cir. 1998); see also United States v. Colvin, 353 F.3d 569, 

576-77 (7th Cir. 2003). 

Here, for two reasons, we will assume without deciding that 

under plain error review Yates does not require Smith’s and 

Raynor’s murder convictions to be set aside even though we do not 

know whether the jury convicted for aiding and abetting or under 

Pinkerton. First, Smith and Raynor have forfeited the argument by 

citing no authority and by raising it in a footnote. See Bush, 595 

F.3d at 388; Am. Wildlands, 530 F.3d at 1001. Second, Smith and 

Raynor shoulder the burden of demonstrating that instructional 

error prejudiced their defense under the plain error standard, see

Appellants’ Br. at 302, a position their counsel reiterated during 

oral argument, see Oral Arg. Tr. at 80.

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types of liability and conflates the two alternative approaches 

taken in Wheeler. See id. It is true that a conviction for 

conspiracy based on hundreds of possible overt acts does not 

permit the inference that the jury found the overt act murders 

to have been committed with the requisite intent. Such proof, 

however, is not required under the Pinkerton theory of 

liability. As the D.C. Court of Appeals explained in Wheeler:

Under Pinkerton . . . the intent necessary for 

conviction of murder as an aider and abettor under 

Wilson-Bey yields to virtually the same state of mind 

— the lesser foreseeability or natural and probable 

consequences standard — found erroneous in the 

court’s aiding-and-abetting instruction. In short, a 

conspiracy — an agreement not necessarily present 

among aiders and abettors — is deemed a substitute

for the particular state of mind required for convicting 

a nonconspiratorial accomplice of murder under 

Wilson-Bey. A jury finding that Wheeler had the state 

of mind required for conviction of first-degree murder 

was therefore not necessary for conviction under the 

Pinkerton theory.

Id. at 985 (emphasis added); accord United States v. VazquezCastro, 640 F.3d 19, 24 (1st Cir. 2011). Pinkerton coconspirator liability exists, moreover, even where the 

substantive offense is not an overt act alleged in the 

indictment. See United States v. Washington, 106 F.3d 983, 

1011 (D.C. Cir. 1997). It requires only that the substantive 

offense be committed in furtherance of the conspiracy and 

reasonably foreseeable as a necessary or natural consequence 

of the unlawful agreement. See id. at 1012. This is the 

relevant analysis here.

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There was ample evidence for the jury reasonably to find 

that the murders for which Smith and Raynor were convicted 

were foreseeable and in furtherance of the charged 

conspiracy. Smith and Raynor’s attempt to show otherwise is 

unpersuasive; they summarize the facts of each murder and 

claim either there was insufficient admissible evidence to 

support the murder conviction or there is no evidence 

establishing the murders were related to the conspiracy’s 

dealings. As regards the former, those contentions are 

discussed and rejected elsewhere. See supra Part XVIII. As 

regards the latter, the superseding indictment and evidence at 

trial make clear that one of the principal goals of the drug 

conspiracy was killing to enhance the conspiracy’s power, 

protect the reputation of the conspiracy and its members, and 

collect money owed to the conspiracy. See Superseding 

Indict. at 4-5. It was reasonable for the jury to find that each 

of the murders furthered one (if not more) of these goals. See 

United States v. Carson, 455 F.3d 336, 376 (D.C. Cir. 2006).

Accordingly, any error regarding the “natural and 

probable consequences” instruction did not “seriously affect[] 

the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial 

proceedings,” Olano, 507 U.S. at 732 (citation and quotation 

marks omitted), because the evidence supports the jury’s 

verdict on Smith’s and Raynor’s CCE, RICO, and first-degree 

murder convictions under the alternative Pinkerton theory of 

liability.

XXII.

Following the government’s proposal to try appellants 

together—in a trial separate from and prior to other charged 

co-conspirators—Nunn and Handy moved for severance of 

their trials from that of their codefendants. In a memorandum 

opinion, the district court denied Nunn’s and Handy’s 

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motions, adopting the government’s proposal to try all 

appellants in a single trial. United States v. Gray, 173 F. 

Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2001). Nunn and Handy argue on two 

bases that the district court erred by refusing to sever their 

trials. First, they argue that their codefendants were charged 

with more numerous and serious crimes, the evidence of 

which could have a “spillover” effect, akin to guilt-byassociation, that would prejudice the jury against them. 

Second, they maintain that they should not have been forced 

to be tried alongside Moore and Gray, who were facing the 

death penalty, because it caused them prejudice to be tried by 

a death-qualified jury. 

Rule 14(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 

provides that “[i]f the joinder of offenses or defendants in an 

indictment, an information, or a consolidation for trial appears 

to prejudice a defendant or the government, the court may 

order separate trials of counts, sever the defendants’ trials, or 

provide any other relief that justice requires.” As is clear 

from the text of the rule, district courts have significant 

flexibility to determine how to remedy any potential risk of 

prejudice posed by the joinder of multiple defendants in a 

single trial. See United States v. Lane, 474 U.S. 438, 449 n.12 

(1986). Thus “Rule 14 does not require severance even if 

prejudice is shown,” Zafiro v. United States, 506 U.S. 534, 

538-39 (1993), and in many circumstances district courts may 

order lesser forms of relief to cure any prejudice. Indeed, 

although a district court may grant a severance in a wider 

array of circumstances, the Supreme Court has held that “a 

district court should grant a severance under Rule 14 only if 

there is a serious risk that a joint trial would compromise a 

specific trial right of one of the defendants, or prevent the jury 

from making a reliable judgment about guilt or innocence.” 

Id. at 539. The Court has further explained that even “[w]hen 

the risk of prejudice is high, . . . less drastic measures, such as 

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limiting instructions, often will suffice to cure any risk of 

prejudice.” Id.

We review the district court’s decision not to sever the 

trials of defendants under Rule 14(a) only for abuse of 

discretion. Id. at 541; United States v. Brown, 16 F.3d 423, 

426-27 (D.C. Cir. 1994). In reviewing the exercise of the 

district court’s discretion, we keep in mind that “‘[t]he 

balance has been struck in favor of joint trials.’” United 

States v. Hines, 455 F.2d 1317, 1334 (D.C. Cir. 1972)

(alterations in original) (quoting United States v. Krechevsky, 

291 F. Supp. 290, 294 (D. Conn. 1967)). We hold that the 

district court did not abuse its discretion when it declined to 

sever the trials of Handy and Nunn from that of the other 

appellants. 

We turn first to the question of “spillover” prejudice: 

Acknowledging that it may prejudice a defendant to be tried 

together with another defendant accused of more serious or 

more numerous crimes, we have held that “severance is 

required when the evidence against one defendant is ‘far more 

damaging’ than the evidence against the moving party.” 

United States v. Bruner, 657 F.2d 1278, 1290 (D.C. Cir. 

1981) (quoting United States v. Mardian, 546 F.2d 973, 977 

(D.C. Cir. 1976) (en banc)). However, “[a]bsent a dramatic

disparity of evidence, any prejudice caused by joinder is best 

dealt with by instructions to the jury to give individual 

consideration to each defendant.” United States v. Slade, 627 

F.2d 293, 309 (D.C. Cir. 1980) (emphasis added). In other 

words, some disparity in evidence does not compel severance; 

rather, when there is “substantial and independent evidence of 

each [defendant’s] significant involvement in the conspiracy,” 

severance is not required. United States v. Tarantino, 846 

F.2d 1384, 1399 (D.C. Cir. 1988); see also Slade, 627 F.2d at 

310 (finding severance not required despite disparity in 

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116

evidence because evidence against defendant was 

“independent and substantial”).

In this case, although Handy and Nunn were alleged to 

have committed fewer crimes and arguably had a less 

extensive role in the charged conspiracy than the other 

defendants tried with them, the disparity of evidence did not 

rise to a level necessary to mandate severance. The 

government presented substantial and independent evidence 

of Handy’s and Nunn’s involvement in the charged 

conspiracy and crimes in furtherance thereof. Furthermore, 

the district court gave the following instruction to the jury:

Unless I have instructed you otherwise, you should 

consider each instruction that the Court has given you 

to apply separately and individually to each defendant 

on trial. Likewise, you should give separate 

consideration and render separate verdicts with respect 

to each defendant. Each defendant is entitled to have 

his guilt or innocence of the crime for which he is on 

trial determined from his own conduct and from the 

evidence that applies to him as if he were being tried 

alone. The guilt or innocence of any one defendant 

should not control or influence your verdict as to the 

other defendants. You may find any one or more of 

the defendants guilty or not guilty.

Dec. 9, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 90.

Although we do not ignore the possibility that some 

“spillover” prejudice may have resulted to Handy and Nunn 

from being tried together with their codefendants, the district 

court’s jury instructions, by explaining that each defendant’s 

guilt should be considered individually based upon the 

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evidence that pertained to him, were sufficient to cure any 

such prejudice. 

Furthermore, Handy and Nunn were not entitled to 

severance merely because their guilt was adjudicated by a 

death-qualified jury. Facing a death-qualified jury did not 

“compromise a specific trial right” of Handy or Nunn. Zafiro, 

506 U.S. at 539. Indeed, in Buchanan v. Kentucky, the 

Supreme Court made clear that trial before a death-qualified 

jury does not violate the constitutional rights of a noncapital 

defendant. 483 U.S. 402, 414-20 (1987). Neither did the 

death-qualification of the jury “prevent the jury from making 

a reliable judgment about guilt or innocence.” Zafiro, 506 

U.S. at 539. Implicit in the holding of Buchanan is the 

recognition that a death-qualified jury, no less than any other 

jury, is able to make a reliable judgment concerning guilt or 

innocence. To the extent appellants ask us to find that 

severance was required based only upon their allegation that 

death-qualified juries are more likely to convict than other 

juries, we may easily dispense with this argument as well. As 

the Supreme Court has explained, “defendants are not entitled 

to severance merely because they may have a better chance of 

acquittal in separate trials.” Id. at 540. The district court 

acted within the appropriate bounds of its discretion in 

declining to sever Handy’s and Nunn’s trials from that of their 

codefendants.

XXIII.

Next Handy contends that the district court erred in 

denying his motions for a new trial. Our review is for abuse 

of discretion unless the issue presented on appeal is purely 

legal, in which event our review is de novo. See United States 

v. Oruche, 484 F.3d 590, 595 (D.C. Cir. 2007).

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Handy filed his first motion for a new trial following his 

conviction for participating in drug and RICO conspiracies 

and several other crimes involving narcotics, murder, 

obstruction of justice, and the use of firearms. See Jan. 9, 

2003 AM Trial Tr. at 55-59. He argued there was insufficient 

evidence of his guilt and that the district court erred in making 

various evidentiary rulings and in instructing the jury. The 

district court denied the motion, finding that there was 

sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to conclude that 

Handy was a “hitman” for the conspiracy, which he joined in 

the mid-1990s, and rejecting his other claims of error. See 

United States v. Gray, 292 F. Supp. 2d 71, 90-91 (D.D.C. 

2003). Handy filed his second motion for a new trial during 

the pendency of the subsequent, separate trial of other alleged 

co-conspirators. This time he argued that the government had 

unconstitutionally withheld exculpatory and impeachment 

evidence, in violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 

(1963), and its progeny. The district court denied the motion, 

ruling that “the evidence is not at all exculpatory or 

impeaching” and “the withholding of the evidence did not 

prejudice Handy.” United States v. Handy, No. 00-157, at 3-4 

(D.D.C. Mar. 4, 2005).

On appeal, Handy raises only some of the arguments he 

made in his motions; only the sufficiency of evidence claims

relating to Handy’s entry into the conspiracy and the murders 

of Richard Simmons and Demetrius Green, and the Brady

claim relating to the pretrial statements of Cheryl Pinkard, are 

properly presented. The remaining arguments (including 

those relating to Scorpio Phillips) are forfeited because Handy 

has presented unsupported narratives lacking citation to the 

record and relevant authority. See Bush v. Dist. of Columbia, 

595 F.3d 384, 388 (D.C. Cir. 2010); United States v. Hall, 370 

F.3d 1204, 1209 n.4 (D.C. Cir. 2004). 

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A.

Handy’s arguments regarding the sufficiency of evidence 

are unpersuasive. Handy maintains there was a fatal variance 

between the superseding indictment and the government’s 

proof at trial regarding his entry into the conspiracy because

none of the cooperating co-conspirators testified that Handy 

had agreed with them or with Gray or Moore to join the 

charged conspiracy in the mid-1990s or thereafter. Such 

direct evidence of agreement is not required, however; the 

jury may infer conspiratorial agreement from the 

circumstances and the defendant’s knowledge. See United 

States v. Childress, 58 F.3d 693, 710 (D.C. Cir. 1995). The 

cooperating co-conspirators provided ample testimony upon 

which the jury reasonably could infer Handy’s knowledge of, 

and agreement to join, the drug conspiracy in the mid-1990s, 

and as early as 1994. See, e.g., May 21, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 

33-34; July 9, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 53-54. For example, 

Maurice Andrews testified that Handy was a participant in a 

drug operation located in the Northeast quadrant of 

Washington, D.C., which Moore and Gray actively managed 

in 1995-1996. See July 9, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 82-83; supra 

Part VII. Further, the continuity of Handy’s participation 

through 1998-1999, see July 10, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 71, 

undermines his contention that the evidence demonstrated at 

best a buyer-seller relationship, rather than membership in the 

conspiracy. See United States v. Thomas, 114 F.3d 228, 241 

(D.C. Cir. 1997); Childress, 58 F.3d at 714.

With respect to the Richard Simmons murder, the 

superseding indictment did not inconsistently charge Handy 

with committing the murder in July 1997 to gain entrance to 

the conspiratorial enterprise while also alleging that he joined 

the charged conspiracy in the mid-1990s. An indictment may 

charge alternative means of committing a crime. See United 

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States v. Coughlin, 610 F.3d 89, 106-07 & n.10 (D.C. Cir. 

2010). The superseding indictment, tracking the text of the 

RICO violent crimes statute, charged Handy with murdering 

Simmons for the alternative reasons listed in the statute — “as 

consideration for the receipt of, or as consideration for a 

promise or agreement to pay, anything of pecuniary value . . .

or for the purpose of gaining entrance to or maintaining or 

increasing position in an enterprise engaged in racketeering 

activity.” 18 U.S.C. § 1959(a); see also Count 60, 

Superseding Indict. at 134. The jury reasonably could have 

found from the evidence that Handy committed the murder in 

exchange for money, see Oct. 16, 2002 AM Trial Tr. at 130-

34, or to maintain his status as an enforcer, see July 9, 2002 

AM Trial Tr. at 54; see also United States v. Carson, 455 F.3d 

336, 370 (D.C. Cir. 2006).23

It also was well within reason for the jury to find that 

Demetrius Green’s murder was a consequence of a territorial 

drug dispute associated with the charged conspiracy. Green 

was selling marijuana for James Penn, who controlled a 

stretch of houses at the top of a hill on Forrester Street 

Southwest, less than a quarter mile from the Southeast border. 

Handy, accompanied by another man identified in the 

superseding indictment as Taron Oliver, was also selling 

marijuana down the hill nearer to the Southeast quadrant of 

Washington, D.C., not too far from Green. Penn understood 

Handy and Oliver to be associated with Erskine Hartwell, see

Sept. 24, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 19, all of whom were members 

of Moore and Gray’s drug operation in Northeast, see July 9, 

2002 PM Trial Tr. at 82; Aug. 26, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 113-

 23 There is no claim that the jury lacked unanimity as to the 

ground for conviction. See United States v. North, 910 F.2d 843, 

876 (D.C. Cir. 1990).

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16. Because Handy was, in Penn’s words, “stepping on 

[Green’s] toes” by taking sales away, Penn walked down the 

hill to “holler at [Handy]” to “slow down” and not make so 

many sales. Sept. 24, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 23, 25-26. 

Following the verbal warning, which was essentially ignored, 

Penn retreated up the hill to get his guns. Penn testified that 

he took action because Handy “didn’t have no business right 

there” and that Handy’s selling marijuana on that section of 

Forrester Street was considered to be “some sort of violation.” 

Id. at 26. By the time he retrieved his guns, Penn testified, 

“somebody had ran in and said they had shot [Green].” Id. at 

28. Oscar Veal testified that Handy later claimed credit for 

murdering Green. See Aug. 27, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 18. 

Eliminating rival competitors furthered the charged 

conspiracy by strengthening its presence in the D.C. drug 

trade. See United States v. Walker, 142 F.3d 103, 114 (2d Cir. 

1998).

B.

More colorable is Handy’s contention that the government 

failed to fulfill its obligations under Brady, 373 U.S. 83, by 

not disclosing exculpatory and impeachment evidence from 

Cheryl Pinkard, an eyewitness to Richard Simmons’s murder. 

The government’s key evidence against Handy was an 

eyewitness account of the murder by the victim’s mother, 

Margarita Simmons. Ms. Simmons testified at trial that just 

prior to the murder she was standing by Richard as he used a 

street pay phone. She watched as Handy ran down H Street, 

Northeast, from the 12th Street side, drew a gun, and fired at 

Richard. Ms. Simmons grabbed Richard briefly before he ran 

away from Handy toward the corner of 11th Street and H 

Street. Richard collapsed at that intersection and Handy, 

standing over him, shot Richard several times. See Aug. 19, 

2002 AM Trial Tr. at 9-14. Handy contends that an FBI 302 

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interview report24

Under Brady, the government has a constitutional 

obligation to disclose “evidence favorable to an accused that 

is material to guilt or to punishment.” Cone v. Bell, 129 S. Ct. 

1769, 1772 (2009); see also Oruche, 484 F.3d at 596. To 

show a Brady violation, the defendant must establish that the 

evidence or information is favorable to him, either because it 

is exculpatory or impeaching; that the evidence was 

suppressed by the government, either willfully or 

inadvertently; and that he was prejudiced by the 

nondisclosure. Strickler v. Greene, 527 U.S. 263, 281-82 

(1999); see also United States v. Bailey, 622 F.3d 1, 8 (D.C. 

Cir. 2010). Prejudice exists when the undisclosed evidence or 

information is “material,” meaning “there is a reasonable 

probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the 

defense, the result of the proceeding would have been 

different.” United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 682 (1985);

see also United States v. Pettiford, 627 F.3d 1223, 1227 (D.C. 

and the grand jury testimony of Pinkard, 

Richard’s girlfriend, were exculpatory and subject to 

disclosure under Brady because they could have been used to 

impeach Ms. Simmons’s testimony. See Giglio v. United 

States, 405 U.S. 150, 153-54 (1972). In Handy’s view, the 

report and grand jury testimony show that Pinkard did not see 

Ms. Simmons standing with Richard at the pay phone and 

therefore Ms. Simmons was not an eyewitness to the murder. 

The government responds that there was nothing exculpatory 

about the report or Pinkard’s grand jury testimony, and 

because they were not “material” disclosure was not required 

under Brady.

 24 FBI 302 reports “are the formal typewritten interview reports 

prepared from the rough [interview] notes and recorded on Form 

FD-302.” United States v. Harrison, 524 F.2d 421, 424 n.2 (D.C. 

Cir. 1975).

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Cir. 2010). The district court’s findings of fact, including 

determinations of credibility at trial and in post-trial 

proceedings, are reviewed for abuse of discretion, “[b]ut once 

the existence and content of undisclosed evidence has been 

established, the assessment of the materiality of evidence 

under Brady is a question of law,” which this court reviews de 

novo. Oruche, 484 F.3d at 595.

In making an initial determination about whether evidence 

or information is “material” and therefore subject to 

disclosure under Brady, see United States v. Williams-Davis, 

90 F.3d 490, 514 (D.C. Cir. 1996), the prosecutor is afforded 

“a degree of discretion” bound by “a corresponding burden” 

(inasmuch as the prosecution “alone can know what is 

undisclosed”) of “gaug[ing] the likely net effect of all such 

evidence and mak[ing] disclosure when the point of 

‘reasonable probability’ is reached,” Kyles v. Whitley, 514 

U.S. 419, 437 (1995). The Supreme Court has instructed that 

“the prudent prosecutor will resolve doubtful questions in 

favor of disclosure.” United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 108 

(1976); see Kyles, 514 U.S. at 439. This is particularly true 

where the defendant brings the existence of what he believes 

to be exculpatory or impeaching evidence or information to 

the attention of the prosecutor and the district court, in 

contrast to a general request for Brady material. See

Pennsylvania v. Ritchie, 480 U.S. 39, 59 (1987).

Here, a prudent prosecutor would have disclosed at least 

Pinkard’s grand jury testimony. Handy filed multiple 

requests for discovery, each of which sought Brady material 

related to the Simmons murder. Although Pinkard was not 

mentioned by name, Handy specifically sought, “[i]n 

reference to the Richard Simmons homicide, . . . any and all 

documents.” Def. Timothy Handy’s First Mot. to Compel 

Disc. app. 2, at 5 (Sept. 13, 2001). In subsequent 

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correspondence with the government, Handy asked for “all 

documents pertaining to statements of non-testifying 

witnesses” and “Brady evidence and information regarding 

the murder of Mr. Richard Simmons,” including “information 

that may impeach the witnesses against Mr. Handy.” Id. app. 

3, at 3. Although the Supreme Court has rejected the notion 

that Brady created a right of open file discovery for criminal 

defendants, see Kyles, 514 U.S. at 437; Ritchie, 480 U.S. at 

59, given Handy’s repeated requests and the centrality of 

eyewitness testimony to the government’s case against him 

concerning the Simmons murder, cf. Kyles, 514 U.S. at 441-

44, the prosecutor should have recognized that Pinkard’s 

eyewitness account raised at the least a “doubtful question[]” 

favoring disclosure under Brady, see Agurs, 427 U.S. at 108.

The government’s suggestion on appeal that Handy’s 

Brady claim is foreclosed by his knowledge at the time of trial 

is not well taken. It noted that Handy knew Pinkard had 

witnessed the shooting and cross-examined Ms. Simmons 

without Pinkard’s grand jury testimony. Although “the right 

of the defendant to disclosure by the prosecutor is deemed 

waived if defense counsel with actual knowledge of the . . .

information chooses not to present such information to the 

jury,” United States v. Iverson, 648 F.2d 737, 739 (D.C. Cir. 

1981), the specificity and scope of the defendant’s knowledge 

is the key consideration. In United States v. Smith, 77 F.3d 

511, 515-16 (D.C. Cir. 1996), the court held that although 

aspects of a witness’s plea agreement were known to the 

defendant, the prosecutor’s nondisclosure of other elements of 

the plea agreement unknown to the defendant violated Brady

because the information was material to the defendant’s 

ability to impeach the witness. A review of the trial transcript 

excerpts provided by the parties indicates that Handy knew 

only that Pinkard was at the murder scene and had 

accompanied Ms. Simmons to the hospital after the shooting; 

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his cross-examination of Ms. Simmons was limited to 

whether she spoke to Pinkard at the hospital, Aug. 19, 2002 

AM Trial Tr. at 60-61, and when she first saw Pinkard at the 

scene, Aug. 19, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 20-21. Absent the 

government’s disclosure of Pinkard’s grand jury testimony, 

Handy lacked a reason to delve further into Ms. Simmons’s 

and Pinkard’s allegedly different accounts of the murder. 

Under Brady it was incumbent upon the prosecutor to disclose 

Pinkard’s grand jury testimony to Handy for his use at trial. 

See Giglio, 405 U.S. at 154; Bagley, 473 U.S. at 678; United 

States v. Celis, 608 F.3d 818, 835 (D.C. Cir. 2010).

Nonetheless, Handy fails to show that the violation of his 

due process right to disclosure under Brady was “material.” 

See Strickler, 527 U.S. at 281-82; Bagley, 473 U.S. at 682. 

Handy places significant weight on Pinkard’s testimony of 

December 11, 2003, during the subsequent trial of other coconspirators. See Dec. 11, 2003 PM Group 2A Trial Tr. at 

28-30, 50-51, 82-83, 86, 92, 95-98. In his view, her testimony 

that Ms. Simmons was not standing by Richard’s side when 

he was talking on the pay phone before being shot is 

“illustrative” of the fact that Pinkard witnessed the murder but 

Ms. Simmons did not. This proves, Handy maintains, that the 

government knew Pinkard was a witness capable of 

impeaching Ms. Simmons’s credibility as an eyewitness to 

Richard’s murder, and thus her pretrial statements to law 

enforcement and grand jury testimony should have been 

disclosed. But Handy overstates the force of any likely 

impeachment.

First, Pinkard’s subsequent trial testimony is not as 

impeaching as Handy suggests. She acknowledged up to a 

minute gap between observing Richard walk out to the pay 

phone and looking up to see him run down the street. See id.

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at 95. Ms. Simmons might easily have appeared at Richard’s 

side during this time.

Second, before the grand jury Pinkard recounted that, 

prior to the murder, she was talking to her father on a pay 

phone across the street from Richard’s sports store. See Oct. 

27, 2000 Grand Jury Tr. at 23-24. She observed Richard exit 

the store to use the pay phone and signaled that they were 

running late by tapping her wrist. She then testified that “less 

than five minutes” later she “heard something go boom” and 

looked up to see Richard running down the street. See id. at 

24. She then crossed the street to where Richard had 

collapsed, noting that Ms. Simmons “was, like, already right 

there. I don’t know where she had come from.” Id. at 26. 

Absent from the grand jury transcript is any assertion by 

Pinkard that Ms. Simmons was not standing next to Richard 

when he was shot while standing at the pay phone. To the 

contrary, the following exchange occurred:

Q: And do you remember [Ms. Simmons] being outside 

at the time [of the shooting]?

A: I think she was, but I’m not sure . . . . I think she 

was, because I think — I’m not sure, but I think 

when [Richard] came out to use the phone, he had 

locked the door. But I’m not sure. I don’t know 

where she popped up from.

Id. at 41. Thus, Pinkard’s subsequent trial testimony is 

inconsistent with, rather than illustrative of, her grand jury 

testimony on the key point. In another respect, her grand jury 

testimony shares the same flaw as her subsequent trial 

testimony. The five-minute gap between Pinkard observing 

Richard at the pay phone and hearing the first gunshot was a 

relatively lengthy period during which Ms. Simmons could 

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have emerged from the store and joined Richard on the 

sidewalk without Pinkard’s knowledge. Had the government 

disclosed the grand jury testimony to Handy prior to his trial, 

there is not a reasonable probability that this information 

could have been used to impeach Ms. Simmons’s claim to be 

an eyewitness to Richard’s murder such that it would have 

changed the outcome of the proceeding.

Third, even assuming a prudent prosecutor would have 

disclosed the FBI 302 interview report, it contains no 

representation one way or the other as to whether Ms. 

Simmons was present at the time of Richard’s murder. The 

only reference to Ms. Simmons is this sentence: “PINKARD 

stated that she and [Richard] SIMMONS has just left their 

house and were en route to the movies when SIMMONS’ 

mother paged him.” See Def. Handy’s Second Mot. for New 

Trial Exhibit 18, at 1 (Dec. 18, 2004). It is far from apparent 

how Handy could have used information from the FBI 302 

interview report to impeach Ms. Simmons’s credibility as an 

eyewitness and, as such, we are confident its use, even with 

disclosure of Pinkard’s grand jury testimony, would not have 

changed the outcome of the proceedings.

XXIV.

We reject all claims raised by appellants that we have not 

discussed individually. We have fully considered all such 

claims and find they do not warrant separate discussion or 

relief.

* * *

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm all of appellants’ 

convictions except Count 32, which we vacate; Counts 4 and 

5, which we remand to the district court for an evidentiary 

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hearing and to address Smith’s ineffective assistance of 

counsel claim; and Counts 126-138, which we remand to the 

district court for consideration in light of Bullcoming v. New 

Mexico, No. 09-10876 (U.S. June 23, 2011).

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ROGERS, Circuit Judge, concurring in part in Part I of the

per curiam opinion: In Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986),

the Supreme Court announced a three-part analysis to identify

whether racial discrimination had motivated peremptory

challenges in jury selection. First, the defendant must establish

a prima facie case by showing that “the totality of the relevant

facts gives rise to an inference of discriminatory purpose,” with

respect to either a particular peremptory strike or a pattern of

strikes. Id. at 93–94. Second, the prosecutor must “come

forward with a neutral explanation for challenging [the] jurors,”

not based on racial or other impermissible classifications. Id. at

97. Third, the trial judge then “will have the duty to determine

if the defendant has established purposeful discrimination.” Id.

at 98; see also Johnson v. California, 545 U.S. 162, 168 (2005);

Purkett v. Elem, 514 U.S. 765, 767 (1995). This court has

seldom addressed a Batson challenge, and on the rare occasion

it has, our analysis of step three was limited. A few 1

observations beyond those stated by the court today are in order.

Justice Marshall, concurring in Batson, which he

characterized as a “historic step toward eliminating the shameful

practice of racial discrimination in the selection of juries,” had

grave doubts that the goal of “end[ing] the racial discrimination

that peremptories inject into the jury-selection process” could be

accomplished without “eliminating peremptory challenges

See United States v. Watson, 483 F.3d 828 (D.C. Cir. 2007);

1

United States v. Spriggs, 102 F.3d 1245, 1254–55 (D.C. Cir. 1996);

United States v. White, 899 F.2d 52 (Table), 1990 WL 42213 (D.C.

Cir. Apr. 4, 1990). By contrast, the Batson issue has been fulsomely

explored on multiple occasions by the District of Columbia Court of

Appeals where the United States Attorney is also responsible for

prosecutions involving felonies and major misdemeanors under the

D.C. Code. See, e.g., Smith v. United States, 966 A.2d 367, 369–88

(D.C. 2009).

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2

entirely.” Id. at 102–03 (Marshall, J., concurring). His doubts,

he explained, arose because defendants are only able to attack

discriminatory use of peremptory challenges where the

challenges are so flagrant as to establish a prima facie case, and

because trial judges face the difficult burden of assessing a

prosecutor’s motives. See id. at 105–06. As to the latter, Justice

Marshall asked, citing examples from the case law:

How is the court to treat a prosecutor’s statement that

he struck a juror because the juror had a son about the

same age as [the] defendant, or seemed

“uncommunicative,” or “never cracked a smile” and,

therefore “did not possess the sensitivities necessary to

realistically look at the issues and decide the facts in

this case”?

Id. at 106 (internal citations omitted). Justice Marshall foresaw

that “[i]f such easily generated explanations are sufficient to

discharge the prosecutor’s obligation to justify his strikes on

nonracial grounds, then the protection erected by the Court

today may be illusory.” Id. 

Justice Powell, writing for the Court, responded:

While we respect the views expressed in Justice

Marshall’s concurring opinion concerning

prosecutorial and judicial enforcement of our holding

today, we do not share them. . . . We have no reason to

believe that prosecutors will not fulfill their duty to

exercise their challenges only for legitimate purposes. 

Certainly, this Court may assume that trial judges, in

supervising voir dire in light of our decision today, will

be alert to identify a prima facie case of purposeful

discrimination. Nor do we think that this historic trial

practice, which long has served the selection of an

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3

impartial jury, should be abolished because of an

apprehension that prosecutors and trial judges will not

perform conscientiously their respective duties under

the Constitution.

Id. at 99 n.22 (majority opinion).

The Supreme Court, therefore, expected that trial judges, in

fulfilling their duty, would effectively ensure that the justice

system did not facilitate the denial of equal protection by

remaining vigilant and attentive to the risk that overzealous

prosecutors may inject racial strategies into jury selection in the

effort to obtain a conviction. See, e.g., Duncan v. Louisiana,

391 U.S. 145, 155-56 (1968). The Court expected the trial judge

would undertake “‘a sensitive inquiry into such circumstantial

and direct evidence of intent as may be available.’” Batson, 476

U.S. at 93 (quoting Arlington Heights v. Metro. Hous. Dev.

Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 266 (1977)). 

The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized the

significance of the trial judge’s role at step three. In Johnson, 

the Court explained:

The first two Batson steps govern the production of

evidence that allows the trial court to determine the

persuasiveness of the defendant’s constitutional claim. 

“It is not until the third step that the persuasiveness of

the justification becomes relevant — the step in which

the trial court determines whether the opponent of the

strike has carried his burden of proving purposeful

discrimination.”

545 U.S. at 171 (quoting Purkett, 514 U.S. at 768). Indeed, the

defendant need not show that it is more likely than not that the

peremptory challenges, if unexplained, were based on

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4

impermissible group bias, id. at 168, 173, and the case proceeds

to step three even if the prosecution “produces only a frivolous

or utterly nonsensical justification for its strike,” id. at 171. As

explained in Snyder v. Louisiana, 552 U.S. 472 (2008):

The trial court has a pivotal role in evaluating Batson

claims. Step three of the Batson inquiry involves an

evaluation of the prosecutor’s credibility, and “the best

evidence [of discriminatory intent] often will be the

demeanor of the attorneywho exercises the challenge.” 

In addition, race-neutral reasons for peremptory

challenges often invoke a juror’s demeanor (e.g.,

nervousness, inattention), making the trial court’s

first-hand observations of even greater importance.

Id. at 477 (alteration in original) (internal citations omitted). A

reviewing court, in turn, “ordinarily should give [the trial

judge’s] findings” based on an evaluation of demeanor and

credibility “great deference.” Batson, 476 U.S. at 98 n.21.

“The Batson framework is designed to produce actual

answers to suspicions and inferences that discrimination may

have infected the jury selection process.” Johnson, 545 U.S. at

172. “The three-step process . . . simultaneously serves the

public purposes Batson is designed to vindicate and encourages

prompt rulings on objections to peremptory challenges without

substantial disruption of the jury selection process.” Id. at

172–73 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The

rights Batson vindicates, however, are not confined to the rights

possessed by the defendant on trial, but extend “to those citizens

who desire to participate ‘in the administration of the law, as

jurors,’” id. at 172 (quoting Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S.

303, 308 (1880)), as well as to “the overriding interest in

eradicating discrimination from our civic institutions [that]

suffers whenever an individual is excluded from making a

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5

significant contribution to governance on account of his race” or

other suspect characteristic, id. The “harm from discriminatory

jury selection extends beyond that inflicted on the defendant and

the excluded juror to touch the entire community,”for

“[s]election procedures that purposefully exclude black persons

from juries undermine public confidence in the fairness of our

system of justice.” Batson, 476 U.S. at 87; see also Powers v.

Ohio, 499 U.S. 400, 412 (1991). Long before Batson, the

Supreme Court had observed: “For racial discrimination to

result in the exclusion from jury service of otherwise qualified

groups not only violates our Constitution and the laws enacted

under it but is at war with our basic concepts of a democratic

society and a representative government.” Smith v. Texas, 311

U.S. 128, 130 (1940) (footnote omitted). The role of the trial

judge, in either dispelling any notion that the proceedings have

been affected by prejudice or repudiating such prejudice when

it occurs, remains paramount, even today in the District of

Columbia. This important function of the trial judge is fully 2

consistent with the motivations underlying Batson, 476 U.S. at

87, and not served by conclusory or dismissive rulings of the

district court. 

 A five-part study of jury service in the District of Columbia

2

by the National Center for State Courts identified that among the

reasons the general public avoids jury service is perceived unfairness

and biases in the justice system. See Richard Seltzer, The Vanishing

Juror: Why Are There Not Enough Available Jurors?, 20 JUST. SYS.

J. 203, 212 (1999). Various recommendations have been developed

to address this perception, including the elimination or curtailment of

peremptory strikes that in “the experience of most trial judges . . . at

a minimum, give[] the appearance that prospective jurors are being

peremptorily stricken on grounds of race, gender or both.” COUNCIL

FOR COURT EXCELLENCE: DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA JURY PROJECT,

JURIES FOR THE YEAR 2000 AND BEYOND: PROPOSALS TO IMPROVE

THE JURY SYSTEMS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. 26 (1998).

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6

Since Batson, when the Supreme Court has encountered

cases where the trial judge failed to fulfill his or her duty, it has

not hesitated to examine the voir dire proceedings in painstaking

detail, inasmuch as a single instance of racial discrimination in

jury selection requires reversal of a conviction, see id. at 95–96. 

An example of such detailed review is Snyder, where the trial

judge failed to make a finding on the record based on the

evidence presented regarding the prosecutor’s two explanations

for striking an African American juror, and consequently the

deference inherent in clear error review was replaced by what

was tantamount to de novo review. See 552 U.S. at 479, 482.3

This is reflected in the practice of circuit courts of appeals when

reviewing contentions that would normally be subject to clear

error review but for the fact that the district court made no

findings of fact. See, e.g., United States v. Microsoft Corp., 147

F.3d 935, 945 n.7 (D.C. Cir. 1998); see also United States v.

Smith, 640 F.3d 580, 596 (4th Cir. 2011); United States v.

McMath, 559 F.3d 657, 663 (7th Cir. 2009); Dennis v. Mitchell,

354 F.3d 511, 517 (6th Cir. 2003); Armienti v. United States,

234 F.3d 820, 822 (2d Cir. 2000); United States v. Vega, 221

F.3d 789, 795 (5th Cir. 2000). As to the first of two

explanations proffered, the Supreme Court reasoned in Snyder

that, in the absence of a specific finding, it could not “presume

that the trial judge credited the prosecutor’s assertion that [the

juror] was nervous.” Id. As to the second proffered

explanation, the Supreme Court concluded, quoting at length the

In adopting a clear error standard of review, the Supreme

3

Court in Snyder, 552 U.S. at 77, cited the plurality opinion in

Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S. 352 (1991), in which concern was

expressed that a more searching review of findings made in a state trial

court would be incompatible with concepts of federalism. Id. at 369.

No federalism concern exists with respect this court’s review of the

district court’s Batson ruling.

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7

transcription of the trial court proceedings, that the prosecutor’s

“explanation given for the strike . . . is by itself unconvincing,”

id. at 478, and that “[t]he implausibility of this explanation is

reinforced by the prosecutor’s acceptance of white jurors who

disclosed conflicting [time] obligations that appear to have been

at least as serious as [those of the struck black juror],” id. at 483;

cf. Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322 (2003) (on habeas

petition). Additionally, when confronted on habeas review with

a state prosecutorial policy to strike African American members

of the venire that resulted in a pattern of such strikes in MillerEl v. Dretke, 545 U.S. 231, the Supreme Court held, upon a

searching record review, that the trial judge’s factual findings as

to the nonpretextual nature of the state’s race-neutral

explanations were wrong by clear and convincing evidence, id.

at 266. In a concurring opinion one Justice acknowledged

Justice Marshall’s concerns and the defects intrinsic to the

Batson analysis, see id. at 266–67 (Breyer, J., concurring), and

concluded that “a peremptory jury-selection system that permits

or encourages the use of stereotypes work[s] at cross-purposes”

with “the law’s antidiscrimination command,” id. at 271–72.

TheSupremeCourt’s post-Batson precedent has forewarned

lower courts that Batson objections are not to be lightly

dismissed. A one-size-fits-all approach by the trial judge —

summarilystating that the prosecutor’s explanations are credible

— risks reversal of a conviction on appeal. The Supreme Court

has held that the prosecutor’s response to an allegation of

racially motivated peremptory strikes “must [be] a ‘clear and

reasonably specific’ explanation of his ‘legitimate reasons’ for

exercising the challenges.” Batson, 476 U.S. at 98 n.20 (quoting

Tex. Dep’t of Cmty. Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 258

(1981)). It would be remarkable, to say the least, to conclude

that the trial judge’s evaluation at step three of the Batson

analysis need not also be clear and reasonably specific.

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8

Even though “these determinations of credibility and

demeanor lie peculiarly within a trial judge’s province and . . .

in the absence of exceptional circumstances, [the Supreme

Court] would defer to [the trial court],” Snyder, 552 U.S. at 477

(second alteration in original) (internal citations and quotation

marks omitted), no deference is due to the trial judge’s Batson

ruling based on the evidence before it unless it explains on the

record why it credited the prosecutor’s race-neutral explanation

and rejected the defendant’s arguments that an individual strike

was racially motivated or that a series of strikes demonstrated a

pattern of racially motivated strikes. See id. at 479; cf. Miller-El

v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. at 341–43. After all, in Batson, and before

and after, the Supreme Court emphasized that purposeful racial

discrimination in jury selection, resulting in the denial of equal

protection, “harms not only the accused whose life or liberty

they are summoned to try,” but “extends beyond that inflicted on

the defendant and the excluded juror to touch the entire

community,” “undermin[ing] public confidence in the fairness

of our system of justice.” Batson, 476 U.S. at 87; see also

Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. at 237–38; Strauder v. West

Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 309 (1880). The Court’s precedent

contemplates no less than that trial judges will give full

consideration to the evidence presented of racial bias, see

Snyder, 552 U.S. at 478, by, for example, comparing the

prosecutor’s behavior in striking, not striking, and questioning

like jurors of different races, looking for patterns or statistical

disparities, and examining whether any policy or practice of the

relevant prosecutor’s office implicates Batson concerns, see,

e.g., Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. at 331–35.

Because the district court’s findings in the instant case

were conclusory, without sufficient explanation to permit

meaningful appellate review, the usual deferential review falls

away and the question is whether this court, upon review of the

record, finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the

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9

defendant has established purposeful discrimination by the

prosecutor. Although not characterized by the Supreme Court

as de novo review, the analysis of the court today, sifting struckjuror by struck-juror through the transcription of the Batson

proceedings, much as the Supreme Court did for a single struck

juror in Snyder, reflects this reality. See Op. at 9–13. The

Supreme Court contemplated, inasmuch as a single Batson

violation requires reversal of a conviction, see, e.g., Snyder, 552

U.S. at 478, that the trial judge would provide a record that

reveals on an objection-by-objection basis how, upon

considering “all of the circumstances that bear upon the issue of

racial animosity,” id. (citing Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. at

239), the defense objections to the prosecutor’s strike

explanations were resolved. Otherwise, the Supreme Court’s

expectation of the constitutional protection institutionalized in

Batson, as well as the expectations for the prosecutor and trial

judge described in Justice Powell’s response to Justice

Marshall’s concerns, will have proven illusory. This explains

the painstaking review of the trial court record that the Supreme

Court has undertaken, for example, in Snyder, 552 U.S. at 478-

84, and Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. at 240–66, to underscore

that the third step of Batson cannot become a matter of rote or

one-size-fits-all analysis.

On the merits, appellants’ Batson challenges do not entitle

them to reversal of their convictions, even upon de novo review

of the record. A single example suffices. Defense counsel 4

challenged the striking of “Juror 5773” on the ground that the

prosecutor was applying a double standard in peremptorily

striking “Juror 5773,” an African American male, but not “Juror

6487,” a Caucasian male. Both were opposed to the death

penalty. The prosecutor in his Batson step two response stated

 Appellants do not pursue on appeal their Batson challenges

4

based on gender. See Appellee’s Br. at 28 n.21.

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10

that “Juror 5773” gave equivocal answers about the death

penalty and his religious views thereon. Appellants maintain

that the record showed that the main concern of “Juror 5773”

was not religious but a concern of condemning the wrong man

to death. During the Batson colloquy, defense counsel had

argued that “Juror 5773” had “some pro-prosecution instincts

regarding the death penalty, but [was] generallythoughtful,” and

disagreed that “Juror 5773” “would oppose the death penalty on

religious grounds.” Instead of dealing with this factual

disagreement and making reasonably specific findings on the

record to which this court, as appropriate, could defer, the

district court ruled as to all defense challenges that it credited

the prosecutor’s explanation of non-racial reasons for all of the

peremptory strikes of African American members of the venire. 

A review of the transcription of the Batson proceedings

supports the plausibility of the prosecutor’s race-neutral

explanations for its peremptory challenge to “Juror 5773,” even

upon de novo review. The relevant answers provided by the two

veniremen in their questionnaires reveals a salient difference. 

The Caucasian venireman followed his expression of opposition

to the death penalty with the statement: “I would try to abide by

the Court’s instruction, not my personal belief.” By contrast, the

African American venireman indicated his concerns about the

death penalty would cause him to have concerns about being

fair, explaining he had “so many questions about the death

penalty and [his] belief in it.” Cognizant that the burden of

persuasion to prove the existence of purposeful discrimination

in peremptory strikes ultimately rests with the defendant,

Johnson, 545 U.S. at 170–71, it is apparent that the prosecutor’s

proffered explanation that the difference in the veniremen’s

answers and not a difference in their race motivated their

disparate treatment. For essentially the reasons stated by the

court with respect to the remaining strikes,see Op. at 9–13, each

likewise survives de novo review of the record.

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11

In view of the equal protection concerns identified earlier,

a final observation bears mentioning. As a matter of public

record, the jury venire in the District of Columbia in 2011 is

unlikely, as it was in 2002 when jury selection began in the

instant case, to have a majority of African American venire

members, no matter how many are peremptorily struck by the

prosecutor. The U.S. Census of 2000 showed that African

Americans were 60.0% of the District of Columbia’s population,

with Caucasians making up 30.8%; Hispanics or Latinos were

7.9%. The venire in the instant case was approximately threequarters African American, and the twelve-member jury that

was selected for trial was composed of nine African American

jurors and three Caucasian jurors. The demographics have

changed. The U.S. Census of 2010 showed that African

Americans comprise 50.7% of the District of Columbia’s

population to Caucasian’s 38.5%, with Hispanics or Latinos

comprising 9.1%. Likely then, in a trial of an African 5

American defendant, a prosecutor will no longer be able to pose

the rhetorical question in the government’s brief, contrary to the

purposes of Batson and its progeny: Why, as a matter of trial

tactics, would the government discriminate in exercising

peremptory challenges when the venire and the petit jury would

be overwhelming African American? Appellee’s Br. at 68; see

also May 7, 2002 PM Trial Tr. at 25, 32. Courts in the District

of Columbia likewise will likely be unable, as a factual matter,

to base acceptance of a prosecutor’s race-neutral explanations

for strikes at Batson’s third step in part on the generality, as in

2002, that a predominantly African American jury will

nonetheless be seated. To the extent distrust of the justice

Individuals are called for jury service in the District of

5

Columbia based on lists of registered voters, licensed drivers, and

those having nondriver identification cards from the D.C. Department

of Motor Vehicles. See Seltzer, supra note 2, at 204.

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12

system among minorities and women persists, based in part on

fear that they will be discriminated against during jury service,

see supra note 2, accepting the prosecution’s approach, as

reflected in the rhetorical question, suggests in view of the

changing demographics in the District of Columbia at least two

concerns: First, a growing risk that an overzealous prosecutor

could be successful in turning a jury toward conviction based on

racially motivated or otherwise discriminatory peremptory

strikes. Second, such activity by prosecutors would result in

greater mistrust of the justice system and reduced participation

in jury service by the affected populations.

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