Opinion ID: 2057903
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Rebuttal of the proof of motive

Text: Reams first argues that, even if the trial judge could properly exclude his hearsay version of his whereabouts at the time of the shooting, it was important for the jury to hear his explanation for why in the weeks following the fight he had not returned to Ivy Citycontrary to the prosecution's theory that he had exiled himself in smoldering anger over the fight. He refers in particular to the portion of the statement where, after telling the police that he had stayed in the house for the last two weeks in May and the whole [month of] June, he had explained why: Me and my nephew, I mean getting my nieces preparation to go to school, fixing the meals, you know, getting them up in the morning so they can go to school eacheach and every day. Cause it was close to school coming up. So, you know, I stayed in the house, you know. Cook them dinner, cook them breakfast. Don't go nowhere. Stay in the house, watch T.V., play video-games. It wasn't no reason for me to leave the house. Or, go next door and talk to my neighbor, and come right back in. Reams argues that by excluding this portion of the statement the judge denied the jury insight into his lifestyle and the way in which he would likely make a decision about what activities to engage in on a given daythe full picture, in other words, of a young man who was without a particular agenda, ... who weighed hanging out on the street against staying home and watching television (Br. for App. at 23). Reams has failed to preserve this claim, as a review of the hearing on the government's motion in limine makes clear. Reams did explain to the judge, initially, that in contrast to the government's theory that he does the shooting in June ... because he gets into this fight, in other portions of the statement he describe[d] the fight as being innocuous and that what he does instead of going back to the neighborhood is to stay home and focus on taking care of [his] niece and nephew and helping out. The judge immediately replied:  All of that would come in, though; right? If he is talking about the fight, if he says it was innocuous, that comes in. ... The point you are raising, actually would be available to the jury. (Emphasis added.) Despite these signals that the judge believed some of Reams's post-fight behaviorhis innocuous[ly] staying home to care for the children admissible through his statement, Reams effectively let the matter drop, remaining silent when it soon became evident that the judge understood the parties to be disputing the admissibility of Reams's account of his actions on the date of the shooting itself. Twice the judge stated that it seem[ed] to [him] the correct rule [was] that the portion of the statement that relates to the fight ... can come in, but that [t]he portion ... that relates to the day of the murder may not come in. On neither of these occasions did Reams assert that he desired to introduce proof of something less or more limitedhis interim behavior in the weeks after the fight to show why that and not the innocuous fight explained his not having returned to Ivy City. Indeed, he did not do so even when the judge ultimately put the burden on the parties to review the videotape of the statement and agree on what statements related to the fight or went to the subject of the motive, adding that [a]ny portion of this tape about the fight that [the government] ha[s] not chosen can come in (emphasis added). Following the government's testimony about the statement, Reams did not seek to revisit the issue of admissibility on cross-examination or in his own case. In these circumstances, to find error by the trial judge in excluding other portions of the statement related to Reams's conduct after the fight would amount to blind-siding. [A] defendant [must] demonstrate with particularity the unfairness in the selective admission of his post-arrest statement. United States v. Branch, 91 F.3d 699, 729 (5th Cir.1996). Particularly when nothing in the judge's subsequent remarks contradicted his apparent initial receptiveness to admitting parts of the statement that shed differentmore innocuouslight on Reams's post-fight change of behavior, faulting the judge for Reams's own failure to press the issue of admitting those portions would itself be an unfair application of the rule. We thus review this claim of violation of the completeness doctrine under the plain error standard. See generally United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993). An initial question is whether it should have been obvious to the trial judge, id. at 734, 113 S.Ct. 1770, that without hearing other portions of Reams's statement the jury might form a distorted impression concerning motivefrom Reams's admission that he had not returned to Ivy City after the fight. Answering that question is complicated by the fact that at the time the judge applied the doctrine he had not, as he pointed out, viewed the videotape of the statement and was ruling strictly on the proffers of the parties; [2] this makes it difficult for us to say that at that point he should have plainly recognized what additional portions of the statement would, and what would not, be necessary to give the jury the full picture of Reams's post-fight change in behavior. Even assuming, however, that the judge should have recognized the obvious relevance of other portions of the statement to counter the government's use of it to prove motive, Reams may not obtain reversal on this ground unless he can show that the error resulted in a miscarriage of justice by `seriously affect[ing] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of [the] judicial proceedings.' Id. at 736, 113 S.Ct. 1770 (citations omitted). He has not done so. Five government witnesses confirmed that Reams's habit of spending part of nearly every day in Ivy City before the fight changed afterwards, so that he was never there (Gilchrist, Jenkins) or there much less (Overby, Jackson) because, in Ashe's words, the men like more or less got the distance between them after the fight. Further, although Reams's statement in full offered another possible reason for his absence, the combined testimony of four eyewitnesses supported a strong inference that when he did return to the neighborhood on June 11, he did so to settle a score with Williams, Jenkins, and others who had fought with him at the earlier time. Realistically viewed, his police statement could have had only marginal effect on that evidence.