Opinion ID: 2329080
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Stipulation and Mr. Funnyre's Alleged Bias

Text: Next, appellant argues that his attorney's decision to stipulate, after the gun's admission, that appellant was a suspect in another violent crime without asking for an immediate cautionary instruction amounted to ineffective assistance. But the assertion in his brief that the revelation that Stewart was a suspect in another violent crime [would have] had no relevance to this case mischaracterizes the content of the stipulation, which stated only that the car from which the police seized the gun was used in another incident in which Mr. Stewart is a suspect. The language in the stipulation did not mention a violent crime, nor did it say anything about the nature of the incident in which appellant was involved. More importantly, defense counsel's agreement to the stipulation reflected a sound trial strategy, designed to avoid the risk of opening the door to any evidence of appellant's involvement in other crimes that could further tie him to the recovered gun. Any indication that appellant had used this same pistol in a murder would have established his possession of the physical means of committing the crime. . . . Coleman v. United States, 379 A.2d 710, 712 (D.C.1977). Such evidence would have been relevant to the issue of identity in this case, i.e., whether appellant was the man who shot at Mr. Funnyre. The trial court could reasonably conclude that counsel's agreement to the stipulation, with no reference to a murder or any other violent crime, mitigated the serious risk that the jury might learn about the nature of the other incident in which appellant was a suspect. We have no difficulty in concluding that counsel's decision to forego seeking a cautionary instruction, in lieu of a stipulation that merely characterized his client as a suspect in another incident, was a legitimate tactical decision. Appellant's claim that counsel should have cross-examined Mr. Funnyre about his alleged bias toward appellant suffers from the same defect. The bias of a witness may be a crucial component in the jury's assessment of that witness' credibility, and thus bias is always a proper subject of cross-examination. Foreman v. United States, 792 A.2d 1043, 1056 (D.C. 2002) (citations omitted). But nothing in the record before us rebuts Strickland 's weighty presumption of professional competence, nor do we have any reason to question defense counsel's explanation, at the § 23-110 hearing, that he deliberately chose to forego exploring Mr. Funnyre's bias because such cross-examination could ultimately have portrayed appellant as a thug. Counsel's decision to avoid the risk of introducing evidence that associated his client with a gang or someone who was killed or possible guns or some kind of feudinformation that might even have supplied a motive for the shooting and spoiled appellant's defensewas, again, a legitimate tactical choice.