Opinion ID: 2553473
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Defense Counsel Reasonably Relied on the Prosecutor's Opening Statement

Text: The question for the trial courtand for this court on appealis what measures should have been taken to mitigate the prejudice to the defense resulting from the prosecutor's opening and later change in strategy as the trial progressed. Relying on the prosecutor's opening statement, defense counsel announced to the jury that the defense would present evidence that corroborated appellant's claim of self-defense. This was a promise that the defense would have fulfilled, but was prevented from fulfilling, by the prosecutor's mid-trial change of course after the trial judge's evidentiary ruling. The majority concludes, in essence, that because the prosecutor cannot be held to its promise to the jury, the defense has no remedy for its good faith, detrimental reliance on the prosecutor's in-court representation. An unfortunate consequence of the majority's analysis is that it condones the prosecutor's failure to obtain the judge's ruling before making an assertion in opening statement that was legally questionable; it also implies that defense counsel should mistrust, and be on guard against, representations made in open court by the prosecutor. As the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has emphasized, however, the federal courts generally, and this court in particular, have strictly enforced, Gaither, 134 U.S.App.D.C. at 172, 413 F.2d at 1079, the prosecutor's obligation to take care to ensure that statements made in opening and closing arguments to the jury are supported by evidence introduced at trial. United States v. Small, 316 U.S.App.D.C. 15, 19, 74 F.3d 1276, 1280 (1996); see Anthony, 935 A.2d at 284 (citing Small ). Lowering the standards expected of prosecutors also undermines the civility and efficiency of court proceedings that this court and the Bar have so assiduously tried to promote. We have emphasized the importance of the reliance that counsel can place on each other's representations in civil trials. See Miranda v. Contreras, 754 A.2d 277, 281 (D.C.2000) (As colleagues at bar and officers of the court, and to ensure the efficient, accurate and just operation of judicial proceedings, counsel must be able reasonably to rely on representations made by fellow counsel in the context of litigation. Conversely, counsel should not be able to reap the windfall of his or her misrepresentation to fellow counsel.). No less should be required in the context of a criminal proceeding, where the public's interest in seeing that justice is done and the court's role in assuring a fair proceeding are paramount. As the majority recognizes, we have held prosecutors to the consequences of their representations concerning trial strategy when, for example, the prosecutor misinformed defense counsel that the defendant had no impeachable convictions; when the defendant took the stand at trial, the prosecutor was not permitted to impeach him with prior convictions. Wilson v. United States, 606 A.2d 1017, 1020 (D.C. 1992), overruled on other grounds by Lyons v. United States, 683 A.2d 1066, 1067 (D.C.1996). The majority distinguishes this principle of reliance on the ground that the cases we have decided involved representations made pre-trial, designed to promote the efficient administration of justice, and that, because the government is obligated to respond accurately and unambiguously to pretrial inquiries made by the court, the defense is entitled to rely on the prosecutor's responses. See ante at 10, quoting Wilson, 606 A.2d at 1020, 1021, 1023. The critical factor, however, is not whether a representation is made before trial or during trial, but whether opposing counsel was entitled to rely on the representation in preparing and presenting the defense case. [6] The majority does not explain why defense counsel should not be as entitled to rely on representations made by the prosecutor in open court during trial as on those made pre-trial. See Rosser v. United States, 381 A.2d 598, 609 (D.C.1977) (noting in the context of incomplete discovery that our decision here turns on the government's incorrect representation. . . in open court . . . coupled with the prosecution's implied delivery of [witness's] complete grand jury testimony. . .). It is true that representations made by a prosecutor pretrial can lead the defense to forgo certain strategies and defenses. It is at least equally true, however, that the defense can be seriously prejudiced by representations made during trial. Once trial strategy is formulated and the case has been previewed in opening and is being presented to the jury, the defense has less room to maneuver. Therefore, any disruption caused by the defense's detrimental reliance on the prosecutor's representations at trial, when the defense has fewer options, has the potential for serious prejudice. In this case, defense counsel responded to the misimpression created by the prosecutor's opening by telling the jurors in the defense opening statement that they would hear appellant's statement to the police that he had stabbed Boyd in self-defense. Defense counsel's response was based entirely on the representation made by the prosecutor in his opening statement that the other (inculpatory) part of appellant's statement would be introduced during trial. Defense counsel's action was reasonably based on the exigencies of the rule of completeness, as explained in the trial judge's ruling. Defense counsel offered to show the trial judge the opening statement he had drafted before he heard the prosecutor's representation to prove that, otherwise, the defense opening would not have promised the jury that the exculpatory statement also would be introduced. [7] It is the inability to fulfill that promise, which remained unfulfilled not because of defense counsel's doing but as a direct result of the prosecutor's initial carelessness and change in strategy, that appellant claims unfairly prejudiced his claim of self-defense before the jury. It is important to note that this case is not like Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U.S. 731, 89 S.Ct. 1420, 22 L.Ed.2d 684 (1969), or Owens v. United States, 497 A.2d 1086 (D.C. 1985), on which the majority relies. Frazier recognized that [m]any things might happen during the course of the trial which would prevent the presentation of all the evidence described in advance during opening statement. 394 U.S. at 736, 89 S.Ct. 1420 (emphasis added). Here, unlike in Frazier where the witness the government reasonably, id., expected to call invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify, nothing prevented the government from introducing the part of appellant's statement to the police that it had said it would introduce during opening statement. The trial judge's ruling in this case did not prevent the prosecutor from introducing the statement; rather, the trial judge's ruling made clear that the rule of completeness would not permit the prosecutor's plan to present only the inculpatory part of appellant's statement and that fairness required that the jury be apprised of the exculpatory part of appellant's statement as well. This ruling was not what the prosecutor had hoped for and not to his liking, so the prosecutor changed his mind and chose not to introduce appellant's statement. Because the defense could not introduce the statement itself over the prosecutor's hearsay objection, it could not fulfill its promise to the jury that it would hear that appellant had early on asserted to the police that he had stabbed Boyd in self-defense. That is a critical distinction between this case and Frazier and Owens. In those cases, the issue was whether the government had been unfairly advantaged by the prosecutor's reasonable mention in opening statement of facts helpful to its case that were not supported by evidence introduced at trial. Frazier, 394 U.S. at 734, 89 S.Ct. 1420; Owens, 497 A.2d at 1091; cf. Najafi, 886 A.2d at 104 (prosecutor repeatedly implied during opening, without any evidentiary support, that defendant was running a business of selling drugs). That was a concern here as well; but neither Frazier nor Owens involved the additional prejudice resulting from the defense's reliance on the prosecutor's opening statement to make its own evidentiary promise to the jury.